Thursday 27 May 2010

Awareness

While wrestling with the tricky issue of helping a client to reach the point where he felt he would benefit from soliciting some feedback around his leadership performance, I came across a recent blog post from Tom Peters on the subject of self-awareness in leaders. It led me towards the conclusion that the ability to understand, exploit and develop our strengths, and commit to a plan for managing our weaknesses, may just be the most essential of all leadership attributes. Tom appears to have never agreed with Jim Collins that in reaching for the top, ‘Level 5’ leaders demonstrate a high degree of humility along with their strong will. However, a willingness to listen; take feedback on the impact of our behaviour; and to recognise that our talent is often not enough, surely requires a degree of modesty and respect. Our performance and the performance of others depends on this?