Apprentice Leader
Scan the corporate landscape for good leadership and most places are desolate wastelands. Millions of management books are sold every year and yet they seem to have no lasting effect. Expensive seminars and two week leadership courses seem to have little real-world impact as the trainees regress back to their old selves in a few weeks. Interestingly, many of these courses are taught by persons who have never been leaders themselves.
You do not learn swimming from someone who has never swam or learn chess from someone who has never played chess. Why would you learn leadership from someone who has never led? A dude who has played war video games advising the general of a real army may be curiously interesting, but such advice is lacking the rigor of real-world experience. In other words, it’s lacking credibility — and someone without credibility teaching a topic where credibility is key is unlikely to have a lasting effect.
Leadership foremost is practical knowledge, which by definition needs practice to master. You cannot practice without opportunity. You need to get yourself in a place where you can exercise these skills.
With the aid of the knowledge you get here, you can take a crack at mentoring yourself. Find a quickly growing company or technology area which will generate frequent opportunities. Take any leadership opportunity that comes by if you are young and starting out.
Your best bet is to find a leader who will take you on as an apprentice. Your mentor should coach you and create opportunity for you. Put you in challenging situations and let you grow. Due to the constant busy state of top leaders, this is an impossible proposition. Very few leaders have organized themselves to have sufficient time to mentor anyone effectively.
If do find a leader you admire, state your goals at the very outset. All great leaders enjoy being mentors and want to pass their leadership skills onto a capable apprentice. Accept that often it may work at the beginning but stall due to various reasons. State that it’s OK so that there is no pressure to perform or resentment build up on either side.
Your hunger for knowledge and experience drives your mentor’s interest in you. They have infinitely more important things to do than to train you on something you barely care about.
As you practice and progress, you should consider mentoring others and pay it forward. You will notice that you learn on a whole different level when you teach.
