Who Decides Whether Leadership Is Successful?

World leadership styles have given me much to consider over the past few years. Increasingly so in the past few weeks. I’ve observed multiple varied demonstrations of leadership and peoples’ response to it, trying to strain out the lessons that we can apply to how we lead in our smaller “worlds”.

In my mind, leadership on any stage is a deeply personal endeavour that bears the consequences of who you choose to be on that stage. Whether we speak up in a team meeting or lead a discussion over the family dinner table; whether we lead a social circle, organisation or country, we do so from the sum of our personal choices, beliefs, views, morals and experiences. Whatever our leadership style, the way it affects others will eventually be reflected back at us.

When looking at the world stage, trying to draw the parallels between styles of governance (democracy, dictatorship, socialism etc) and leadership styles in life and in business makes for some complex conversations. Leading a company or team cannot always be a democracy for many reasons, but neither can it successfully be a dictatorship. Similarly in the cockpit, if I need to divert my aircraft to another destination, I cannot guarantee every passenger onboard a vote about where that might be. Few leaders in life and business are voted into position by the people they lead, nor do they necessarily only serve those they lead.

There are…