Leading Thoughts

The Foundation of Great Leadership

For great leaders, it is personal. Such leaders find tremendous fulfillment in their role and understand how it relates to their own identity, purpose and vision. They enjoy the personal challenge of improving quality and results. When a leader is fully engaged personally – they relax in their true nature realizing both their strengths as well as their
“Achilles Heels.” This allows them to leverage their strengths and build a strong team around them that fills in for competencies they are not strong in. At their highest level, James Collins has described such leaders as “Level 5 Leaders” who balance authenticity and humility with an unrelenting focus on results .

The Path to Mastery

When you choose to actively engage in your leadership development you are making the decision to forward your overall development as a human being. As I have said before, as one develops into a leader they begin to upgrade their overall operating system. As this “upgrade” occurs a leader travels two parallel paths:

• An ascending path that fully engages their passion propelling them towards vision and their most desired results.
  
• A descending path that takes them to a deeper understanding about themselves – their core beliefs, habits and ultimately their true nature.

This leadership development process leads to an ever expanding self-awareness and an increasing capacity for making conscious choices all aimed at forwarding what is most important to the leader and the organization they serve. And as a leader continues on their development journey, their self-awareness and conscious choice will continue to expand as they deepen their connection to vision and transform their true nature to higher forms of expression.

Choice: The First Step in Developing Your Leadership
It is important to emphasize here that while certain people may be born with a natural orientation towards leadership and already have some natural leadership abilities – leaders are not born, nor are they made based on some position they hold. Becoming a leader is a choice. It is a choice that we can make at any point in our lives. Making this choice requires us to tap into our passion to make a difference, the courage to live our passion and the realization that to becoming a leader requires us to make a commitment to a life long journey of growth.

Yet to be a leader does not require one to excel in every leadership competency coveted by the various leadership models. In fact, research done by Zenger and Folkman indicate that if a leader scores in the eightieth percentile on just five complimentary competencies they will likely rank among the most extraordinary of leaders . Therefore the primary goal of any executive interested in further mastering their leadership must be to better understand their natural talents. This will provide important clues for designing a leadership development path most suited for them and their natural style.