The Accidental Leader

Here we are. Welcome aboard day 1.

First I would like to look at where we are starting.
After a number of years in our respective jobs we have, through no real effort on our parts, picked up some leadership responsibilities. It may be just a few staff, or it maybe a significant group of say 40 people. Either way, we seem to have ended up with responsibilities that all our training never really equiped us for. Sure, we may be great developers, graphic designers, firemen or mechanics, and this may be why we are now leading a group of these people, but it sure as hell does not mean we are any good at it.
Now is the time to act. Like it or not, we have another job now that is a lot harder, that we have not trained for. You might have done courses of even a few weeks duration, but leadership does not come out of courseware. It comes from an awareness and belief in yourself and I am told, a lot of guts.
I need to learn this as much as you do, possibly more.

The Plan!
The plan is to run this for a year starting about mid June 2005. Each month I will focus on an aspect that I am currently discovering about leadership, give references and tell stories. Lets all add our comments and share our experiences. Think of this as an online group experience.

As a start, feel free to add in here some ideas of broad areas that you would like covered. Over the next month I am going to plan out the content for the first four to six months.

I don't know where this is going to end, but please come along for the ride, what can we loose.

cheers for now.
Steve