Leadership - have you ever encountered it ?

I have decided to abandon the search for a leader I can admire, or follow.

I do what I can to be the leader I would like to work for. Perhaps that's all I can hope for.

What I have encountered over the last forty years has been big egos that have successfully climbed towards power. Some of them have parts of the good leader equation, but what I'm seeing is the people who have the work ethics, communication skills and mentoring abilities I admire do not gravitate towards top positions. Or if they did, a more aggressive persons with less skills beat them to the command positions.

Have you worked for persons you admired and learned from that were in top positions ?

 

Totally. Pretty much every job I've been in.

Probably the determining factor in this (other than being completely blessed) is that I have always worked for small private companies that had been around for >15 years before I joined.
A small private company with a big ego at the top usually isn't going to hire someone like me.
A small private company also tends to promote from a smaller pool...and aggression doesn't work as well.

JMO...I'll happily take what I ended up with.

 

No, but I have learned a lot from watching these leaders, all stuff I wouldn't do myself, so I think I have learned a lot about what not to do.
There are learning experiences everywhere I suppose. Most of my mentors were not big leaders, but they were great teachers.

 

With the exception of one boss who did make the effort to mentor me (albeit briefly), I've been forced to be very self-reliant. This includes providing the majority of my own training by searching out resources. Good leadership is rare in my opinion, and not something I'd personally ever want to attempt. Just knowing what not to do isn't enough for me.

 

You make a fair point normzone.

Someone who has a big ego and aggressive vs someone with work ethics, communication skills and mentoring abilities, the latter is the better leader in all accounts.

at equilibrium what do you mean by "Just knowing what not to do isn't enough for me."

I tend to do my own training too and would love to have good leadership skills one day but I would not mentor anyone myself, maybe pass on my knowledge to my children if I had any.