Static Leadership

I was reading an article by Chris Ferguson today when a line caught me. He remarks "leadership is about discerning what should and should not be changed." In looking at my own journey as a leader, I think my own failings have mainly been not in the things I've neglected to do, but in what I did that wasn't necessary. I'm a creative thinker who's brain is always buzzing with new ideas and new things I want to try. When I get bored, I seek out problems to solve. However, sometimes there just isn't anything going wrong at the moment. It's in those situations that I end up redesigning things simply to redesign them, even though they were perfectly fine to start with and perhaps better than before I began tinkering. 

This tendency is frequently referred to as "shiny object syndrome"- I have a need to chase new goals and ideas rather than stay the course and continue down the path I'm on. I've started and gotten board of at least a dozen businesses. I've re-written the SOP's at my day job more times than I can count. So for my own development, I'm proposing a new idea- static leadership.

We've all heard of dynamic leadership. This can be a great thing- many organizations need new ideas and big overhauls. But once the dust dies down and the course is straight, that's when static leadership comes into play. A good leader learns to recognise when things are going well and stay the course rather than continuing to seek out exciting nw projects that the company isn't ready for yet. Maybe a controversial idea- shouldn't leaders be visionaries, constantly on to the next big thing? I say no. A good leader recognises what the company needs and gives them that. That's true leadership.