Dec 07 2008
Learning to Lead from the Inside Out: Growing Into the Position
I’ve got a good head of steam from my riffs on leadership, and RPG Blog Carnival is doing Transitions and Transformations this month. So I thought, why not combine them?
Leaders, in my opinion, are not born; neither does a good leader just happen. At some point, they’re going to have to work for it, and that sort of learning process has the potential for some of the most amazing characterization and development the medium has to offer. Why not take advantage of it?
The first question is whether the leader-to-be has any experience leading or using any of a leader’s traits beforehand. Does he have a strong sense of how the people around him work? Does she have a knack for instructing people? Is he used to being followed around by others because of what he does or who he is? Does she already know the people she’s going to be leading? The more questions you’ve answered with a yes, the more your leader-to-be has a leg up on the situation.
Then we get into how they end up in their roles. Depending on what form of leadership is appropriate, this can vary greatly: while it’s most often delegators delegating, communicators mediating, and inspiration leaders either Being Impressive or finding themselves subject to bloodline/Destiny/Outside Force Z, sometimes someone will step in with a skill to which they’re not suited out of desperation. One fun thing to play up is how enthused they are about this new role. Are they trying to end up in charge? Did they step in because nobody else was going to? Was everyone else involved, at least to their eyes, incompetent or just plain stupid? Were they swept up in someone else’s Grand Plan?
Then you can start thinking about their skills, and their attitude towards them. They probably don’t know about the Three Approaches (though if they do, please tell me! I love seeing my ideas propagated!), but they probably do know about some of the skills expected of one who leads, and possibly even have a figure they’re trying to emulate. Mixing and matching styles between what they are and what they want to become, or what they are and what they first stepped up as, can be great fun; more on this later. So do they try to master the skills they already have? Branch into ones they feel they should have? Where do they succeed? More interestingly, where do they fail and what do they do about it? For that matter, are they trying to grow as leaders, or being forced into it? Might they refuse to learn the skills, even pretend to be worse at them than they actually are, in hopes that it will make the people putting them in charge find some other fool? The particularly canny ones might even feign ignorance but attempt to work on the skills when nobody’s looking.
And this is just how the leader’s dealing with herself and her own qualifications. Tomorrow, I’ll look a little more closely at how a leader-in-training deals with her organization as a whole.
Very interesting thoughts, Ravyn - I’ve seen a lot (both in games and the real world) that would suggest that often the people who want to be leaders aren’t the ones for the job, and vice versa. A lot, of course, not everyone - but often leaders and politicians who try to ascend to a status do it not only for its own sake, but also the benefits. Not to say that most people are necessarily selfish, but if you don’t have a incredibly strong motivation to do your job, maybe enough of one to overcome your inherent dislike or frustration with your job, then its easier to fall victim to self-aggrandizement via corruption and the like.
Hee, I guess that was probably a bit didactic, sorry - meant it more as my thoughts on the subject as a whole. Keep it up!
Yeah, I agree with you there. The whole “If you want this job, clearly you do not understand what entails”–speaking of which, “What the job entails” is going to be my next topic.