Articles on Leadership
Copyright 2005 - 2006 GFTR Consulting LLC
What Leadership means to your quality of life?
The health of your body, spirit, soul and financial well being
How the Principle of "Getting Hooked©" affects your leadership!
The affect of your choice of reaction to outside events AND inner judgments and beliefs COMPLETELY dominates how other see you... and whether people choose to follow you.
"In the Moment©" Leadership
Once you've grasped the complexity of your inner judgments and beliefs, how do you react? How do you apply what you know to pick your leadership style In the Moment© ?
Dr. Kai on Leadership
A liberal academic magician speaks to leadership and life
Click on the above titles to read the complete article
What Leadership means to your quality of life?
The health of your body, spirit, soul and financial well being
Solid disciplined leaders average a LOT more income than ANY other measurable group.
Do I have your attention?
Emotional Intelligence
Men and women who score a high EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient) consistently and spectacularly out earn, stay married longer, lead more everything from armies to companies to non-profits... than men and women with high IQ (Intelligence Quotient).
You may ask, "So how do I train for a higher EQ?" "What else is in it for me?" How about...
Women and men who consciously know how to listen, and intelligently and calmly move from servant leader to authoritive leader, and from coaching leader to collaborative leader are in better physical condition, live longer, lead more spiritual lives, are people others look up to and once again almost always earn FAR more money.
While money itself may not buy happiness, it certainly seems to follow people, or be a very common by-product of having a superior understanding of oneself and others!
Teachable Moments
Some appear to have the ability naturally, very cool, and I wasn't that lucky! And yet, even those "lucky" people, when studied, revealed that somewhere, sometime, a parent or teacher or coach or religious leader got through in some "teachable moment" that person never really understood, but it had a stunning impact.
Three important points about "teachable moments" and Emotional Intelligence!
To point #1, if pure academic leadership training worked corporations wouldn't be straining to find the people they need. Look what happens to the highly trained people on a show like "The Apprentice". Intangibles like pressure and fear can shut down access to all that brilliance without specialized interactive training. If book learning worked there would not be so many rope challenge style trainings and neo-boot camps creating physical challenges, their whole point is to involve the body, stress and fear to access those "teachable moments".
If you have not taken such a class, try one. It will test you! And there is another level, a level of "opening" to teachable moments which can happen without any of these outside stimuli, none of which can easily be reproduced in a board room or with an employee.
Instead in the Head, Heart & Soul of Leadership or any of the Go For The Roar trainings, the access point will be your own words, your beliefs and judgments... the real life part of you that either propels you or holds you back. You won't be standing on a rope bridge 100' in the air, but you will feel all of the feelings that you create when you need to speak up to your boss, or make a major presentation to shareholders.
You will see how you get there... without standing at the edge of a 500' high building. You get there standing all by yourself on the floor, faced with the reality about how you show up in your life.
At that moment, and through witnessing others also standing at that imaginary precipice, you are open to learn, which brings us to point #2 and #3.
The learning we speak about is far more a case of UN-learning ingrained previously learned patterns that repeat over and over. Can you relate to that maze of confusion and fear?
The FACT is you learned it once one way, you can learn it again in a healthier and more productive way!!
You learn at a deep level why you can't say no, or why you don't hold your vice-presidents' accountable, or why you accept less that the best performance, and then why you react with anger at the poor performance.
The Power You Will Have
THAT learning is life changing! You'll suddenly get on the tread mill with almost no effort, you'll look someone in the eye and hold them accountable and do it knowing fully that is what you should do PLUS you'll know a good way to approach it to create a good result. People will sense something different in you and the vast majority of the time, your financial situation starts to change because of how you "show up" day to day.
Numerous studies show that people with a positive can-do attitude have less stress... in my experience the difference is you see the exact same situation completely differently and process it as a challenge and something to look forward to rather than fearful hence stressful.
The net result is better health, greater peace therefore a more fulfilled spiritual life, a more understanding emotional outlook, a stronger personality, and those four items usually equal greater financial stability!
Ask for a Go For The Roar Leadership Workshop in your community
Return to Top
How the Principle of Getting Hooked© affects your leadership!
The effect of your choice of reaction to outside events AND inner judgments and beliefs COMPLETELY dominates how others see you... and whether people choose to follow you.
A Simple Fish Story
As a fish swims in a river being a great fish, he looks for food. Because of the nature of fish vision, they can see certain types of food they eat by the way light reflects off of the various bugs and small marine creatures. They LEARN that to get fed, if they respond to flickers of light, and swim over and open their mouth, they get food. A fairly simple dynamic. Hunger is resolved by reacting a certain way to the flickers of light.
The fish swims freely and safely and all is well... until one day, the flicker of light has a dark hook attached to it, and the usual response is met with a hook into his cheek, and suddenly the peace and quiet of responding the same way is shattered by a pain in the cheek and being yanked around by a line attached to that hook.
The reaction is to fight because the hook hurts and he has lost his freedom, so the fish reacts violently from several levels, especially fear, because all of a sudden something that was always safe, was no longer so.
Luckily the hook didn't set properly and just as suddenly, he was free. If you have ever fished in a fishing whole where catch and release is common, you have witnessed fish no longer jumping at the first flicker of light.
As humans, we actually share a lot of DNA with fish, and whether that is relevant or not, the fact is we react to being "hooked" the same as a fish.
Human Hooks
In human terms the "hooks" are a perceived danger to safety at some level.
An insult perhaps. A characteristic in someone else that we resent. A challenge to honesty. A dismissal of an idea. A perceived threat to your job. A perception that someone is uncovering a weakness you have, perhaps being overweight or out of shape. You feel ashamed and react. You feel attacked so you get angry. You don't feel heard so you fight back with defensiveness. You sense your honor is under scrutiny so you go to great efforts to be believed. You feel sadness that you didn't do something, or you are not good enough so you cry. Perhaps unconsciously you agree with a criticism of you, so you feel fear and somewhere else you learned to run from fear so you shut down.
Fundamentally, an emotionally intelligent leader knows most of his own inner workings or reactions; knows where he is weak, strong, in or out of integrity, knows where he is accountable, understands his shortcomings. A leader has forgiven himself for being human and yet still works at transcending to know himself better and to improve. A leader also has an sense of inner discipline that allows himself to hear another person. Hearing even an "enemy" and staying OPEN to what he is saying is a learnable skill. You will learn NOT to create a competing conversation in your own mind that shuts down your ability to hear.
FROM THAT PLACE a leader can hear others and react to anothers needs and concerns, not his own weaknesses and shortcomings.
The "hook" no longer has a point or a barb, sure it's still a hook, and invasion of sorts, but just like the fish, you watch more carefully, you have more discipline, you don't just lunge at the next flash of light, you approach, examine, listen... because still most of the flashes of light are in fact... really good food!
Ask for a Go For The Roar Leadership Workshop in your community
Return to Top
In the Moment© Leadership.
Once you've grasped the complexity (and some say madness) of your inner judgments and beliefs, how do you react? How do you apply what you know and feel to pick your leadership style
In the Moment© ?
My last article I used a fish metaphor, this time it's an archer. There are many forms of archery from target practice to hunting. Europeans enjoy a form of longbow archery. There are many different arrow heads, arrow shafts and feathers. Archers carry their arrows in a quiver, and when hunting, they carry many different arrows to allow for distance, impact needed, weather and wind direction.
In another discipline, psychology, there are many models of the human psyche, my favorite is one that is actually so old that it predates psychology as we know it, has roots in natural realities like compass directions, seasons, elements and animals. Almost every culture recorded back through into biblical record have used these metaphors to tell stories, to describe the human condition, to inspire us to consider others as they are, not as we would want them to be.
The 7 Direction Leader Energy Matrix
My favorite matrix is a 7 direction model. The idea is to consider ourselves as 360 degree leaders, egoless servant leaders able to respond from any direction as needed to best serve the individual, a grouping or society or the world as a whole.
Briefly, the model starts in the East, the place of new beginnings, the rising sun, a new day, Jung called this the place of the Lover. The energy of this direction is that of starting new projects, learning new things, nurturing, feelings, dreaming up solutions to problems. To keep alert, we also recognize the dark side of this direction, the dysfunctional rescue, the victim, the self absorbed, jealousy... effectively the same energy experienced in the positive and the negative.
The South is the place of doing, the Warrior, bring projects to completion, the place of heat, the noon day sun, the middle of the day. The energy of this direction is doing, moving forward, holding strong boundaries, protection and creation. Men love this direction and at the same time are shamed for being "doing" machines, for being too single minded. This is also the exact same energy as the savage and the destroyer. Even the word "Warrior" brings up fear for many who have been ravaged by the raw power of this energy while at the same time being one of the favorite energies that women love in men.
The West is the place of beginning to darken, to get quieter, to ask questions, to "cave", to seek answers or to pray. The Magician energy is the thinker of solutions to problems, this energy solves mysteries and are perceived literally as magicians of thought, logic and conflict resolution. In business this direction blows a whistle when they perceive a perpetration, lawyers are masters of this direction. In darkness this is also the manipulator and the creator of chaos by doubting the direction of a project after decisions are made. Same energy, polar opposite in it's consequences.
The North is the 4th direction, this is the home of the wise man needed to survive long cold winter. This direction is called the King, the holder of the vision, responsible for the long term health of the realm. The Warrior serves the King, puts his vision into action. The opposite energy is that of the tyrant. Same energy, different consequence.
Up, or the Sky represents the 5th direction, that of Father Sky, inspiration and innovation, vastness, the macro vision, literally the power of a single being to change the direction of an entire nation. The negative or opposite energy is the dreamer who rarely or never gets results, in fact never really trys, just talks a good game.
Down or Mother Earth is the 6th direction, the energy of sustenance, grounding, literally the thankless task of supporting with little fanfare, taking all the garbage and waste and turning that into life. The opposite energy is that of the smotherer, or the energy of not letting go.
The final direction, within, the place all six energies meet and feed into the whole complete and complex being, the mixing place of all the energies which feeling and the gut, the mixing place of head, heart AND soul which allows the person to react from any direction in order to serve "another". The negative influence here is the denial of all the input and contemplating oneself above all else, the belief that "self" is the center of the universe OR that the self is substantially flawed and not worthy of the wisdom that supports the inner structure.
Leadership is all of this, 360 degrees in 3 dimension, a ball not a disc, existing bu it's very nature to serve others to heal, bless, inspire and teach.
Tieing back to the original archer story, the leader is the archer with a quiver of choices (arrows) with each arrow having it's time, place and purpose. The whole leader (archer) hears AND feels the input and makes a decision which arrow to use when, how far to shoot it and if one doesn't work, sees that and realizes another arrow might be better. The whole leader is willing to use some arrow, to take the risk to be wrong and to humbly admit that and not back away but try something else in service of the other.
The "Head" Version
A headier way of representing this, the way a person would write the text book version of Leadership might have 6 distinct styles to choose from.
1) Coercive - demanding immediate action in one direction, used for good to turn around a crisis that cannot risk any deviation in order to survive
2) Authoritive - mobilizes people to a powerful vision, a powerful change agent where a new direction is needed, this is more inspirational but still fairly single minded
3) Affiliative - creates harmony and builds emotional connections and bonding, people centered, might heal rifts and improves connections after a big change
4) Democratic - asks for input, builds consensus while participating openly, team building and creating unity through buy-in
5) Pacesetting - sets very high standards and lives up to them and expects others to follow to be part of the team, high achievement mode to get a project out, the American Bomb project in WW II would be an example
6) Coaching - a belief in developing competence, helping people to experience their greatness, developing long term employees
In leadership, 1 through 6 represent arrows, choices a leader makes to create a desired outcome. Wrong choice in a situation means the ship goes down. Coaching in a crisis mode inherently won't be trusted because the people know that immediate and substantial action has to happen NOW. Coercive or Authoritive leadership will build immense trust when used appropriately on a crisis, and will destroy trust and cause massive turnover when the needs are more team and learning oriented.
The Whole Leader - Head, Heart & Soul, Leadership In the Moment ©.
Ultimately, the 360 degree leader exercises his temperature taking "muscle" and weighs the needs and responds. The immature leader has his own agenda and reacts. In some cases, leaders with one dimension but a highly effective one dimension are brought in to save the day, be the hero, and then ride off into the sunset, victorious. Those situations are rare though. What companies, families and the world truly want to honor and be loyal to are leaders who have the full quiver of responses, often dancing between one response and another to best suit each individual, to create powerful teams of individuals, not mindless clones all treated alike to suit the limitations of the leader.
This is Leadership In the Moment ©.
What kind of leader would you want to be, or would you want to support?
Ask for a Go For The Roar Leadership Workshop in your community
Return to Top
Dr. Kai on Leadership
A liberal academic magician speaks to "embedded" leadership and life
Leadership without the heart/soul connection can easily become tyranny, whether in a political context or in a Parent Teacher Organization. When leaders make decisions and determine the direction a team will take without attention to social responsibilities and consequences, the culture, environment, and economies of an organization can be devastated. Recently General Motors reintroduced the car model "Nova". This was an economy car that was targeted to establish GM in the Mexican market place. Sadly, almost no Novas were sold in Mexico. It was only after millions of dollars had been spent that someone noticed that "Nova" in Spanish means: NO GO.
I would call this an example of irresponsible leadership. Many times, what seem like good decisions at the time turn out bad later on. Most leaders can site examples of this. Obviously not every contingency can be anticipated and planned for. But too often, well-meaning leaders simply rely on the financial inputs (of managers) to determine what’s 'best'. "Is this profitable?" is more important than "How will this impact the environment and our customers?" A leader who understands the relationship between the head/heart/soul dynamics makes better decisions for the organization-economically, socially, and politically. If you look at the Fortune 100 list of the Fastest Growing Companies in 1990, almost all of them are out of business fifteen years later. So making decisions based on the financial balance sheet is not enough. The balance sheet can never account for heart and soul matters that influence the market place and culture.
So the opportunity to connect with the heart and soul is available for everyone. There is an "Embedded Leader" in all of us. If you watch "The Apprentice" the men and women who succeed are not the ones who can 'manage' a task the best, they are the ones who can lead the team when the going gets tough. Trump does not need more managers in his organization. He's not much of a manager himself. He inspires others to his vision. He knows how to touch them at their hearts and souls.
So do you.
Our approach is to work with you to find your own Embedded Leader. S/he is in there. You have seen glimpses of her/him or you would not be reading this now! We do not know exactly why s/he is staying 'embedded', but we do know that we can show you the path to claiming your magnificence and becoming the leader you want to be in your life-family, work, whatever. It is not easy and will not occur without the 'slings and arrows' of others who see the world differently. Eagles fly alone; ducks fly in flocks.
Ask for a Go For The Roar Leadership Workshop in your community
Return to Top
Do I have your attention?
Emotional Intelligence
Men and women who score a high EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient) consistently and spectacularly out earn, stay married longer, lead more everything from armies to companies to non-profits... than men and women with high IQ (Intelligence Quotient).
You may ask, "So how do I train for a higher EQ?" "What else is in it for me?" How about...
- better physical health
- better spiritual life
- live longer
- more respected
- more income
Women and men who consciously know how to listen, and intelligently and calmly move from servant leader to authoritive leader, and from coaching leader to collaborative leader are in better physical condition, live longer, lead more spiritual lives, are people others look up to and once again almost always earn FAR more money.
While money itself may not buy happiness, it certainly seems to follow people, or be a very common by-product of having a superior understanding of oneself and others!
Teachable Moments
Some appear to have the ability naturally, very cool, and I wasn't that lucky! And yet, even those "lucky" people, when studied, revealed that somewhere, sometime, a parent or teacher or coach or religious leader got through in some "teachable moment" that person never really understood, but it had a stunning impact.
Three important points about "teachable moments" and Emotional Intelligence!
- It DOES NOT come from book learning. For adults we have to co-create that teachable moment!
- We all have the "muscle" needed to recognize that moment, no school or book teaches how to.
- Becoming a great leader is a LEARNABLE skill, you will discover how you learned the wrong way in the first place!
To point #1, if pure academic leadership training worked corporations wouldn't be straining to find the people they need. Look what happens to the highly trained people on a show like "The Apprentice". Intangibles like pressure and fear can shut down access to all that brilliance without specialized interactive training. If book learning worked there would not be so many rope challenge style trainings and neo-boot camps creating physical challenges, their whole point is to involve the body, stress and fear to access those "teachable moments".
If you have not taken such a class, try one. It will test you! And there is another level, a level of "opening" to teachable moments which can happen without any of these outside stimuli, none of which can easily be reproduced in a board room or with an employee.
Instead in the Head, Heart & Soul of Leadership or any of the Go For The Roar trainings, the access point will be your own words, your beliefs and judgments... the real life part of you that either propels you or holds you back. You won't be standing on a rope bridge 100' in the air, but you will feel all of the feelings that you create when you need to speak up to your boss, or make a major presentation to shareholders.
You will see how you get there... without standing at the edge of a 500' high building. You get there standing all by yourself on the floor, faced with the reality about how you show up in your life.
At that moment, and through witnessing others also standing at that imaginary precipice, you are open to learn, which brings us to point #2 and #3.
The learning we speak about is far more a case of UN-learning ingrained previously learned patterns that repeat over and over. Can you relate to that maze of confusion and fear?
The FACT is you learned it once one way, you can learn it again in a healthier and more productive way!!
You learn at a deep level why you can't say no, or why you don't hold your vice-presidents' accountable, or why you accept less that the best performance, and then why you react with anger at the poor performance.
The Power You Will Have
THAT learning is life changing! You'll suddenly get on the tread mill with almost no effort, you'll look someone in the eye and hold them accountable and do it knowing fully that is what you should do PLUS you'll know a good way to approach it to create a good result. People will sense something different in you and the vast majority of the time, your financial situation starts to change because of how you "show up" day to day.
Numerous studies show that people with a positive can-do attitude have less stress... in my experience the difference is you see the exact same situation completely differently and process it as a challenge and something to look forward to rather than fearful hence stressful.
The net result is better health, greater peace therefore a more fulfilled spiritual life, a more understanding emotional outlook, a stronger personality, and those four items usually equal greater financial stability!
Ask for a Go For The Roar Leadership Workshop in your community
Return to Top
How the Principle of Getting Hooked© affects your leadership!
The effect of your choice of reaction to outside events AND inner judgments and beliefs COMPLETELY dominates how others see you... and whether people choose to follow you.
A Simple Fish Story
As a fish swims in a river being a great fish, he looks for food. Because of the nature of fish vision, they can see certain types of food they eat by the way light reflects off of the various bugs and small marine creatures. They LEARN that to get fed, if they respond to flickers of light, and swim over and open their mouth, they get food. A fairly simple dynamic. Hunger is resolved by reacting a certain way to the flickers of light.
The fish swims freely and safely and all is well... until one day, the flicker of light has a dark hook attached to it, and the usual response is met with a hook into his cheek, and suddenly the peace and quiet of responding the same way is shattered by a pain in the cheek and being yanked around by a line attached to that hook.
The reaction is to fight because the hook hurts and he has lost his freedom, so the fish reacts violently from several levels, especially fear, because all of a sudden something that was always safe, was no longer so.
Luckily the hook didn't set properly and just as suddenly, he was free. If you have ever fished in a fishing whole where catch and release is common, you have witnessed fish no longer jumping at the first flicker of light.
As humans, we actually share a lot of DNA with fish, and whether that is relevant or not, the fact is we react to being "hooked" the same as a fish.
Human Hooks
In human terms the "hooks" are a perceived danger to safety at some level.
An insult perhaps. A characteristic in someone else that we resent. A challenge to honesty. A dismissal of an idea. A perceived threat to your job. A perception that someone is uncovering a weakness you have, perhaps being overweight or out of shape. You feel ashamed and react. You feel attacked so you get angry. You don't feel heard so you fight back with defensiveness. You sense your honor is under scrutiny so you go to great efforts to be believed. You feel sadness that you didn't do something, or you are not good enough so you cry. Perhaps unconsciously you agree with a criticism of you, so you feel fear and somewhere else you learned to run from fear so you shut down.
Fundamentally, an emotionally intelligent leader knows most of his own inner workings or reactions; knows where he is weak, strong, in or out of integrity, knows where he is accountable, understands his shortcomings. A leader has forgiven himself for being human and yet still works at transcending to know himself better and to improve. A leader also has an sense of inner discipline that allows himself to hear another person. Hearing even an "enemy" and staying OPEN to what he is saying is a learnable skill. You will learn NOT to create a competing conversation in your own mind that shuts down your ability to hear.
FROM THAT PLACE a leader can hear others and react to anothers needs and concerns, not his own weaknesses and shortcomings.
The "hook" no longer has a point or a barb, sure it's still a hook, and invasion of sorts, but just like the fish, you watch more carefully, you have more discipline, you don't just lunge at the next flash of light, you approach, examine, listen... because still most of the flashes of light are in fact... really good food!
Ask for a Go For The Roar Leadership Workshop in your community
Return to Top
In the Moment© Leadership.
Once you've grasped the complexity (and some say madness) of your inner judgments and beliefs, how do you react? How do you apply what you know and feel to pick your leadership style
In the Moment© ?
My last article I used a fish metaphor, this time it's an archer. There are many forms of archery from target practice to hunting. Europeans enjoy a form of longbow archery. There are many different arrow heads, arrow shafts and feathers. Archers carry their arrows in a quiver, and when hunting, they carry many different arrows to allow for distance, impact needed, weather and wind direction.
In another discipline, psychology, there are many models of the human psyche, my favorite is one that is actually so old that it predates psychology as we know it, has roots in natural realities like compass directions, seasons, elements and animals. Almost every culture recorded back through into biblical record have used these metaphors to tell stories, to describe the human condition, to inspire us to consider others as they are, not as we would want them to be.
The 7 Direction Leader Energy Matrix
My favorite matrix is a 7 direction model. The idea is to consider ourselves as 360 degree leaders, egoless servant leaders able to respond from any direction as needed to best serve the individual, a grouping or society or the world as a whole.
Briefly, the model starts in the East, the place of new beginnings, the rising sun, a new day, Jung called this the place of the Lover. The energy of this direction is that of starting new projects, learning new things, nurturing, feelings, dreaming up solutions to problems. To keep alert, we also recognize the dark side of this direction, the dysfunctional rescue, the victim, the self absorbed, jealousy... effectively the same energy experienced in the positive and the negative.
The South is the place of doing, the Warrior, bring projects to completion, the place of heat, the noon day sun, the middle of the day. The energy of this direction is doing, moving forward, holding strong boundaries, protection and creation. Men love this direction and at the same time are shamed for being "doing" machines, for being too single minded. This is also the exact same energy as the savage and the destroyer. Even the word "Warrior" brings up fear for many who have been ravaged by the raw power of this energy while at the same time being one of the favorite energies that women love in men.
The West is the place of beginning to darken, to get quieter, to ask questions, to "cave", to seek answers or to pray. The Magician energy is the thinker of solutions to problems, this energy solves mysteries and are perceived literally as magicians of thought, logic and conflict resolution. In business this direction blows a whistle when they perceive a perpetration, lawyers are masters of this direction. In darkness this is also the manipulator and the creator of chaos by doubting the direction of a project after decisions are made. Same energy, polar opposite in it's consequences.
The North is the 4th direction, this is the home of the wise man needed to survive long cold winter. This direction is called the King, the holder of the vision, responsible for the long term health of the realm. The Warrior serves the King, puts his vision into action. The opposite energy is that of the tyrant. Same energy, different consequence.
Up, or the Sky represents the 5th direction, that of Father Sky, inspiration and innovation, vastness, the macro vision, literally the power of a single being to change the direction of an entire nation. The negative or opposite energy is the dreamer who rarely or never gets results, in fact never really trys, just talks a good game.
Down or Mother Earth is the 6th direction, the energy of sustenance, grounding, literally the thankless task of supporting with little fanfare, taking all the garbage and waste and turning that into life. The opposite energy is that of the smotherer, or the energy of not letting go.
The final direction, within, the place all six energies meet and feed into the whole complete and complex being, the mixing place of all the energies which feeling and the gut, the mixing place of head, heart AND soul which allows the person to react from any direction in order to serve "another". The negative influence here is the denial of all the input and contemplating oneself above all else, the belief that "self" is the center of the universe OR that the self is substantially flawed and not worthy of the wisdom that supports the inner structure.
Leadership is all of this, 360 degrees in 3 dimension, a ball not a disc, existing bu it's very nature to serve others to heal, bless, inspire and teach.
Tieing back to the original archer story, the leader is the archer with a quiver of choices (arrows) with each arrow having it's time, place and purpose. The whole leader (archer) hears AND feels the input and makes a decision which arrow to use when, how far to shoot it and if one doesn't work, sees that and realizes another arrow might be better. The whole leader is willing to use some arrow, to take the risk to be wrong and to humbly admit that and not back away but try something else in service of the other.
The "Head" Version
A headier way of representing this, the way a person would write the text book version of Leadership might have 6 distinct styles to choose from.
1) Coercive - demanding immediate action in one direction, used for good to turn around a crisis that cannot risk any deviation in order to survive
2) Authoritive - mobilizes people to a powerful vision, a powerful change agent where a new direction is needed, this is more inspirational but still fairly single minded
3) Affiliative - creates harmony and builds emotional connections and bonding, people centered, might heal rifts and improves connections after a big change
4) Democratic - asks for input, builds consensus while participating openly, team building and creating unity through buy-in
5) Pacesetting - sets very high standards and lives up to them and expects others to follow to be part of the team, high achievement mode to get a project out, the American Bomb project in WW II would be an example
6) Coaching - a belief in developing competence, helping people to experience their greatness, developing long term employees
In leadership, 1 through 6 represent arrows, choices a leader makes to create a desired outcome. Wrong choice in a situation means the ship goes down. Coaching in a crisis mode inherently won't be trusted because the people know that immediate and substantial action has to happen NOW. Coercive or Authoritive leadership will build immense trust when used appropriately on a crisis, and will destroy trust and cause massive turnover when the needs are more team and learning oriented.
The Whole Leader - Head, Heart & Soul, Leadership In the Moment ©.
Ultimately, the 360 degree leader exercises his temperature taking "muscle" and weighs the needs and responds. The immature leader has his own agenda and reacts. In some cases, leaders with one dimension but a highly effective one dimension are brought in to save the day, be the hero, and then ride off into the sunset, victorious. Those situations are rare though. What companies, families and the world truly want to honor and be loyal to are leaders who have the full quiver of responses, often dancing between one response and another to best suit each individual, to create powerful teams of individuals, not mindless clones all treated alike to suit the limitations of the leader.
This is Leadership In the Moment ©.
What kind of leader would you want to be, or would you want to support?
Ask for a Go For The Roar Leadership Workshop in your community
Return to Top
Dr. Kai on Leadership
A liberal academic magician speaks to "embedded" leadership and life
Leadership without the heart/soul connection can easily become tyranny, whether in a political context or in a Parent Teacher Organization. When leaders make decisions and determine the direction a team will take without attention to social responsibilities and consequences, the culture, environment, and economies of an organization can be devastated. Recently General Motors reintroduced the car model "Nova". This was an economy car that was targeted to establish GM in the Mexican market place. Sadly, almost no Novas were sold in Mexico. It was only after millions of dollars had been spent that someone noticed that "Nova" in Spanish means: NO GO.
I would call this an example of irresponsible leadership. Many times, what seem like good decisions at the time turn out bad later on. Most leaders can site examples of this. Obviously not every contingency can be anticipated and planned for. But too often, well-meaning leaders simply rely on the financial inputs (of managers) to determine what’s 'best'. "Is this profitable?" is more important than "How will this impact the environment and our customers?" A leader who understands the relationship between the head/heart/soul dynamics makes better decisions for the organization-economically, socially, and politically. If you look at the Fortune 100 list of the Fastest Growing Companies in 1990, almost all of them are out of business fifteen years later. So making decisions based on the financial balance sheet is not enough. The balance sheet can never account for heart and soul matters that influence the market place and culture.
So the opportunity to connect with the heart and soul is available for everyone. There is an "Embedded Leader" in all of us. If you watch "The Apprentice" the men and women who succeed are not the ones who can 'manage' a task the best, they are the ones who can lead the team when the going gets tough. Trump does not need more managers in his organization. He's not much of a manager himself. He inspires others to his vision. He knows how to touch them at their hearts and souls.
So do you.
Our approach is to work with you to find your own Embedded Leader. S/he is in there. You have seen glimpses of her/him or you would not be reading this now! We do not know exactly why s/he is staying 'embedded', but we do know that we can show you the path to claiming your magnificence and becoming the leader you want to be in your life-family, work, whatever. It is not easy and will not occur without the 'slings and arrows' of others who see the world differently. Eagles fly alone; ducks fly in flocks.
Ask for a Go For The Roar Leadership Workshop in your community
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