How do you spin your plates fast enough to make room for doing leadership? That question led to a an impromptu twitter seminar this morning between an eclectic bunch of leadership gurus. As the final thought in the series reminds us, today’s tweets are tomorrow’s chip wrappers – a fate from which wisdom such as this should surely be rescued.

Three thoughts strike me from the exchanges below:

  • Mark O’Neill’s opening premise is that leadership is different from plate spinning. Some of this makes better sense if you accept that plate spinning is leadership, because plate spinning is what leaders do
  • Chris Chant is surely right that adding more sticks on which to spin more plates is not a viable long term strategy…
  • … but as Mark observes, prioritising which plates should be spun is itself a plate which needs to be spun.

It can be easy to confuse leadership with charisma. Charisma may for some leaders be some part of how they do leadership. But for most leaders, most of the time, it’s about keeping the plates spinning.