Forget Leadership. Give me Gumption!
There's a great old fashioned word that sums up what many managers look for in their employees.
This noun is rarely (if ever) mentioned in the halls of Business Schools. It never appears in best selling business books. It doesn't appear in the pages of Forbes or on any of the financial news networks.
The word is so old, that arguably it is out of style. And that word is: gumption.
For those of you not old enough to know what it means;
n. Informal.
1. Boldness of enterprise; initiative or aggressiveness.
2. Guts; spunk.
3. Common sense.
Perhaps it's time to reintroduce the word into our business lexicon. I want to work with people who have gumption. I like initiative, courage, common sense - that sense of individual vitality that for the most part is missing from many organizations.
And yet, aren't the people who are most valued withn your company those that have gumption?
But we don't talk about it much. We chose words like leadership (evoking images of George Washington in the bow of a boat crossing the Delaware River) or of Braveheart leading his followers into battle. For most, leadership seems daunting, unattainable - too lofty an ambition. And so, many of our employees don't aspire to be leaders.
Perhaps our organizational development efforts would have better results if we stopped trying to create leaders and started to encourage gumption.
Because gumption is within anyone's grasp.
