The Psychology of Leadership
Understanding the psychology of leadership can help us achieve great things and break our boundaries.
Great Leaders
As leadership expert Warren Bennis once stated, “leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” Great leaders possess dazzling social intelligence, a zest for change, and above all, a vision that allows them to set their sights on the things that truly merit attention. Not a bad skill set for the rest of us, either.
It is the job of leaders to develop a vision—establish what matters and articulate why—set direction, and inspire others. Recent research on the skills leaders need establishes the increasing importance of inner resources of the psyche such as self-awareness and self-mastery.
Today’s leaders are expected to be agile, flexible, ROI-driven, socially-aware and relationship-oriented, open-minded and supportive collaborators actively seeking out different perspectives and breaking down traditional non-functioning barriers in order to achieve exceptional results.
Whether this is Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Sir Alex Ferguson, the captain of the local rugby team or a teenager with the right stuff, leaders come in different forms.
If we accept the need for flexible, agile and relationship-driven leadership, then it is important to develop a leadership model that nurtures such people – regardless of where they are in the organisation.
Over the last 10 years or so, I have been delivering various flavours of leadership development ranging from one to one mentoring through to fuller blended programs. What I have seen over time is the growing importance and relevance of the integrated psychology of leadership.