I was having a discussion about leadership with a friend last week.  He was telling me that his company’s executive board were debating the five essential elements from my book ‘Inspirational Leadership’. Apparently they were aligning them with their expectations for members of their ‘C’ level team. My friend said that they failed to talk about ‘vision’, which he thought must be the most important element of all? He asked me why I had left it off my top 5 list?  My reply was this:

Imagine an inspirational leader as a television. The essential elements that make up the television (the chassis, the screen, the software operating system, the power-supply and the remote control, for example.) can be compared with my 5 essential elements: Confidence, Emotional Intelligence, Adaptability, Pragmatism, and Intellectual Curiosity. However, in the television (like in an Inspirational Leader) the ‘Vision’ is the content.

A leader can only be truly inspirational, if they have all of my five essential elements.  It is because of these 5 elements that when they are in any given situation, they are able to come up a ‘vision’ to inspire those around them into action. Their vision is formed by the circumstance they find themselves in and is thus, not an element in itself.

My friend seemed satisfied with my answer.  On reflection, there are many ways to boil an egg, everyone is different but, in my experience if you have Confidence, Emotional Intelligence, Adaptability, Pragmatism and Intellectual Curiosity, then you have the makings of fine leadership.  And if you don’t have them all, then simply focusing on the element you struggle with most, will certainly help you get to where you want to go.