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Leadership
traits are as varied and numerous, not to mention
subtle, as the human mind and heart themselves. No
list will ever be complete, nor will it be the best
suited for each individual reader. And the
leadership characteristics set out in any essay on
leadership could fail to resonate with you simply
because of the language, the metaphors, chosen.
Everyone has their marketing gimmick, whether it's about
moving cheese or laws of success. In the end,
there's no easy way to absorb leadership directly into
the
bloodstream. Here are a few baseline concepts,
without fancy names, to get you and your
leadership
coaches on the same page.
Integrity
Here we
mean not just honesty, or acting in accordance with a
consistent set of values. We also mean integrity
in the sense of soundness, completeness, unity. Aligning
your personality with your values (or, if you are of a
spiritual bent, your personality with your soul). Not
compromising yourself. Not telling yourself lies, even
(or especially) when you have abandoned your values or
what you stand for. It’s hard because we fear the
consequences of having integrity. We might have to
change, or we fear we’ll dislike what we see, if only we
allow ourselves to see what we’re doing.
But
authentic leadership is about fearlessness. And personal
integrity is to human effectiveness as a laser is to
light. Integrity, or alignment between your real and
apparent self, focuses your energies like a laser onto
any object or goal. Your light is no longer diffuse,
splintered, scattered – ineffectual.
If you
haven’t figured out what you want to do, or you haven’t
been promoted to a place you think you deserve, then
your personal integrity, the equivalence of your real
self and the self you project to the world, is not
strong and sound. What stories are you telling yourself? What euphemisms do you use to protect yourself? What
self-limiting beliefs do you carry around, sometimes
almost proudly, to comfort yourself about why you can’t
do something? What are you telling, implying, or showing
others? Is it real?
Integrity Check
Write
down places where you could be losing integrity, or
personal power.
1. Are you uncomfortable about a
particular subject? You lose integrity when you think
about it, and when you push it away as well. Confront
it.
2. Are you uncomfortable around a particular
person. Ditto.
3. Are you into adrenaline,
workaholism, caffeine highs, or any other
addictions?
4. Are you mistreating anyone?
5. Are
you allowing anyone to mistreat you?
6. Are you
standing by passively while others commit breaches of
integrity? Don’t think these breaches don’t spill over
onto you as well.
Clean them up. Do it.
Responsibility
Don’t
take responsibility for all problems. But if you want to
be or are a leader, you will need to take responsibility
for their solutions, as the best
team leaders do. Even company conflagrations aren’t
about assigning blame, they’re about taking
responsibility. Have you been assessed for the
level of victimhood you assume in your life?
Almost everyone underestimates this -- perhaps literally
everyone.
Intuition
We only use
a small fraction of our brain’s capacity. You’ve
probably heard that. But it’s only half-right. What we
use only a tiny proportion of is our mind-body capacity. Mind and body are not separable. Anyone who has followed
the developments in physics, chemistry, and biology over
the last century, or who has ever been sick, especially
due to a stress-related illness, should know this by
now. Top CEOs, male or female, know intuition. It’s how
they got there, and it’s how they become effective
enough to stay there. It’s not just the people skills
others assume or believe they have. It’s about the skill
of self-listening. If you are going to be a leader, you
need to develop this skill in yourself. We all have it. If you share human DNA, it’s your birthright. Period.
You need to get rid of the clutter and
confusion, the noise and distraction and adrenaline, the
disorganization and breaches of integrity. Then you can
hear it.
It will shorten the time it takes you to
make decisions, make those decisions better, help you to
more easily live with the results of your actions, and
show you how to trust yourself and others much more than
you do now. You’ll get more work done faster, and it
will be of better quality.
[If you want to be
skeptical and scoff, that’s fine. For thousands of years humankind has taught
and written about the power of silence, particularly the
use of scientific techniques of meditation. Hundreds of
millions of people, including many of our highest
achievers, have sworn by it. Are you ready to dismiss it
when you know no more about it than you
do? Besides, you have probably already been
reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and accepting
the concept of "thin-slicing". It's the same
thing. Malcolm just dressed it up for you.]
There are three steps for the casual seeker
of the benefits of silence on intuition:
1.
Find time for silence and stillness
This means
time in which you do not feel you have to DO anything. At the home or office, just a few minutes a day is all
you need to start hearing yourself. Can’t imagine what
you’d do? Tried it and grew restless almost immediately?
Then you’re most in need of it. You’ve just exposed a
huge gap in your life and its state of health and
balance. A few minutes a day is fine; silence or
meditation is cumulative in its effects. But you may
find you enjoy it more and more – in fact, if you stick
with it for just a week or two, you WILL find that you
enjoy it more and more. And you’ll start to hear all
your neuroses and compulsions, the first necessary step
toward ridding yourself of their effects.
2.
Learn to ask good questions of yourself regarding
decisions you need to make. Don’t be too vague. Be
specific.
3. Learn the difference between
intuition and fear. Not everything you hear from
yourself is the truth. Much of what you hear will come
from a place of fear. If what you hear is loud, jarring,
or frightening, chances are it’s fear. Keep testing it
to be sure. Intuition is usually, though not always,
more gentle.
Vision
Do you have a
vision, or do you veer from crisis to catastrophe and
back again? Here again is a frequent subject of
leadership coaching and
leadership training.
A leadership coach can guide you in
creating a real vision that will inspire and guide the
direction of your organization.
For coaching or training on fundamental
leadership traits, contact
us now.
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