Some Misconceptions About Leadership

What comes to mind when you hear “leader” or “leadership”? It’s likely that you think of someone who’s, well, in charge, someone who exhibits a very aggressive personality, who nobody ever dares to defy, and who never takes no for an answer. Leadership is also seen as having assertive behavior. Apart from that, some people also think that those who have the title of “president”, “director”, “CEO”, “chairman”, or “supervisor” already qualifies as a leader. Anyone who also has seniority and is at the right age to be appointed to a certain position can also be seen as a leader.

Aside from these, there are also some wrong notions about what leadership means, notions that the right leadership training program should be able to dispel. The general impression is that leadership means nothing more than being assertive, than being someone who doles out orders and instructions. Leadership is certainly not about power and about making other people feel small and helpless.

On the contrary, the right form of leadership should even make every employee feel big, important, and useful. A leader is someone who inspires and encourages, because this sort of encouragement pushes people to improve themselves and thus work hard to do everything they can to achieve their goals. By inspiring and encouraging people, you actually help them see their potential and make them realize that they can achieve quite a lot. It’s a far cry from being the kind of person who brings them down and makes them feel worthless and useless, which will certainly not encourage them to do their jobs at all.

The right leader doesn’t just focus on himself or herself. He or she is not out to paint himself or herself as the star of the whole show. Instead, the leader works to make sure that it is the entire team that shines and gets the proper credit.

It certainly sounds like being a leader is not the glitzy job that people tend to make it out to be most of the time. It’s certainly not easy, even after getting corporate leadership training, although you would have vastly improved. You’re not only expected to be skilled and knowledgeable, but to be capable of juggling the myriad personalities and temperaments of your team members and working around them, as well as be able to find the best talent. The important thing is for you to grasp the responsibility that leadership entails rather than thinking about the perks.