Leadership is risky business . . . enter at your own risk.

January 1, 2005

The beginning of the conversation called leadership.

If management is designed to provide a certain level of safety, security, and stability - maintaining equilibrium - then perhaps leadership is designed to provoke a certain level of uncertainty, unrest, chaos and lack of equilibrium. Leaders are the guides to the future, acting ahead of knowing with certainty, how it will turn out.

Leaders are always taking risks when they are upsetting the equilibrium of a system. Their chief "opponents" become those that are responsible for maintenance of those systems - the system "managers". Managers are working on optimizing and maximizing the current systems, processes and tasks.

Leaders develop a tolerance for the ambiguity, that others want to give sound definition to. For those that seek "safety, security, and stability" ambiguity is a threat and the threat must be attacked - made wrong, or criticized. To appear as an "attack" on someone's "safety, security and stability" is "risky" business - isn't it.

What's up for you?

Have you been disrupting the equilibrium of some entrenched system - feeling like you were taking on something very risky - if not threatening at times?

Have you been protecting some deeply entrenched system - feeling like you were being threatened, and that you needed to "fight" to protect that which has been functioning so well - in the past?

Copyright 2005 Bob Elliott, Newfields, NH. All rights reserved.