The importance of asking: what really is leadership?

Unless you understand the truth about leadership you are powerless to affect it.

A horse will tell you this truth immediately.When you learn how to get your vision so clear in your mind and so strong in your body that a horse will choose to follow you anywhere - willingly and freely, without force or fear - you are beginning to experince the power of true vision, clear intention and natural leadership.

In my book, Why talk to a guru? When you can whisper to a horse – the art of natural leadership – as well as offering some challenging points of view on what may be true, I have the luxury of 300 pages to discuss the paradigms, mythologies and misunderstandings surrounding the well-chewed subject of: what really is leadership?

What if, in the same way ‘time’ does not really exist, ‘leadership’ does not really exist? As in improving ‘time management’ skill, if you try to manage time you get totally lost. If you look at what people are really doing rather than what they say or appear to be doing you are dealing with truth. So when you learn to manage choices and priorities – not time itself - you start to feel you’re winning.

It’s exactly the same principle with leadership skill development. What are people really doing? What appears to be ‘great leadership’ is really ‘great followership’ of those seeming to be led. So the questions arising from this might be:

1. What must I follow to become a more effective leader?
2. What and how must I communicate in order that my people follow in the same direction?

This all leads to the question: do I have a vision or could it be a mirage?