Leading, Leaders, and Leadership
“Leading” means stepping ahead or showing the way for a group of individuals or an organisation. Broadly, leadership is concerned with people whereas management is concerned with task. Both leadership and management are required for the effective running of organisations. Commonly, management receives more attention as a skill to be learned, possibly because of its more tangible nature.
For our purposes, leadership is a process not a person. That process is potentially shared by everyone in the organisation. We won’t use the phrase “the leadership” to mean the top people in the organisation. They are the “leaders” or, more frequently, the “senior leaders”. Part of our philosophy is the benefit of developing leadership throughout the organisation at every level—that being a key to resilience and agility, among others things.
Enterprising
“Enterprising” means having or showing initiative and resourcefulness, with allusions to business and the serving of customers and stakeholders
Mastery
“Mastery” means continual learning, always looking for ways to improve what we do with an attitude of curiosity and openness to feedback and an ultimate aim of an advanced level of ability. Mastery means being mindful of how we are doing what we are doing even as we are doing it; being an observer of ourselves. Is what we are doing working and, if not, how should we change it?
Our ultimate aim is an advanced level of ability – a mastery of the subject, if you like – but as importantly, we mean deliberately setting out to learn and grow and improve.