Jo Owen - The Leadership Skills Handbook

Introduction

M ost leadership books try to answer the question What is good leadership? That is like trying to answer the question What are people like? The resulting debate generates more heat than light because leaders, like people, come in many different shapes and sizes.

This handbook is different. It starts with the question: How can you learn to lead? In our research with over 1,000 leaders at all levels in public, private and voluntary sectors the answer was clear: leaders learn not from courses but from experience, bosses, peers and role models. Some of the lessons are positive: we try to copy effective behaviour. Some lessons are negative: we see a boss or peer explode spectacularly and quietly decide not to copy that mistake.

The problem with learning from experience is that it is a random walk. Bump into good role models and experiences and you learn good lessons. Get the wrong role models and experience and you learn the wrong lessons. Not many people become leaders through the luck of the random walk.

This handbook will help you take the randomness out of the random walk of experience. It gives you a framework for observing and learning from the experiences you go through. The structure takes some of the randomness out of random experience and lets you learn faster and better than your peers: this is your guide to accelerated leadership.

Our research identified the main practical skills that leaders must have. No leader gets ticks in all the boxes. But you need to develop some signature strengths and you do not want to fail badly in any area.

The book does not prescribe a single formula for success. You will not have to become Nelson Mandela, Genghis Khan or Mother Teresa to succeed. The book allows you to create your own formula for success. Your success formula will reflect a combination of what works in your sector, organization and profession plus what works for you as an individual.

The leadership riddle

There are two dead-end roads to leadership. The first dead end is to try to be someone else. We cannot be Churchill, Gandhi and Alexander the Great all rolled into one (although there are some people who think they are already that good). We have to be true to ourselves.

The other dead end is to simply be who we are, in the vain hope that the world will recognize our innate brilliance and leadership talent. We could end up waiting a very long time.

So now we have a problem: we cannot become leaders by being someone else, and we cannot succeed by being who we are. How do we solve this riddle?

The solution is that we have to become the best of who we are. This book is your guide to discovering how to be the best of who you are. It will help you discover, build and celebrate your strengths. You will not have to sacrifice your personality: you can be a leader on your own terms, not on the terms of some guru with a great theory.

This handbook helps you take the randomness out of the journey to leadership. The book features the core skills leaders need to develop. Each skill has a framework to help you think about how that skill should be deployed ideally. As important, note and learn from your own experience examples of where you see the skill being deployed well or less well. You should think hard about why it was effective or less effective. As you observe and record real-life examples of skills in action, you will be developing your own unique formula for success in your own unique context.

This handbook is to be used by you to create your own leadership DNA. Ideal leadership is always inferior to practical leadership: what works for you where you are. The handbook only succeeds if you use it as an active tool. When you are faced with an unfamiliar challenge, refer back to this handbook and your notes. Use the book well and it can become your personal guide and coach on the road to leadership.