So, what is this big idea of steward leadership?

The big idea here is that brilliant ideas exist, solutions exist in potential. They want to happen and they are actively seeking you and are trying to get your attention and to form a collaboration with you. As one of my clients described it, the idea wants you to sponsor it into existence, and stewarding an idea into existence is exciting and deeply meaningful.

The idea itself already contains a brilliance. Success in bringing the idea into existence is both from you and through you. Your leadership is becoming the producer of the idea, bringing the skills needed to execute the idea and diminish the amount of interference to the idea blossoming.

The idea has its own intelligence and knows what it can become, so refreshingly, this orientation takes some of the pressure off you to be the sole source of all the wisdom and insight. You don’t need to try be a charismatic or grandiose, you don’t need to be superman or superwoman. You shift the focus to the success of the idea rather than your own ego, investing in the success of the idea, not just making yourself look good. Your goal is to become more of the natural you.

The leader as gardener analogy is powerful. You know and trust the innate potential within the seed of an idea, and then skilfully cultivate the conditions for what can naturally happen, to actually happen. Your job as a steward leader is about care rather control, cultivating the conditions that enable both you and your team to willingly give of their best and deliver their best work in service to your clients.

Stewarding is less about being a dominant leader, whose goal is to blow the competition out of the water. Stewarding suits you when you naturally gravitate to being naturally generous, and love enabling the process of bringing something beautiful into existence that clients, team members and investors are naturally drawn to be part of.

Stewarding also implicitly acknowledges that our leadership is temporary. We will steward for a period and then hand over our leadership to someone else at some point and move on to stewarding new ideas into existence. We don’t get over attached. It is an invitation to be in integrity, and to maintain a healthy humility in the knowledge that we are not indispensable. Someone else might well be right for the next chapter of stewardship.

I am Nick Williams, and I am on a mission to inspire and enable more steward leadership. I have already stewarded 19 of my own books, many trainings, several brands and a whole body of work into existence. I’ve been part of hundreds of interviews and podcasts. I have also had a ringside seat to leadership of dozens of clients in leadership for whom leadership is their calling, as well as their position. They hire me to help them as they steward their ideas into existence. I remain fascinated and inspired to witness these ideas taking up important places in the world. Many of my clients are world class, and their ideas have become global hotel brands, BAFTA and Golden Globe winning TV series and films that have touched millions of lives, and potentially billion-dollar valuation businesses.

My own passion and skill lie in helping you nurture your own growth, and helping you realise your own innate potential. My underlying philosophy is not about self-improvement and trying mould yourself into an idealised version of who you think you should be, but to simply blossom into becoming more of the natural skilful self that you already are.

What I love about the stewarding orientation is that it natural, it simply involves becoming more naturally and skilfully you. As all leadership has, it has its own challenges and difficulties but it can be an exciting, and fulfilling adventure

If these ideas resonate with you, I imagine that you are precisely the right person to steward some particular ideas into existence.

If you are already in a position of leadership, and you’d like to explore the next chapter of your own steward leadership, please drop me a line: nick@iamnickwilliams.com and we’ll arrange that conversation.