Leadership: Knowing your role in the process

People often envy and criticize leaders and question what they do. Here is a simple answer: they are people in the front making decisions. Leadership is for those who have the courage to make decisions and are not afraid of failing. In my view there are three types of people in the world - whether it is your personal life or professional life.

Decision makers
These are the leaders. The people who analyze information at their hands, filter the important from the unimportant, and take a decision. Decisions are often taken on partial information. If precise and complete information was always available you could train computers to take decisions. An important aspect of leadership is knowing that there is no way to lead without failures. Bad leaders are often who are afraid to fail. These leaders delay acknowledging failures and hence make the consequences of those failures bigger.

Influencers
Influencers who understand that they are not in charge of making the decisions but realize the importance of participating in the decision making process. Influencers are of 3 types:

1. Future leaders who are training themselves by putting themselves in the leader's shoes.
2. Perpetual influencers who are best suited as advisers to leaders and lack other aspects of leadership
3. The negative influencers who are typically putting their personal agendas ahead of the leader's primary responsibility. Leaders need to recognize this group and eliminate their influence.
   

Followers
This is a very important and perhaps the most important group. They implement the leader's decisions and vision. Followers need clarity. Clarity in:

1. Decisions: Clear articulation of the decisions, the rationale, objective and goals.
2. Communication: Clear communication and constant reminder of the goals
3. Operational mechanism: Clear way of setting goals, measuring success and tracking progress

Each group has its place and is a necessary function for progress. What is important is to know who you are and the role you are playing and do it well.