How to be a leader in your field

This article, ‘How to be a leader in your field‘, is technically a guide for students in professional schools, but I found it to have a lot of great advice for anyone interested in becoming better and more productive at her job.

One excerpt:

Write down all the difficulties that seem to recur in your experience of practicing your profession – anything, however small, that often seems to go wrong. Or else become an anthropologist for a day, and hang out with some people – students, immigrants, new customers, etc – who are dealing with your profession for the first time. Experience consternation at the difficulties they run into. Collect a dozen difficulties. Then start making theories of what causes those difficulties. Big, pretentious theories are best, especially if they exaggerate how important the difficulties you’ve listed really are. Elaborate your theories in your notebook for a few more months until they are really grandiose. Then use the theories to start generating ideas for innovation and change in your profession. Many of your ideas will have advantages aside from fixing the difficulty that inspired them. Consult with dynamic people to determine which of these ideas (not the theories, obviously, but the ideas) might be plausible as issues for the long haul.

I think this is a good procedure for reflection, a very important part of transformational leadership.