Best of Blogs: Lead Quietly by Don Frederiksen

Don Frederiksen is not a published author, trainer, consultant or speaker. Don is an IT professional with 20+ years of leadership experience. As a Business Intelligence Architect for Pearson VUE, he leads quietly. As a self-described "student of leadership" he seeks to understand, and practice how teams can effectively collaborate to solve difficult challenges. Lead Quietly is dedicated to the study of quiet leaders who do the right thing with quiet, behind-the-scenes actions, not public heroism.

On May 4, Don wrote this great piece on leadership and perfectionism:

Be a good leader. Be incomplete. Don't be perfect, don't even try. There is evidence that the best leaders are distinctly far from perfect and simply incomplete.

Woohoo. When I look at my personal skills, this is the best news I've heard in some time.

An article in the July 2007 volume of the Harvard Business Review caught my attention this past week as I continue my exploration of collaboration and leadership. In Praise of the Incomplete Leader, is the collaborative work of a group of authors MIT that includes Peter Senge, author of the previously cited business classic, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization.

The article resonated with me from the first read of the summary tag line:"No leader is perfect. The best ones don't try to be - they concentrate on honing their strengths and find others who can make up for their limitations."

Don states that it is time to stop visualizing the complete leader as a person at the top who has all the answers. He goes on to say that leaders shouldn't even try to fill the gap.

Click here to read Don's entire post.

Labels: Best leadership blogs, leadership blog

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