Leadership as a term is as broad as it is wide and hence all encompassing. It exists in every facet of life from self leadership through to multinational corporation and even national leadership and it exists at different levels in an organisation. But how do we know how good we are as leaders and hence where we might need leadership development? Could you turn an ordinary successful organisation into an extraordinary successful organisation?
Leaders are successful in myriad ways and what suits one situation may not suit another. Leadership in times of plenty is simpler than leadership in fallow times. Self analysis through reflection is essential to understanding your personal leadership style,strengths and areas for development but to quote Donald Rumsfeld “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” And that is the issue for without a real depth of leadership experience and knowledge we cannot gauge whether we are performing at our optimum leadership level and hence are we leading our organisation in the best way they deserve. Internal 360 degree feedback is useful, mentoring helps but an external leadership audit can be really effective in leadership development terms.