Nickie Muir: Who needs a leadership course?

Nickie Muir.

Leadership. It's such a lonely word.

And before you fear that a rip off of a Billy Joel song follows, I'd just like to say this: Leadership - it's hardly ever heard. Or seen for that matter - like taniwha, we know it exists but it's very hard to say exactly what it is or how it works.

Leadership is one of those buzzwords that has passed its use-by date and should probably be taken out the back and put out of its and our misery for its general lack of usefulness to humanity.

It's been a ticket to ride, a boogie man to blame and an excuse to randomly circumnavigate all due process in the name of "showing some leadership" when following any form of democratic consensus would have taken longer and got better results.

If you look up the flooded online sites for leadership courses and what they entail you'll find an extended exercise in ... um ... telling other people what to do and talking a lot about how you've told other people what to do.

There's lots of "visionary thinking" (we used to call this day-dreaming) and reflection (if it's not based on making other people's lives better then isn't this just narcissism?)

Leadership begins to sound like a rather elaborate ploy to get out of doing any real mahi and therefore highly unlikely to get anyone anywhere.

You can get degrees in strategic management (starting with; Machiavelli 101) and Masters in Educational Leadership - (when you no longer like teaching real children) or nursing leadership - for when you're over patients.

How about "leadership in management" (supremely redundant) or "green leadership" (anyone following the Green Party would surely find this oxymoronic).

The leadership conversation is lonely because the model that has become popular is based on principles that have nothing to do with anything as unsexy as service or example and very little to do with building and maintaining a team.

The hand of a real leader is almost invisible because their team is who they are and they are nothing without one.

A mark of a great leader is the one who puts out the invite to the party that everyone wants to be at.

Great leaders counter-intuitively, know how to lose. They stand by their failure and face it head on knowing that the key to getting things right is right there; in the middle of the loss.

They're not necessarily the best at what they do but they do know how to choose the best based not on gender or ethnicity but on pure merit and true grit.

Paradoxically, they exclude no one or the contribution they may make. They also know exactly what "getting there" looks like in their field.

Unlikely that truly great leaders like Shackleton, Sir Peter Blake, Sir Edmond Hilary or even the still present Helen Clark, ever went on a leadership course. Too busy working.