First, may I distinguish between strategic and tactical leadership. Tactical Leadership is based on the courage and determination that individuals throughout the organization can display when things that need to get done aren't getting done. Strategic Leadership has to do with setting the future path of an organization. There are lots of theories out there about strategy ranging in intentionality from "logical incrementalism" to "creating the future."
My concern here is with those who want to expand their leadership influence in an organization or those who are already in executive roles and are concerned that their organization is not developing leaders faster and better. In that regard, I see two main reasons why there's a lack of leadership.
The first is a lack of strategic story. Most people, in my experience, if you ask them, "what do you think the strategy of your organization ought to be?" haven't much if anything to say. They may complain about what they see, but they have nothing to offer in its place. They haven't developed their own strategic story for the path the organization should pursue. In my view, a good strategic story has at least six pieces: a clear and memorable and inspiring mission statement, a clear and detailed vision statement of where we want to go, a clear and short values statement of the core principles upon which we will be making our decisions, a strategy statement (the longest of these pieces) that describes how we're going get from where we are to where we want to be (vision), and a statement of short-term operating goals (STOGs). In my experience, far too many executives misconstrue STOGs as strategy. All of these elements taken together can be called an "organizational charter." One could, and I believe, should develop detailed charters for their organization, their current work group (that they lead), and for themselves. In other words, we can think of strategic issues occuring at the organizational, work group and personal levels, and using the structure of a charter will help individuals round out their strategic thinking. My book on Level Three Leadership has a chapter on Personal and Organizational Charters if you're interested in more details.
The second major reason there's a lack of leadership is the fear of rejection. IF a person has a strategic story to tell, that is, they've done their strategic homework and have a set of beliefs about what they think the organization should do, then the question is "what proportion of your life are you living inside-out versus outside-in?" Unless the average in your life is above fifty percent inside-out, I believe the odds of you becoming a leader are minimal. Clearly neither extreme, zero or 100 percent inside-out-ness are good: spineless or self centered boor. But if you worry more about what others will think than about the goodness or truthfulness or importance of your strategic story, you won't have the courage to say what you believe and with conviction.
If you want to be a more effective leader, consider these two questions:
1. Have I developed an organizational charter for my organization? If not, I won't have anything to say.
2. Am I leading my life on-balance more inside-out than outside-in? If not, I'll be too worried about what others think of me to be honest and direct about what I see.
We'll come back later in another post to the question about how executives can develop more leaders in their organizations.