To Lead OR Not to Lead

This has been a question that has bothered me for quite a while and this is as good a time as any to ponder on it.

Leadership without a team or a group is meaningless. There can be no leader when there is no one to lead. On the other hand, my personal theory is that a well-organized, responsible group of intelligent human beings with a strong sense of ownership can function efficiently without a leader, whether appointed or elected. So, what is leadership? What is its essence? Do we really need it? Why? What makes a group of people accept someone with a special type of persona as their leader and follow in his/her footsteps with or without question?

There is a huge corpus of literature produced by some of the greatest scholars, thinkers and prominent leaders in history, covering all aspects of the theory and practice of leadership in all spheres of human life - social, political, military, religious, economic, philosophical, spiritual - you name it - spanning a few thousand years of human civilization. I am sure most of you are familiar with at least a fraction of that intelligence, and it is not my intention to discuss or comment on any of it.

What I would like to share with you are some thoughts and ideas, accumulated over a brief period of a quarter of a century of professional life. In the course of my career in IT/Software development and delivery I have led a few excellent teams with varying degrees of success. As far as my experience goes, the best and most practical leadership is not one that makes all the decisions for the group, but that which empowers the group to arrive at the best and most suitable decisions on their own. The question, at the innermost core, is one of survival. Just as it was for our earliest hunter/food gatherer forefathers, so it is with the fiercely competitive corporate giants of our own time. A leader is, in effect, the person who can identify with the group and show (not tell) them clearly and precisely where they are headed, while anchoring them firmly in their collective history. In other words, while the rest of us are still floundering in our search, the exceptional person is the one who comes closest to answering our fundamental questions:

-Where do we come from?

-What are we?

-Where are we going?

Evidently, the responsibility that comes with such power is overwhelming. Anyone who consciously and willingly agrees to shoulder that burden is not just special, but a little frightening as well!