"Through focused review and cogent articulation of one's purpose and the construction of a support structure based in the realization of that purpose, Julian Sturton has succeeded in providing the forum and opportunity for me to refine my leadership techniques and strategies. The result is an empowered leadership profile. The program is demanding and excellent!"

John Mancuso
Vice President / Team Leader, Global Logistics, Pfizer Inc.
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Leadership: A New Perspective

		Leadership Distinct from Management Leadership: A New Perspective Leadership and Your Business Printer-Friendly Page

Leadership is the most critical factor in the competitive success of any human endeavor. Successful leadership requires dynamic, forward thinking, motivated leaders -- active participants unfettered by the employee mentality of compliance and consequence. These are people who can embody a purpose, imagine brilliant solutions, inspire great efforts, and subsequently are able to produce consistently outstanding results. Leadership is mandatory if your business is to excel.

This cannot be stated any more strongly than at the executive level. If the underlying mentality of an executive is, "I just work here," or "I have to do this or else," that executive will not be capable of functioning as an effective leader. In fact, they will drag down those around them, clouding the sense of purpose in a working group, cooling the fires of innovation and dulling the desire to succeed.

Leadership Distinct from Management

There is often great confusion between "leadership" and "management," perhaps because the words are used interchangeably in today's business world. Worse yet, they are often not specifically defined within an organization. While both leadership and management are important for any functioning business, for anyone serious about success, it is critical to understand the distinction between the two concepts.

The Business of Leading Method defines the terms this way:

Management is a matter of calculations, maintenance and following a path. Management is the act of making rational decisions based on a given set of past based experiences. Just look at all the "management" software available today.

Leadership is a matter of strategy, of purpose, objective and discovering the path to follow. It is a matter of constantly refining and maintaining a level of objectivity throughout your whole enterprise. Leadership is a dynamic creative element in a business and can only be provided by a human being engaged with a purpose.

By our definition, you can't manage change, you can only lead change. As a leader you have to put yourself out there, out in front of everyone and everything, consistently and all the time. It's that simple. And with the Business of Leading Leadership Model in place, you will be out in front... if that's where you are committed to standing.

Leadership empowers both the leader and those being led to engage fully in their task, their purpose, their objective. It raises the stakes. It breaks down wasteful employee mentality, enabling fully committed and progressive action from every aspect of your business.

The key to leadership is a competitive strategy. Without it, leadership doesn't exist. Without strategic leadership, skill, talent, and capital are untapped, misused or wasted. Without strategic business leadership, you are doomed to reside at best in the middle of the pack.

Leadership and Your Business

Without strategic leadership you simply do not have a company. You don't have a business. What you do have is ego and skill; a lot of it, held together by a series of possibly very great ideas, plus a lot of what some call "employee motivation".

If your business is to excel and differentiate itself in the ever more crowded business arena of tomorrow, you must yourself be a powerful leader.

But what exactly is strategic leadership? What essentially distinguishes it?

Leaders are operating from a place of purpose with specific objectives. They have ownership of their own actions, and no hesitation in answering the question, "Why?"

That question is implicit in your every business interaction: "Why?" Why are your clients working with your business? Why do you make the decisions you make? Why does your business exist? The response to this question is your purpose, and if your so-called purpose is not capable of responding to this question at all times and in all situations then that response is insufficient and not really your purpose.

Strategic leadership springs from purpose. Simply put, leadership is being your purpose in the most full and far-reaching sense as possible, living and breathing it. It is from this commitment to and ownership of purpose that greatness is derived.

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