For centuries we've focused on "leaders", on people who’ve been given job titles or who came to prominence in a movement that changed society. Our attention – and thus our thinking - has focused on these people because of their prominence in that movement, and we have come to view them – incorrectly - as the cause of the movement when in fact they emerged from the conditions that made that movement possible and /or necessary.

Martin Luther King didn't start the struggle for freedom and equality; Rosa Parks had been boycotting that bus for eleven years before anyone noticed; Churchill had been warning about Hitler and the Nazis since 1930.

When we look back without the (very human) desire to find and appoint a hero we see that their emergence from - and intervention in - the wider systems of their time signal a shift in thinking and in direction and behaviour that was already happening in those wider systems. Whatever marketing gurus want to tell you (because they need their heroes too), Steve Jobs didn’t create the desire for great design; he responded to it.

In other words, our heroes were as much the creation of the movement we associate them with as they were its creators. We see them as prominent and vital only because they articulated what people were already thinking and feeling. We have continually failed to recognise and continue to choose to ignore the fact that many, many people were already moving in the direction our heroes began later to champion. Leadership isn’t something someone DOES to others; it’s the phenomenon we see when people choose to act in a common direction and for a shared cause. The people we perceive as leaders are the tips of the powerful wave that brings them into being, and a high percentage of the “others” – the people we call followers - are often well ahead of the people to whom we attribute “leadership”.

So, what does this tell us about leadership itself and how to “do” (and develop) it?

Well, first of all, let’s agree that “leadership” isn’t mere compliance; it’s not what happens or what we see when people act in response to a threat of punishment or promise of reward. It’s not complying with what your boss tells you to do. It’s what we see when people are motivated to collaborate or cooperate in a shared direction of travel and towards goals that are, at the very least, not mutually exclusive (they may however be complementary, rather than identical). It’s what happens when people are truly committed to the journey and the goal; when they want to contribute more than the minimum, when they care deeply enough about success to provide their discretionary effort. In short; when it’s their goal as much as anyone else’s. When they own it.

The biggest clue to what leadership really is, however, is that our heroes became leaders ONLY because there was already a huge potential for a shift in thinking and values to happen in the system; there was a movement ready to emerge. By the time Ms Parks, Churchill, and Dr King became involved many, many people could already SEE for themselves what our heroes started to point at and the journey they were championing. It wasn't Churchill's vision in 1930, or Rosa Parks boycotting that bus for 11 years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, or Dr King's speeches, OR Hitler's, or Trump's that made the difference. It was the creation of a collective awareness in a large enough number of people that change was necessary and / or desirable. That was the potential that our chosen heroes represent and embodied. And it had reached a tipping point. They system was about to evolve.

What happened in those instances - what happens in every instance in which we see a change in thinking, in values, in behaviour, in direction, is that an individual inevitably emerges from the growing potential for change whom we choose to see as representing or embodying that potential - that promise of a journey and the emerging vision – but it is always, always, always, in reality already a collective vision - or else there would be no change, no movement at all. And that's because the emergence of these people into our awareness and our designation of them as "leaders" ONLY happens when a sufficient number of people in the system have already contributed to creating that potential for movement. Without that collective shift in thinking and direction nothing would happen, and the would-be-leader would be just someone going for a noisy walk - as Churchill did for several years, starting in 1930, and as many, many CEOs do to this day.

This distinction matters hugely.

Why? Because if you’re trying to develop leadership in your business or your country you need to understand that all of the nonsense about having a “vision”, a “purpose”, “authenticity”, being a ‘servant’’” etc, etc, ad nauseam says NOTHING about the critical fact that DEEP and LASTING change ONLY happens when people decide for themselves that they want it to happen; when people can genuinely see the need for deep and lasting change. And no, that isn’t the same as getting “buy in” for your personal view of the future. It means a genuine collaboration with the people involved and the people impacted to explore with them what the very best future might look like. Without that genuine collaboration you cannot create the potential movement, that shared vision and desire for deep and lasting change. Without that collective and collaborative journey in which people can reach their own conclusions you can achieve compliance, you can manage, but you’re not leading. The guys on the shop floor talking about better ways of organising the work are already doing the leading. In which direction? Are you listening?

In short, your people aren’t passive “followers”; they’re collaborators, colleagues, comrades, and co-conspirators. If you really want to see leadership, if you really want to generate it, then you must enable and empower people to contribute it by damn well listening to them in a genuinely collaborative process from which a genuinely shared understanding of the challenges, the benefits, and the roadmap emerges. Why? Because in this increasingly fast-paced and complex business environment your business needs diverse inputs to pick up early signs of trends, make sense of them, and arrive at a clearly understood decision that will be implemented both swiftly and well because everyone involved knows both the “why” and the “how”.

What’s more, you may well find that your people already know better than you where the thing your looking at needs to go. If they don’t then maybe take a long, hard look at the information you provide them with, and ask who told them that they are just drones in your machine. Don’t be too upset if you realise it’s you. You’re far from being the only one.

Leadership isn’t you or anyone else in the C-suite having a Dream and pointing at it in the hypothetical distance. It’s an emergent property of the complex systems of which we are all a part, and it emerges when enough of your colleagues, co-conspirators, and comrades realise that their thoughts and ideas are as welcome as their effort, and that together you are working to intuit or understand why change needs to happen and what it should look like.

Leadership is making that process happen. The question is, how do you do that well and quickly?

I’m a coach. That’s an actual question. You’re smart; you’ll figure it out. But If you’re pushed for time, simply download our practical guide to action - Future Fit - here:  Strategic Leadership Development | Enabling Talent