Leadership Precepts
Leadership is internally derived, externally manifested
Begin to understand who you are and what it is that distinguishes the way you lead. Discover what you need to do or learn to do to become a more effective leader. There is a lot to who you can become by understanding who you are.
There is a lot to who you can become by understanding who you are.
It is not applying a leadership model. Authentic leadership begins within. You must learn who you are and operate from that understanding. Your moral core is the source of meaning that tempers and sets judgment.
Manifested in community, leader influence is sustained by ongoing contributions in pragmatic life. The community’s response reflects the leader’s image and reveals what one knows and does not know.
Following is the apprenticeship of leading
The journey to becoming a leader goes down the path of the courageous follower. Without the follower, no one can lead. Being a courageous follower is the leader’s first challenge.
To become an authentic leader, one must first serve an apprenticeship as a courageous follower. It is experiencing being a loyal challenger, taking a stand for what is ethically correct, raising alternatives, surfacing hidden assumptions, and whole-heartedly participating with the leader.
Apprenticeship is learning to trust colleagues. It is a relationship of multi-directional influence moving in meaningful action. It is coming to grasp the meaning of “Gaining control by giving up control.”
Leadership cannot be taught; it is learned
Leadership is learned through self-awareness gained in trial and error application. It is experientially developed with the help of experienced leaders, knowledgeable guides who provide critical feedback. The voice of experience helps the novice to recognize the storms and barrier reefs, and to discover the clear channels between the rocks and shoals.
One learns how to deal effectively with imbalances. Action learning provides opportunities to experience imbalances, and reflective learning determines counter-balancing skills. Within the complexity of options, leadership is learning to be accountable for one’s choices, and not to equivocate. Understanding the why and how of choices made is the soulfulness of experience.
Leadership learning is moving beyond the heroic model, and engaging in an interdependent dynamic; a many-way street. It is learning to lead from influence and trust, creating opportunities for people to express heart and soul in action.
Leadership must be intended?
Leaders are lightening rods; they attract controversy. Effective action springs from intention. At the heart of intention is the realization that your actions are key to success of the effort or enterprise. The intent and courage to assume the risk when it matters, leaves its mark.
An individual is called to leadership; the call is provoked at different times in different ways. It is unique for each person. Without intention on the individual’s part, the call goes unanswered.
Leadership is a transformational strategy; it is about change and growth. Leading is an intentional art and discipline; it must be lived, practiced, and learned. Not everyone can lead.
Leading occurs at the confluence of emotions, intellect and spirit
Leadership is courageous action that emerges at the intersection of competency, trustworthy relationships, and a meaningful expression of purpose. Leaders have the courage to be loyal challengers, to stand when it matters, to fight for what they believe in – therein lies the basis of trust. Leadership ability transcends intellect; it happens at the synergistic confluence of one’s intelligence, emotions, and spirit.
Leadership is learning to trust yourself and your followers.
It is understanding that:
A good leader, who talks little, when the work is done, the aim fulfilled, the followers will say, 'We did it 