The Trifocal Vision of Leadership

Ian Whittingham, PMP is director of Calixo Consulting, providing project and program management expertise from initiation through to implementation, covering business transformation, workflow process re-engineering, and enterprise data integration. He is a regular contributor to ProjectManagement.com. You may contact Ian directly at [email protected].

  Leadership  

Situational or symbiotic, agile or authentic, these days it seems as if there’s any number of leadership styles to satisfy the latest fashion in management practice. It’s easy for a cynic to disparage these various styles as symptoms of management consultant faddishness. But behind it all there is a genuine desire--and need--for organizations to develop effective leadership skills among their workforce. Most importantly, as agents of transformational change, leaders provide organizations with the capability to adapt and respond appropriately to the constantly changing environments in which they operate, enabling them not just to survive but also to thrive.

At the risk of appearing to add yet another fad to the pick-and-mix menu of leadership styles, this article looks at a fundamental leadership skill, one that all successful leaders practice--irrespective of which style they follow. And as it does not have one, to give it an appropriately faddish title I’m going to call this leadership skill Trifocal Vision™.

Pay attention
Except for the last five years, George Dawson lived an unexceptional life. He supported his family by working in a dairy in Dallas until he retired at the age of 79. During that time, anyone who knew him would not have associated the word leader with the words George and Dawson. And neither would George. Because for most …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.