Dear DJmcmath
 

With regards to leadership be yourself. Anything else is an affectation and in the end is a waste of time. It is posturing and preening.

Sun Tzu said, "He who knows himself and his enemy will win 100 battles without loss."

I had an arguement with Shaun a while back. I said a leader is someone who is willing to go in a direction even if no one one is willing to follow. He is willing to go it alone if necessary. You might call that the courage of your convictions, ideas or vision. You have a sense of what has to be done and you do it. That kind of leadership might be called "Trailblazing."

Shaun on the other hand was arguing managerial leadership in the sense that you have to be able to work with people and get them on board with a goal and get them to work together to achieve that goal.

To be truly great you have to combine both the intellect with the heart.

It can also be called "insanity".

Remember, sometimes "The Road Less Travelled" is less travelled for a damn good reason.

Knowing when to cut against the grain and when not to is a bit of an art. Simply making bold and obnoxious predictions all the time because nobody gets remembered for mediocre ones (even when they end up being right) hoping to get lucky and look like a genius should one actually come true is not evidence of real genius - it's evidence of reckless risk-taking with one's reputation.

Best of luck to you.

It isn't "luck" or "reckless risk taking" when you know what is going to happen.

Hmm. Leadership that takes you down a path alone may not be leadership -- you aren't leading anyone down the path with you. I agree with the element of courage, but not necessarily with the element of loneliness, in that sense.

Cutting against the grain can be the right answer -- but it's more important for a leader to Do The Right Thing than to be different simply because he feels that being different is more leader-like.

I guess you'd point at investors who "go it alone" as leaders, though I wouldn't say that someone who's investing gobs of cash on a contrarian idea (Warren Buffet?) is a leader so much as he's a great investor. You might also point at an inventor who defies the skeptics to do something that's never been done before, and which people said wasn't possible, as a leader. But really, that guy is a genius who believed in his crazy idea, not really a leader.

Thanks for the thread title, btw, or I never would have found this thread in my name. :)

Dan

I'm thinking of guys like ole Daniel Boone...he cut a new trail out to the new territory which everybody then followed his lead.

Einsteinstein wrote his theory of relativity. It took about 20 years to prove it, and then when it was proven everybody followed.