List
Print This Post Print This Post

A ‘Daily Thought’ taken from one of my Leadership series’.

Gold leadership, is the one above silver and bronze, that’s it. Sorry if you were expecting a very sophisticated definition.

If I describe the Gold, you can figure out what Silver and Bronze might be.  Certainly a very rich set as well, all excellent. Just, not Gold.

This is Gold:

  1. Ahead of the game, a few or more steps than anybody else. A bad reader thinks that this Gold leader is on a different planet. But the Gold leader is not; he/she simply sees this planet from a different angle. An angle that not many people see. This is visioning at its best, not dreaming. He/she is also not entirely apologetic about this.
  2. Imagination at work, which needs some (often irritating sounding) detachment from daily life; even if that daily life sucks the Gold leader into factual problem solving. Even a crisis that is in the process of being addressed, by no means solved, elicits in the Gold leader the thinking of how to avoid a new one, or different one, which annoys people trying to solve the crisis of the day.
  3. The Gold leader refuses to obey the ‘one thing at a time’ rule. For the Gold leader, sequential stuff is overrated.
  4. The Gold leader refuses to see ‘focus’ as something you see through a tiny hole. Focus is often confused with determination. The Gold leader is focused but has more than one target to focus on. He or she particularly likes people who can have a broad vision and a good helicopter view, and then can focus. Which confuses some.
  5. The Gold leader thinks legacy, even when nobody expects that he or she thinks legacy, not yet. It’s mainly not personal or ego legacy, but thinking about the building that is being built. Sometimes nobody seems to see the walls. Gold leaders do.
  6. Creates space and time by stealing them, by refusing to be drawn to busy-ness. This is both for himself/herself and for others. It has nothing to do with ‘free time’ and ‘thinking time’. It has to do with the War on Stupid Busy-ness
  7. The Gold leader is brilliant at enhancing the possibilities and life of people. He/she puts people in the right places, which includes stretch. There is nothing altruistic or naïve in this. He or she has perhaps innate hope in human beings, but may not be too vocal about it.
  8. The Gold leader refuses to play the role of having all the answers or knowing the exact point of destination, but at the same time brings others to figure out the journey (and may close the door and throw the key out of the window until everybody is on the same route plan)
  9. The Gold leader not only accepts but promotes areas of ineffectiveness in the organization life, where things are not super perfect and super clear and perhaps there are elements of waste. The Gold leader knows that this is the only way to get better and better and succeed. But he or she can be seen sometimes as too tolerant with some ambiguity.
  10. The Gold leader is both very strategic and very tactical, so it does not fit into the assumed bipolar view of the world. In fact, the Gold leader surprises others with the apparent confusion. Often some tactical moves for others are very strategic for the Gold leaders, and vice versa. That distinction does not sit comfortably in the Gold leader’s mind.

If you see one of these, work for or with one of these, congratulations. If you are one of these, think Platinum.

Keep up with the Daily Thoughts

Twitter Email

Would you like to comment?

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To search my website, please use the form below.

  Daily Thoughts

May 19th, 2023

Value is an overused term in business and, as such, it’s becoming meaningless

Value, as usually used, means transactional monetary value. Usually it doesn’t mean intrinsic value, or value per se. For example, […]

May 4th, 2023

The importance of ‘critical thinking.’ Your own critical thinking is more effective at making your workplace better than any generic employee survey.

Build your own Employee Engagement argument for free. You can’t go wrong. Here are three baskets full of concepts: Basket […]

April 21st, 2023

´Busy-Ness’ Is A Trap

I went to a big conference where I was introduced by the chairman like this: “Welcome everybody. Lovely to have […]

April 14th, 2023

Training and culture change. The love affair that ends in tears.

It seems to be very hard for people to get away from the idea that if we just put individuals […]

April 11th, 2023

Teamocracies and Networkracies have different citizens: in-Habitants in team-work, riders in net-work

The old view of the organization is something close to the old concept of a medieval city, where citizenship was […]

April 5th, 2023

3 Ways To Get Approval From Your CEO Or Your Leadership Team

Way number 1: My team has developed these three options, A, B and C. Which one do you want us […]

March 29th, 2023

A Cheat Sheet To Create A Social Movement Tip = to shape organizational culture since both are the same.

Mobilizing people. This is another of the Holy Grails (how many have I said we have?) in management. Whether you […]

March 16th, 2023

Critical Thinking Self-Test: A 10 Point Health Check For Your Organization And Yourself. If any of these are a good picture of your organization, you need to put ‘critical thinking’ in the water supply.

Test yourself, and your organization. Do any of these apply? Doing lots, too fast without thinking. High adrenaline, not sure […]

March 9th, 2023

A culture of safety or a culture of training in safety?

Cultures are created by behaviours becoming the norm. Safety is at the core of many industries. Significant budgets are allocated […]

March 2nd, 2023

Empowerment is an output. If you can visualize it, you can craft it.

The real question is, what do you want to see happening so that you can say ‘people are empowered’? Employee […]

February 24th, 2023

A simple question will jumpstart your organization into change. It will also save you from months of pain spent reorganizing your people and teams.

The following line will short-cut months of (building) ‘alignment’, integration, reorganization, team building, coalition building, and any situation in which Peter, […]

February 20th, 2023

Lead Via Peer-To-Peer Networks – If you don’t lead via peer-to-peer networks, you’re only driving your car in first gear.

Peer-to-peer work, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is the […]

February 7th, 2023

Write a script, not a strategic plan

If you care about the journey and the place, you need a story. If you have a good, compelling one, […]

January 26th, 2023

3 self-sabotaging mechanisms in organizations

Organizations, like organisms, have embedded mechanisms of survival, of growth and also of self-sabotage. These are 3 self-sabotage systems to […]

January 10th, 2023

Who should be involved in culture change? All inclusive versus going where the energy is.

Many times, in my consulting work, I find myself facing a dilemma: Do I involve many people on the client’s […]

December 23rd, 2022

Tell what won’t change – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

In any change programme that any organization wants to start, they will start by thinking of the things that they […]

December 16th, 2022

Scale It – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

When creating effective change in any organization, there are 40 rules that, in my experience, are the key between success […]

December 5th, 2022

Assets & Strengths Base – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

For more than 30 years I have been involved in ‘change’ in organizations. Again and again, some fundamental principles, and often […]

November 25th, 2022

Campaign It… is 1 of my 40 rules of change

When you filter out the noise, when you try to extract the core, the fundamentals, those ‘universal rules’ of change […]

October 31st, 2022

Hybrid or not hybrid? That’s not the question…

Culture is the new workplace If you want to have a conversation about the future of work, the nature of […]

October 24th, 2022

‘Powered by Viral Change™’: A Social Transformation Platform for the organization of the 21st Century

When we started to work on Viral Change™, as a way to create large scale behavioural and cultural change, and […]

October 14th, 2022

Corporate tribes, intellectual ghettos and open window policies

We talk a lot about silos in organizations usually in the context of Business Units or divisions. But these are not […]

October 7th, 2022

Peer Networks are the strongest force of action inside the organization

Peer-to-peer works, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is […]

September 30th, 2022

Change that doesn’t deliver change-ability is a waste

The traditional model of change is the one I call ‘destination’ type, that is, how to go from A to […]

September 23rd, 2022

Company structures: aggregate and disaggregate

New organizations, and old ones in the business of transforming themselves, would be better off learning by heart these two […]

September 15th, 2022

3 Self-Sabotaging Mechanisms in Organizations

Organizations, like organisms, have embedded mechanisms of survival, of growth and also of self-sabotage. These are 3 self-sabotage systems to […]

September 2nd, 2022

The best organizational model is to have more than one under the same roof

Command and control management has fewer friends, and it’s quite terminally ill as well. The heirs are fighting for a piece […]

August 26th, 2022

Unprecedented Times? Sure. Let’s Move On Please.

Somewhere in the post-Covid peak, I promised myself that I wasn’t going to pay attention anymore to anything that starts with […]

August 19th, 2022

Engagement, Empowerment and Ownership Culture Meet at One Single Point. Obvious, Simple and Incredibly Forgotten

Employee engagement efforts, ownership values and empowerment behaviours must meet at one point. It’s simple, not terribly controversial, based upon […]

August 12th, 2022

Employee Engagement and the Productivity Magnet

For me, the most damaging use of the employee engagement framework is the widespread one that states that ‘engagement’ predicts […]