Leadership is the force that moves someone to make, or create something better than right now.

Leaders don’t worry about the challenges so much as they learn from them, and then go from there. There is a constant learning and growth process when it comes to being a leader who shares both passion and hope to their followers.  There will be challenges, perhaps someone will wonder if you can lead a group of people or be passionate about what you’re doing.  There is an element of hope in a leader, the hope they make or create a change.  They have a vision, and it is one which is clear.

A good vision is simple, and must share passion to anyone who reads it.  Something beyond the simple such as “change the world” isn’t a good vision, and a good leader understands this. Everyone wants to change the world, but a great leader is like a great writer, they choose the words they use carefully.  A good leader has a vision like this one “Creating a website that provokes comments and response from our readership.”  It is simple, a team of followers can see it and will follow it.

There are always challenges that leaders face even with a clear vision statement and a point of their company.  Living a Life of Writing is a company, and for a while it had a similar vision to the first one.  It wasn’t clear which made the challenges bigger.

What are challenges that leaders will face?

There are many, but one of them is not fear of change.  This isn’t suggesting leaders don’t have fear, but it is saying they know what to do with the fear they have about changes.  Although a challenge, a loss of income or a revenue source is hard, a leader doesn’t ‘fear’ it, rather they reflect on it and find a way to fix it.  They instinctively understand this is a cycle of a business, and some years are better than others.  A writing business, for example, with a clear vision will do better than one without.Another challenge is growing as a leader, while still being the reason people were passionate about you in the first place.  For a while, to me, leadership was being a hands off type of person.  I would be passionate about my goals, or my blog, but the people under me, they knew what to do, or so I thought.  My challenge was to break out of this assumption and do it quickly.

When I learned this lesson, although I am in reality re-learning it, I found the hands off approach only served my own person, not as a writer or a leader.  It didn’t help anyone else, and it didn’t allow the people who wrote on the blog a reason to be passion, or hopeful about what they could contribute to the blog.

Leadership is not a hand off thing.

The best leaders, are the ones who know how to reboot as leaders.  They admit a mistake and they go back and fix it, and keep on keeping on.  They look for ways to make it stronger, faster and smarter and they look for a team to do this with them.

It’s about teaching the next set of leaders how to do what they do.  The best leaders gives hope and has a passion for something completely out of the box.  They also are part time visionaries and educators and writers.

Leaders have a passion for writing.

Yes, leaders do.  The best and most successful write down what they want, they have concrete goals, and aren’t afraid to get things done.  Not only that, but they write down how they had success, and how they failed.

They write.  The learn, and they share what they have learned to others.  They don’t give away everything, their time is valuable, but leaders know the more they write it down, the more passion they have for a business, and the more hope they can give to others.

Leaders have a clear vision.  They have passion and because of this passion, they give hope to new leaders who want to emulate them in later years.  They share their goals on paper and become wordsmiths to encourage, empower and show their teams that they are valued.

What does this have to do with writing?

If you want to be a successful writer, you have to first learn to lead, and follow what leaders do.  Team building is only one part of what it means to be a leaders who shares both hope and passion to their team.