My leadership log

I recently had and email exchange with a colleague of mine about the role of leaders as both students and teachers in in-company leadership development initiatives.  Our debate was wether is was better to develop a pool of leadership talent using external expertise or have the intervention led by organisational leaders.  It was such an interesting thought that it led me to 'pencil' my own views.

I came across an except from a speech given by JK Rowling (Harry Potter fame as if you didn't know) to Harvard graduates.  Her subject was learning from failure.

This is an analogy I've use in many senior level engegements in the past.  It works for me because it suggests a basic skill set for leaders that we don't often take time to contemplate.  This skill set has nothing to do with communication skills, direction setting, building commitment or any of those other great things leaders need to have in their kit bag or portfolio of tools to manage the multi-dimensional and complex business scenarios they have to deal with every day.

I was very grateful and interested to see some of the comments added to my last posting, and the whole subject really got me thinking further.  So I did a bit of reading.

Browsing the web on news stories about the Northern Rock leadership I came across this snippet from the telegraph written at the end of last year about Adam Applegartth the then CEO.