Welcome to Lead2XL

Here you will find novel thinking about leadership. For a knowledge driven age, we need to see how leadership can be shown bottom-up, not just by those in charge. If you champion a new product or process to management, is this not leadership as a one-off, bottom-up act? This is not what we normally call "informal leadership" because the informal leader takes charge of groups just as the formal leader does, only without formal authority. Informal leadership is still a role in charge of people. It's not "distributed" or "dispersed" leadership either, because all such leadership is shown downwards only.

There are lots of kinds of leadership that don't fit the conventional "person-in-charge" model. When green leaders convince far-flung communities to change their ways, they also show leadership without being in charge of those who follow. Martin Luther KIng showed leadership to millions of people who didn't report to him. This is leadership shown by an outsider who is not even a member of the relevant group let alone in charge of it. Leading by example is similar. something anyone can do regardless of whether you have anyone reporting to you. Leading by example is a case of "actions speak louder than words" which means that no vision is verbally conveyed to induce others to follow, hence vision is only situationallly required to show leadership, not a universal requirement. See posts under LEADERSHIP for more on these issues.

If we change how we view leadership, then management must be upgraded to take over the role-based aspects of being in charge of people. See posts under MANAGEMENT for more on this theme.

Other topics include building confidence for career success, how to engage others and yourself, how to assert yourself without blowing people away, how to contribute more in meetings, how to capitalize on informal leadership opportunities to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

All posts were written by Mitch McCrimmon, Ph.D. an executive assessment and coaching consultant with over 30 years of experience.