Leadership is often confused with being in charge of other people. While necessary in that circumstance, the skills of leadership are universal and apply to the entirety of life.

The dimensions of persuasion and decision making overlap with the Sales and Mental Models domains, so I won’t belabor them here again. But I will draw some nuanced distinctions.

Leadership is the set of skills to influence others to achieve group outcomes while reaching individual goals. The orientation here is slightly different than what we reviewed in the Sales quadrant. The context here is that there are group outcomes that need to be achieved. Whether dealing with family members, neighbors, fellow volunteers, co-workers, etc., leadership’s orientation involves collective actions.

Making a decision about whether to exercise today is very different than making a decision that will affect other people. However, the base skills are the exact same. That’s what makes the Wheel of Competency so powerful–it is a set of skills that once mastered, can be applied to all three axes of life.

The two dimensions unique to the Leadership quadrant are vision and growth. Vision is the ability to identify where you’re headed, then reverse-engineering the behaviors necessary to achieve the objectives, then the beliefs that will be required to maintain continued execution of those behaviors, and finally the culture that must exist to nourish those beliefs.

After identifying, documenting, and communicating all of that, the next dimension is growth. A leader must flip the org chart upside-down and support those being led by working to coach and develop them to be in the best position to succeed at contributing to the group outcomes while also reaching their individual goals.

I’ll note here again for emphasis that each of these skills can be applied toward what we might call “inner leadership.” An Outlier must lead oneself toward desired outcomes. While group dynamics are a distinct application of these skills, the value to our individual pursuits should not be overlooked.

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