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Leadership is critical for all aspects of business and life. Too often, though, the discussion tends to be more philosophical rather than practical and applicable. TrimTab Leadership utilizes simple, practicing the principle of DUH! 

There are three basic elements of leadership that can help anyone grasp what is needed – Relationship, Orientation and Work (ROW). Let’s talk about Work and discuss the Relationship and Orientation in later posts. 

A key attribute, characteristic or component of leadership is most often described as being visionary or providing vision and direction. While true, Robert Fritz has more accurately expanded that thinking into a more practical and robust form by using the Creative Process which we believe is the WORK of a leader.

The Work of a leader involves two additional components which greatly enhance the ability of followers to see the vision. To illustrate the first component, let’s assume that I am a traveler and you are a Travel Agent. I call your 800 number and tell you I want to go to New York City. There is one question you need to ask me, otherwise, you can’t start the process. Here are some typical guesses; when do you want to go, how much do you want to spend, how do you want to travel, what airline do you want to use. Sometimes a person offers the right question – Where will you be leaving from?

What makes that difficult to guess? Because we know where we are and often assume others know where we are also. Leaders don’t make that assumption. They are not only envisioning where they would like to go, but are also clear and fluent in Current Reality, where they are right now.

So, adapting the great work of Robert Fritz, a more robust Work of leaders involves clarity about – THERE and HERE. THERE is what a leader invites people to achieve, to travel to. HERE is the accurate picture of current reality, the place where he and the people currently reside.

Using those two points taps into the power of the way our brain works. Seeing clearly both points allows our brains the opportunity to start working on the best possible PATH to travel from HERE to THERE. That is the essence of the Creative Process. Great leaders use the natural and powerful motivation of THERE, HERE and PATH to kick start movement. They clearly define where they are going – THERE, identify objectively the current reality of where they are – HERE and start identifying a PATH to travel to go from HERE to THERE.

By the way, leadership and management are both needed. There is no reason to denigrate one and elevate the other. Every leader needs to execute, which is management and every manager needs to lead. Both are necessary, let’s not create fights about the most important.

Next time we will discuss the Relationship element for leaders.