“Act as a Leader, Think as a Leader” by Herminia Ibarra

Since July 2019 I am participating in a new project, which is dedicated to reading. I have always loved reading and self-development, but I guess I was doing it not regularly, and definitely not every day. I realized I needed to discipline myself, and that is how I subscribed to the project where I read with multiple other participants every single day, write down what I understood after each reading session and evaluate reading blogs of others. This is one of the best projects I have taken part in during my free time.

The first book was by Herminia Ibarra, professor of Organizational Behaviour at London Business School as well as a former professor at Harvard Business School, where she writes about leadership. This book helped me to find confirmations in my own thoughts and beliefs, but also helped me see better what needs to be done to become a better leader.

What is so interesting what I learned from the book?

First of all, majority of courses about leadership teach us, that first we, people, have to understand ourselves and find out what we want to become – first think, then act. Better approach, though, is to first act, then think. Try new things, new approaches and apply them in practice. Only after that – watch the results and observe reaction of others. First Act, then retrospect!

There is a certain difference between leadership and management. When you manage, you are often “inside the box”: you know what needs to be done, you have already done this work before and now you guide others to do same but more effectively. Leadership, on the other hand, means you leave the routine to others, but You, You try to find out new information, build new contacts, learn about new approaches in business, communicate with other departments and stakeholders, which are not connected to your own.

Management gets maximum effectiveness from doing the current work, whereas leadership – is a change of the way the work gets done, it is a way of going beyond the already known things.

In general, leadership actually means a change from your comfort zone to discomfort zone. You try new things, which you haven’t done before, you get to know more people outside of already established contacts, you get new responsibilities, which you haven’t tried before. With time, the zone of discomfort will become a zone of comfort and you will need to try next challenges, all the time.

If you would like to check and read this book too, you can buy it HERE.