Learning to lead is a lot easier than most of us think it is, because each of us contains the capacity for leadership. Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself.
Becoming Our Self
As adults we learn best when we take charge of our own learning, and taking charge of our own learning is taking charge of our own life. The key to understanding is learning from our own life and experience. We are fully able to express ourselves when we know what our strengths are, and what our weaknesses are, and how we can fully deploy our strengths and compensate for our weaknesses. We must know the role failure has played in our life and how we have learned. We are obliged to examine the turning points in our life and how we have developed. We need to understand the external factors that encouraged us and stifled us. We do well to reflect upon the people we particularly admire and why.. Becoming a leader is the ultimate act of free will to grow to be who we really are.
Full expression means knowing what we want, why we want it, and how to communicate our desire to others in order to gain their cooperation and support. We do not set out to be a leader per se, but rather our leadership is the full and free expression of our self. Our goal is not to prove ourselves but to express ourselves in all of our passion, authenticity and commitment to our compelling goal.
For leaders "walking the tight-wire is living; everything else is waiting". Leadership is overcoming both circumstances and our own being in taking charge of our own life. The greatest impediment we must overcome is learning that "what we need to know gets lost in what we're told we should know".
Leadership plays a major role in creating the state of mind around us in symbolizing the morals and values of those who would follow us. The expression of leadership conceives and articulates goals that lifts people out of their petty preoccupations to transcend everyday obstacles in the pursuit of objectives worthy of the followers best efforts. Learning to lead is a matter of becoming more skillful and passionate at being our self. There is no cookbook with a special recipe we can follow in learning to lead. However, we must know that the vital ingredients are self-knowledge, authenticity, and passion.
The Leader's Inner World
Tom Peters says it is very important to be true to our self. We need to find out how we are unique - - how and when we thrive. For example, he works creatively from 4 a.m. to 11 a.m.. It took him 15 years to discover that but now he pays attention to his inner clock. Taking a long afternoon nap refreshes him remarkably. We have been socialized to fit in to the corporate dehumanizer. From the time we entered kindergarten, we have been taught to ignore what goes on inside our self. The school system teaches us to shut down our emotions and conform. We need to discover our own nature - - in all its intricacies - - and what is good and bad for us.
Staying in the "game" and learning how to sustain our self is an essential task of leadership. Leadership is about more than inspiration, vision, and creativity - - it is also hard, painful, and dangerous. Learning process involves five phases of self-discovery:
(a) uncovering our ideal self - - who we want to be;
(b) figuring out who we actually are and where our strengths and weaknesses lie;
(c) creating learning agendas that build on our strengths while filling in our gaping holes;
(d) experimenting with and practicing new behaviors, thoughts, and feelings;
(e) developing supportive and trusting relationships that enable us to change.
Learning what happens inside of us accounts for the 85% of what distinguishes our success and performance.
Often overlooked in leadership is the foundational element of human operation: mood and emotion. Leadership mood and behavior is the potent driver of performance because such emotional expression permeates an organization with an almost electric speed. A leader's "primal task" is emotional leadership. The leader's mood and behaviors drive the moods and behaviors of everyone else. The leader's emotional state drives performance. Happy moods frame everything in a positive light - - the yield is optimism about achieving goals, enhanced creativity, predisposition toward helpfulness, and critically, improved efficiency in decision-making. By contrast, emotional immaturity displayed by leaders creates a dysfunctional environment.
Leaders can modify their emotional leadership, or emotional intelligence, in a five-step process:
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identify "who do I want to be" by discovering missing elements in emotional style,
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establish "who am I now" by gathering feedback from as many people as possible, focusing on both strengths and weaknesses, not just weaknesses;
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consider "how do I get from here to there" by crafting a plan with manageable steps towards improvement - - utilizing feedback and self-awareness as measuring devices - - proposed change must be rehearsed continuously both in mental imaging and real-life application;
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learning "how to make changes stick" by reinforcing practice until old neural habits are broken and new behaviors become automatic - - continued visualization and imagination are requisite as habits are built;
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creating a community of people "who can help me" as the self-discovery and reinvention process continues.
- In a "self-directed learning process we draw on others every step of the way - - from articulating and refining our ideal self and comparing it with the reality to the final assessment that affirms our progress".
Emotional leadership is not all that matters but it is that element that sparks high performance and sustains success. Changing corporate culture through emotional intelligence is a journey. "You can't turn an elephant around in the bathtub in one move - - it takes a lot of time and consistent effort". Each step of change needs to be worked on until it is fully integrated into the very fiber of the organization before moving on to the next step. Leadership communication needs to be consistent and anything but a flavor-of-the-month approach.
What separates the best leaders and performers are often nuances and subtleties. These little things that distinguish us often become the big things that lead us to success. Our personal processes and mindsets when understood give us clarity. It helps us to understand how we need to stretch. Learning to lead requires us to go through a variety of experiences that hone our skills and capabilities while building confidence along the way. Pursuing developmental opportunities and learning to take chances is about learning to convert risk into trust and confidence as we follow our discovery mission. Through discovery we can learn pride, passion, and commitment. Personal innovation and passion is what ultimately distinguishes great leaders from good leaders.
The real struggle of leadership is internal. It begins when we set out to conquer our self. Conquering our self means learning about our self - - our skills and inadequacies, our beliefs and prejudices, and our talents and shortcomings. Real leaders are perpetual learners.
While followers do not want to see their leaders lacking self-confidence - - they will not tolerate someone who appears weak, uncertain, or lacking in resolve - - however, at the same time they also insist on knowing their leaders are human. Leaders are like the rest of us: we are both trustworthy and deceitful, cowardly and brave, greedy and generous. Very few of us are never deceitful, cowardly, or greedy. It behooves us as aspiring leaders to recognize and manage our failings. Flawed leaders are everywhere. Nonetheless, to have willing followers we must have integrity, the capacity to adapt, share meaning, and use a distinct voice.
To lead we must be dedicated to self-improvement. While it is unreasonable to expect we will only show the good side of our leadership without the bad, it is when we are unaware of our own darker side, and so fail to guard against our deficits, that we fall from grace. We need to become aware of how we
(a) are narcissistic and self-indulgent
(b) how we pretend to be omnipotent, omniscient, and perfect
(c) how we inadvertently reveal our unresolved issues
As leaders we are under an imperative to combat our hypocrisies and inconsistencies. Although we generally regarded ourselves as carrying, respectful, warm, flexible, honest, and personally competent, we need to become acutely attentive to how much we practice what we believe ourselves to be.
Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do as executives is to confront our own ignorance and incompetence. The humility to do so is not common. Leaders who can utilize such humility do what most cannot. Achieving self-awareness and self-control is the basis for leadership success. The struggle to overcome selfishness and aggression is what makes us better leaders. Through adversity we learn to transform ourselves and close the cracks in our character. Good leaders do bad things - - but they wrestle with their soul for self-mastery.
When we find ourselves in the wrong it is important that we do not cover it up with anger but instead we need to admit to the self-doubts. If we are ever going to be a great leader, we will have to reduce our dependence on the opinions of others! The only way we can do this is to take ownership of our mistakes. "Effective leaders need the internal conviction and humility to accept that they do not know all the answers".
Many great leaders found their inner being to be melancholic, ambiguous, doubtful, and brooding. Many have possessed a fiery temper while others are capricious and condescending. We get into trouble when there is a dissonance or a disconnect between our inner and outer worlds. The task of leadership is alignment. When we align our personal selves to our emotions we can move from our "authentic" self to our "vital" self.
Most executives have a notoriously underdeveloped capacity for understanding themselves and dealing with their emotions. All but the very best leaders are most reluctant to ask themselves why they act the way they do. Executives simply cannot afford to ignore the fuzzy realm of emotions and relationships. Often when we are not sensitive to our inner world, we treat people as anonymous entities as we attempt to box in our behavior. The mysterious action of our self and others (as we try to lose within tightly wound organizational structures) can rob us of the joy of creativity, play, and humor. We get into trouble because we do not see, understand, or accept our unconscious processes. We need to learn how to look beyond the obvious to find the deeper meaning of our actions.
Taking Root
Above all, great leaders reduce their dependence on the opinions of others. Effective leaders need the internal conviction and humility to accept that they do not know all the answers. In other words, great leaders take root in themselves as they steady their organization in pursuit of meaningful truth. They are not driven by insecurity or politics but by the best interests of their organization and their people.
Great leaders are quietly introspective. They continually ask themselves whether they are the cause of their organizations problems or whether they are actually doing what needs to be done. In other words, they take personal responsibility for whatever trouble on organization may be experiencing. Great leaders are always searching for the truth and they look for ideas in strange places. They encourage debate in search of the right decision and direction. They have the willingness to be open. For us to learn to be open we will require the strength to make our “self” vulnerable. Only when we are truly vulnerable, are we open to discovering the truth and eventually greatness. Becoming a leader involves breaking free from the bonds of conventional thinking in order to bring out natural creativity and intellectual independence.
Leading with an open-heart becomes a matter of how we handle adaptive challenges. Many executives avoid the hard work of changing attitudes, habitual ways of doing things, and deeply held values. It is less painful to put off the responsibility of adapting to our fast-paced rapidly evolving world that we find ourselves in; we would like to put on blinders to deceive ourselves but such action only increases the dangers we will have to face later instead of now. Developing a thick skin will just "squeeze the juice out of our soul" as we "lose our capacity for innocence, curiosity, and compassion". When we close our hearts, "our innocence turns into cynicism, our curiosity turns into arrogance, and our compassion turns into callousness".
We can meet the challenge of adaptive change in five ways:
"get off the dance floor and onto the balcony" by stepping back from the fray in order to assess what is happening from a wider perspective;
think politically in creating allies, keeping close to the opposition, and generating commitment from the uncommitted to create and nurture networks of people who can be called upon, motivated, and mobilized to meet the challenge;
orchestrate conflict by engaging people with differing points of view in order to bring about creativity and innovation;
"give the work back" because in times of challenge people must change their own hearts, minds, and behaviors - - leaders cannot do this for them;
hold steady because confronting major change generates repelling conflict and resistance - - the leader must contain the conflict so that it does not becomes destructive but also so that it is not met with avoidance behaviors.
Engaging adaptive change with an open-heart allows us to act with innocence, curiosity and compassion. Innocence and naivete allows us to see new, emerging realities that other people cannot see because they assume they already know the answers. Curiosity allows us to stay open to changing realities as we raise questions that slow things down. Compassion helps us carry people through the pain of change: "It is a sacred task to receive people's anger, and not to do so in an arrogant or defensive way".
Character is the key to leadership - - 85% of the leader's performance depends on personal character. Leadership success or failure is usually due to qualities of the heart. Congruity or authenticity - - that is feeling comfortable with our self - - is the reflection of our character. Further congruity is more than just self-knowledge; it is being consistent in all aspects of our lives whether at home, at work, or in the community.
Character goes beyond essential ethical behavior. Character is being "the real me" - - a fully integrated human being. Character is framed by drive, competence, and integrity. The leader's moral compass is the difference between destructive achievement and utilizing resources for a higher, often altruistic, purpose.
We take root by making time for reflection. We understand our own significance and the meaning of our work. We see how we make a difference to others. We measure our success in terms of its positive outcomes. Our passion is rooted in a commitment and conviction that borders on love.
Taking root in our self requires a display of personal courage. Such courage is not the absence of fear but is rather the ability to put fear aside and do what's necessary. Personal courage takes two forms. Physical courage involves overcoming fear of bodily harm in order to serve or to do our duty. Moral courage is demonstrated in our willingness to stand firm on our values, principles, and convictions.
We take root as we stand up for what we believe is right, regardless of the consequences. We display moral courage as we take responsibility for our decisions and actions - - even when things go wrong for us. Moral courage expresses itself as candor as we are frank, honest, and sincere with others while we keep our words free from bias, prejudice, or malice. It means not allowing our feelings to affect our calmness or what we say about a person or situation. Courage is the willingness to look critically inside our self, to consider new ideas, and to change what needs changing.
"Defining moments" also shape our character. Such moments arise when our responsibilities bring into conflict our deepest values. A defining moment challenges us by asking us to choose between two or more ideals in which we deeply believe. As we grapple with the choice we uncover what is hidden within us or we crystallize matters that previously had only been partially known. Further, we test ourselves as we discover whether we are living up to our personal ideals or whether we have only been paying our values lip-service. We learn who we are both personally and collectively as we resolve our decisions with grace and strength.
Here are eight steps we can utilize to help us build integrity and character:
- Do what we say we will do - - a most critical yet basic practice
- Embody our convictions by doing the right thing
- Take responsibility for each of our actions instead of blaming people or outside events for our problems
- Support our own weight rather than being a net drag on others
- Apply holistic thinking and appreciate the big picture
- Respect others especially when they do not live up to our expectations
- When we err check the mirror asking ourselves "is this who I am?" and "is this what I really want?"
- Explicitly define our rules and values to enable people to benefit from the integrity of the group
Living with integrity raises our credibility allowing followers to trust us and depend on us as leaders.
Character and leadership is learned when we refuse to play the role of a victim. Character is formed under circumstances of adversity when we exercise the resolve, the humor, and the determination to not let persecution, circumstances, or the system to define us.
We develop character as we find meaning in negative situations that try us. As we transcend adversity we emerge stronger than before. We come to understand that happiness is not a function of our circumstances but is a function of our outlook on life. Our adaptive capacity is found in our hardiness and the ability to grasp context in putting "our crucible" into perspective so that we learn, become more engaged, and become more committed than ever. Rather than being destroyed, we can learn to flourish.
Leadership is developed through one of two courses in life - - through socialization or through personal mastery. The former applies to the once-born personality type whose lives have gone smoothly. The latter applies to the twice-born who have had to constantly struggle to try and maintain some sense of order in their life. Having to continually work at managing their lives brings about a profound sense of character-generated separateness. Such leaders, who have learned to continually change, seek to acutely alter human, economic, or poetical relationships. By contrast, once-born leaders seek to guide institutions by maintaining the existing balance of social relationships.
Leadership resides in character. It is the type of character that works to realize the greatness of followers rather than demonstrating our own greatness. The best leaders are empathetic as they illuminate the potential in those around them. Leadership is about inspiring and motivating followers to achieve that greatness. Leaders with character think outside of themselves and humanize what they do.
The key to character change - - for organizations but I also believe for people - - is first to understand what not to change and then to feel free to change everything else. We need to keep what works while getting rid of what doesn't.
We must always remain guided by our core traits. We need to define our own essence - - that part of us that we never ever want to change - - that which makes us special in terms of our best capacity for service. Greatness is cumulative. We need to follow what Peter Drucker called "planned abandonment". That means we get our house in order by dealing with our old assumptions, policies, practices, and activities that have little relevance for our future. Putting our personal house in order deals with people - - possibly abandoning certain people that hinder us. More importantly, it deals with who we are and who we hope to be. "Freedom and obligation, liberty and duty - - that's the deal".
Risk taking, humble self-reflection, soliciting others' opinions, careful listening and openness to new ideas are vital when assuming the role of leader. To lead we frequently have to withdraw and reorient ourselves in times of stress and turbulence.
We must start by healing our self. We reflect on the above and the around. We are willing to confront the terms of our own existence. We seek out what "our destiny" would lead us to do. We draw on creative power. We create change dangerously. Based on what previously happened, and what is happening now, we use our intuition to foresee what is going to happen, and when to decide even though all of the information is not available.
In reflection and in seeking answers, we gain a sense for the unknowable and pursue the ability to see the unforeseen and thus "lead." Under stress we compose our self and trust. In this risk we trust that if prepared with humility, wisdom, knowledge and experience, intuitive insight will come to us in the face of uncertainty. For the sake of our community and those we love, we nobly risk failure, not fearing the unknown while we individually courageously say, "I will go; come with me."
"To become authentic, each of us has to develop our own leadership style, consistent with their own personality and character". We need to be autonomous and highly independent. The one essential quality that we must have in order to lead is to be our own person - - we must be authentic in every regard. Anyone attempting to emulate the characteristics of other leaders is doomed to fail. It just doesn't work. We simply need to be our self.
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