Leadership takes places in everyone’s life to a degree, whether they realise it or not. In this portion of an interview between Dale Beaumont and Denis Gianoutsos find out the definition of leadership according to a very successful leadership coach.
Denis is a global transformation leadership coach working for a large global IT services organisation. He also owns the company, Maximum Stretch Limited, and works with other organisations. His company consists of a team of strong leaders and offers services such as executive, leadership and team coaching and leadership development.
What is your definition of leadership?
In my opinion, leadership is ‘influence‘. It doesn’t matter what position or role you have, if you don’t have influence as a leader then you will not be effective. Over the years I have studied a lot of leaders and discovered that it all comes back to this definition – leadership is influence, and it needs to be earned and not demanded. A leader becomes a person of influence.
For the last 16 years I have followed and studied a great leader, role model, author and teacher – John C Maxwell. John is a pastor who has taken churches from 1,500 to more than 6,000 people by building leaders around him. From his years of experience, John has spoken to many businesses and organisations about developing leaders. He talks about five levels of leadership and explains that people are at different levels. These five levels are:
- Position – you have a title and limited influence, and people follow you.
- Permission – you have relationships and people follow you because they want to.
- Production – you have done things for the organisation and people like you so they will follow you.
- People development – people follow you because of what you have done for them.
- Personhood – people follow you for what you have done and for who you are. Very few people make this level because it typically requires years of growing people and organisations.
I ask leaders who I work with where they think they sit in relation to the five levels of leadership. We then identify what they need to do to progress to the next level in their journey to becoming a great leader.
For more of this interview and about the definition of Leadership check out Secrets of Inspiring Leaders Exposed!
