I recently watched the last HBO special of George Carlin ‘It’s Bad for Ya’ where the made a passing mention of ‘Leadership Camp’ in his list of raves and rants and raised a pivotal question in my mind:

So, what is ‘leadership’? Can it be taught at camp or by seeking admission into a plethora of management courses that a million universities offer in the mode of distance or full-time education? Or is it something that comes ‘naturally’?

Questions, questions, questions… answers to which one can hardly take the dichotomous Yes/ No approach leaving you with more questions than ever... where every school of thought interprets & dishes out their uniquely, canned version of leadership, delivered either through a training session, a seminar or conference.

Personally, I’ve sat through some of them… have read a series of ‘How-to’ books… and have conducted a couple of sessions related to ‘leadership’…

But as I mentioned earlier, it has only led to more questions… which has brought me back to square one…

So, what is ‘leadership’?

Leadership is all about ‘radical thought’. Period!

So, your next question might be: How can it be as simple as that? Please feel free to substantiate your unique, ‘canned’ version of ‘leadership’…

And I gladly will…

Humanity has taken giant leaps in technology, spirituality, politics and psychology over the last century… now how did this happen?

Very simply, because of people who were ‘ahead of their time’…

Call them pioneers if you will… they were leaders who commanded absolute mastery over their respective fields… and were more than willing to push the envelope… and their fields to greater heights…

To press forward… and that only comes from radical thought… the ability to look into the future…

Interestingly, when I attended a session on Leading the AOL Way… a comparison between leaders and managers were made… and if we look at both these words… a manager’s role is to control a situation or system that requires stability and in my opinion, supports a degree of stagnancy… but the word ‘leader’ is indicative of direction…

In this day and age, there is no place for stagnancy… everyone is looking for bigger, better and more… and this is true of the “corporate jungle” that we are a part of… some cynically call it the “rat race”… just so that we can stay ahead…

And real leaders aspire to more than just that…

And how?

Radical & in most cases, controversial thought that demonstrates a paradigm shift in thinking, saying and doing… with the ‘leader’ showing us the way…

The actual meaning of a ‘paradigm shift’ is a complete 180-degree turn from what is being done now to something that is more suited to a better future… even if you have to discard integral elements of a particular school of thought that is widely accepted… and take an alternative approach… in a completely different direction…

This takes guts… but as the saying goes ‘No Guts, no glory’…

Read what John Kenneth Galbraith has to say about ‘conventional wisdom… and you’ll see what I mean…

To me, this is ‘leadership’ in a nutshell…

The ability to look into the future [vision, so to speak]… and take your people there from start to finish… to much much more than just bigger and better… with a dogmatically stubborn conviction that the race to perfection has no finish line…

For, where there is no vision, the people [read: employees, followers, you name it] perish [Proverbs 29:18]

So, what’s your ‘radical thought’ quotient?