How hard to solve is your leadership puzzle? Leadership is a tricky concept. As leaders, we find ourselves trying to solve the paradox of great leadership versus required management.

The culture of our workplaces can sometimes make this more difficult, particularly if there isn’t a real leadership culture supporting us. Sometimes that’s a training issue, too. If the business trains ‘because it has to’, rather than because it needs to change, then creating good leaders will be even more difficult.

Back in May this year, I had the opportunity to talk to the Institute of Managers and Leaders, along with other pre-eminent people in different roles: Gen George, founder of OneShift; Daniel Flynn, co-founder of ThankYou; Luke Higgins, Managing Director of Accenture; and others.

In that article, I talked about two key things: The need to build strategic skills; and the need to form good relationships.

Without good strategic skills, you will spend your time putting out fires instead of leading the charge. And without good relationships, you will find it difficult to create success for your organisation as a whole, over and above your own team or your own scope. Without good relationships internally, you might be missing opportunities to collaborate and innovate.

Personal branding is something we often see as being ‘out there’: It’s being in social media and the press. When you work in an organisation, your personal brand internally is sometimes much more important.

Stay tuned for more about the business of training and leadership

As a member of the C-suite, understanding the change you want to make in the business as a result of training (like leadership training) will help you to measure its success. Over the coming weeks and months, I’m going to bring you some key thinking about the business of training and leadership.

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