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Stepping up to being a leader is a ‘state change’. It’s not – as many believe – a question of steps being put in place before it happens. It’s not a ‘tipping point’ from which a manager, armed with the right experience and the right circumstances, suddenly becomes a leader.

…and they might actually cost you and your business less. Imagine you hired a meetings fairy. The fairy’s job would be to ensure that meetings were short, efficient and effective.

What’s the difference between a leader and a manager? The question still pops up regularly in executive development programmes – I bet you’ve heard it, maybe even asked it, yourself. The classic distinction between leaders and managers claims that they are separate types of people, with different personalities, behaviour, attitudes and goals.

Whether you’re thinking about sending a child to private school, where to go on holiday, or buying office supplies, every day you opt for one thing over another. Sometimes you’re choosing. Sometimes you’re deciding. Doing one when the other is called for can get in your way.

In this series we’ve talked about disciplines for becoming ever more authentic and completely yourself. Why then would you ever make a mistake again? Because we all fall short of ideal behaviour, and forget to choose to be great and behave well on a daily basis.

How do powerful people lose their moral bearings? What went wrong, and how can you learn from it?

These are some critical underlying drivers of sustainable business success:

Have you noticed that some of the great stuff you want to achieve in business is not easily measured? It’s easy to measure quantities, of money, production, sales calls, numbers of time the phone rings before it’s answered, and because it’s easier, businesses tend to default to measuring and managing only straightforwardly quantifiable things.

In coaching clients on Leadership we’ve noticed an early sticking point. Though different people give different reasons, there is a common theme: at this point, people seem to be showing resistance to ‘stepping up’ to Leadership. Of course, they don’t accept that it’s resistance; from where they stand it seems ‘impossible’ to assume Leadership, ‘…until…’

You’ve got your vision, your passion, and your strategy and plan. So why is it that despite displaying appropriate leadership competencies, you sometimes fail? In practice, there is one factor that distinguishes success and failure in leadership: your flexibility of style.