You can ask lots of questions about leadership:
► Is this about ‘what positional leaders do’, and therefore about leaders and followers? Is it the job of leaders to set ‘the direction’ and give instructions to followers?
► Or is it more about the capacity in your organization to ‘lead innovation’? And then people take the lead not because they have a certain position of power in the organization, but because they get inspired and want to do something fueled by their passion, experience and expertise?
► And what if taking the lead, doesn’t mean ‘showing people where to go’ but is more about bringing stakeholders together and stimulating the innovative dialogue to cope with unexpected and unpredictable challenges? Is leading not about distributing leadership and develop coalitions between professionals that work.
► And is Leadership Development then ‘developing’ positional leaders on how to get ‘followers’ to do what they think is necessary?
► Or is Leadership Development actually for everyone and is that about the question of how you can engage everyone to contribute to that ‘shared ambition’ that people in the organization have? How can you take the initiative yourself and how do you work together with others to make initiatives successful?
And what do you do in your organization … is it about ‘positional or distributed leadership’ and is it about ‘commanding’ or ‘process guidance’?