Leadership Notebook #1 March 10, 2022:  What is Leadership?

When Maggie, my current boss, comes to me for assistance with a task that she knows she’s out of her depth on. She’s my boss, but she relies on me, and others, to fill in the gaps on her skillset. She doesn’t try to act like she can handle things that she can’t, and she doesn’t see this as any issue with her leadership role. 

Several years ago one of my volunteers was in charge of my demonstration garden and just was not doing the job as I needed him to. He was continuously making poor decisions without consulting me and just really not handling my feedback well, or even implementing any of the tasks that I assigned to him in the way I envisioned them. I decided to sit him down for a conversation and basically fire him from his leadership role, but I took responsibility for his failure, because I had not set him up for success by making my parameters crystal clear from the beginning. I pointed out where the issues were and told him I thought he had strengths that we could better utilize in other project areas. I listed several projects where I thought his skills would be particularly useful to my program, and I asked him where he would like to focus his time moving forward. 

I do agree that leadership is a choice. 

Going forward, the change that I am trying to make is to improve my leadership skills, to have a positive impact on those around me, and to improve the issues that are within my ability to effect.