The Leadership Mystique

Leadership is an individual’s ability to inspire, influence, and enable others to contribute toward greater organizational effectiveness. True leaders create a vision, set direction, inspire, motivate, provide containment, and equip their people with objectives, tools, and incentives. Leaders, however, are not only the people at the top of an organization. At KDVI, we recognize the power of distributed leadership—leadership that is present at many levels of the organization. Responsible, ethical, and highly committed leaders contribute to the development of a committed workforce and more successful organizations.

However, the ability to lead is not an innate skill. Leaders have to be developed. In many organizations, the tendency is to promote or hire people who have achieved superior results due to their technical skills. The assumption is that these people will be great leaders and managers. But many technically very competent people are not up to making the transition and acquiring the skills/competencies needed to be an effective leader.

At KDVI, leadership development describes a wide range of activities aimed at enhancing leadership skills/competencies, including assessment and feedback, theoretical instruction, instructor-led training/role play, online learning, coaching, mentoring, action learning projects, and on-the-job stretch assignments. Through these processes, leaders develop a deep understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and recognize how they influence others. They acquire a clear insight into what drives them, and what drives other people in their organizations. They learn how to get the best out of their teams and recognize what a high-performance culture looks like.

Few of us can develop these skills on our own. Our clinical experience gives us a deep understanding of the forces that create effective leaders and how leaders can create emotionally intelligent organizations. In applying our knowledge, we use an integrated approach that combines personal self-awareness, inter-personal communication and relationship skills, relevant leadership behaviors, and goal achievement.