Leadership

There are a few characteristics of a good leader. Among them are; courage, judgment and experience. To explain this I often used the “scraping of window panes” metaphor. Here the leader is on the inside of a room and there is something going on outside that they need to act on quickly. In front of them is a window with a number of panes all painted opaque. Were they clear, the scene would be apparent and the action obvious. A good leader starts by scraping a bit of the paint off of one pane and gets a glimpse of the scene. That small segment suggests they may want to scrape another bit of a pane at the far end. There is starting to appear a hint of an image. They scrape a bit of another pane, go back to the first and scrape a little more and then, though without a full picture, they see enough to make a decision. In the example above the leader exhibited a characteristic essential to good leadership. First and foremost they were willing to take a risk and make a decision without waiting for all the pieces of the puzzle to be in place. I have seen very capable people continue scraping each pane clear and see the entire scene before taking action. They are afraid of being wrong, whereas the leader above was willing to chance and make the decision. At this point I might add that for different actions there are different degrees of probability that are prudent. A surgeon need a very high probability and would be justified to scrape much of the window clear but most of us are in positions where we can afford to be wrong and often inaction is more consequential than wrong action. Another attribute required to make a decision with minimal scraping is experience. With experience one has seen many scenes outside the window and seeing only a few key pieces can imagine the full picture. People without the experience, though brave, need to clear a larger portion of the window to see the same amount of the scene to make a decision. The third attribute is judgment. As they scrape small segments of a pane and catch a glimpse of the scene, they need to decide where might there be another segment that will most probably lead them quickly to the whole picture. Someone, courageous and experienced but without good judgment, unable to figuring out where the most probable bit of a scene lies that will help form enough of a picture will need to scrape a large portion of many panes. Without the courage, judgment and experience, no matter how bright the individual, they will spend too much time gathering information or if not, see the wrong picture and though in positions of leadership, will not be followed.