A portrait of a leader

Oct 22 / Phil Gouldson

What if the images say more about you?

Below are some artistic representations of leaders - painted portraits, a sketch and a bust. What is interesting about each of these is what is reflected or represented about their characteristics as a leader.

Reflect on each leader depicted below and take a moment to  write down what you see as their compelling leadership characteristics, both the good and not so good.
The thought-provoking reflection in this exercise is to notice  who you identified as having ‘good’ leadership characteristics and what you considered to be good leadership.  And, how this might indicate who you might be inspired by and/or willing to follow.

Another couple of aspects worth reflecting on are: 


Firstly:


What portrait are you presenting to the people you lead and how might they ‘view’ you.  How would they paint or draw you?

Are you even conscious of this?
Secondly:

People will tend to draw an entire portrait of you from just a couple of pixels.

There is the possibility that this may be negative and not really reflective of who you are.

So, the question is – what are your great leadership characteristics that you want to convey and how are you doing it?

Are you telling the people you lead this through:

  • your rhetoric?
  • your actions?
  • your behaviours?


You could ask yourself, tongue in cheek – are you ‘bragging’ about these characteristics. At the same time saying what you are not so good at.
Reflect on the questions below and what actions you will take as a result:

Should you let other people draw your portrait? 

Or should you be proactive in painting a genuine portrait
of you?