Leadership is the fundamental building block for change. Be it in the home, at work or the nation as a whole, the figure-head mostly sets the tone.
Organizations understand leadership is important and impacts on the organization and that leadership influences the quality and overall performance of the organization.
The European Framework for Quality Management revolves around the fact that leadership should drive policy, strategy, resources, processes and how people are managed to achieve a favorable impact on the society, customer and employee satisfaction all of which translates to excellence in business.
However, there is always the role and participation of the led. While the leader is pivotal to change and improvement/growth or excellence, the led should be involved to the extent that the statement “shared values, goals or objectives” finds true meaning because this is key to the success of the leader.
While we would very much like to hold our leaders accountable for all that has gone wrong and is going wrong around us, we need to acknowledge our roles and responsibilities in all of it.
The led and the leader are responsible one to the other and to drive improvement, each needs to get involved and have a sense of shared responsibility to/for the goals, objectives or values of the group.