why do I care?

This past week I have had a long conversation with a colleague about leadership from the middle and gave a talk at the IACBE conference on developing leadership capacity in college students. In additon, I have been reading Daniel Pink's new boon entitled Drive, and had an interesting conversation with a friend at the IACBE conference on servant leadership. My life seems to be filled with thoughts and conversations on leadership - I wonder why that might be?

If you are reading this blog, you are also probably interested in leadership (or are just being a good friend to me and reading my blog because you want to tell me that you actually read my blog). So why are you thinking about leadership? What is it thast makes you look at leaders and wonder why they do what they do? Why are you anxiously waiting to read the next great book on leadership and try to learn something new? Why do you care about becoming a better leader yourself?

Let's consider this question for a few moments:

• you care about leadership because you feel a call to lead
• you care about leadership because you are in a position in which you should be leading
• you care about leadership because those who lead you are either 1) grossly incompetent or 2) very competent and you want to know what makes them the way they are
• you care about leadership because you believe you have been called to make changes in the world around you - and you know that leadership skills are needed to make change happen
• you care about leadership because you have been put into a position where you are expected to lead - and you actually want to do a good job with that
• you care about leadership because you have always been a natural leader - people look to you to lead and come to you with ideas about leadership
• you care about leadership because you have hope for the future - and you believe it will take a new type of leader to solve the problems we will all face in the future.

And so the list goes on. I think that if one can articulate WHY they care about leadership, it can shape what they read...what they talk about...what they think about...to whom they talk... and the actions they take to make a difference. So ask yourself why you care about leadership and why you are taking the time to read this blog. And if you like the answer - ot not quite sure about the answer - post a comment and let's see what kind of conversatin we can get going to learn from each other about why people (especially you and me) care about leadership.