Leadership Reflections #3

Review of reflections about leadership. 1) Leaders envision and set visions about the future. 2) Leaders are both loved and hated. 3) Leaders have to be able to take the heat for leading out. Two more reflections about leadership for now: 4) Leaders are leaders only to the extent that they add value.

If it all begins with seeing the future and stepping out to make the solutions of that future present in the now, then the external side of leadership involves adding value. It may involve adding value to customers and clients, it may involve adding value to a business, corporation, or organization, it may involve adding value where there are hurts and problems, but in some way the leader is a leader because he or she adds value to others.

This raises some very personal questions for anyone in leadership or training for leadership: “What value am I adding? Value to whom, when, where, and how? How can I add more value to what I offer? How do I or others measure the value I add? How does it affect the bottom-line, customer satisfaction, quality of products, etc.?

Those who are put into roles of leadership, and who assume the title of leader, but who do not contribute to the value of the business, to clients, customers, employees, etc., are not truly leaders because they are not truly leading. A true leader gives, contributes, and serves. Ah, here is another one of those paradoxes of leadership. You have to have a servant’s heart to truly lead.’

Why is that? Because leadership is about giving to others something of value—a vision, a solution, a new product, process, pattern, etc. Without enriching the lives of others, a leader is more of a bureaucrat administrating an organization that, while in name, is supposed to be adding value to others, is more likely to be self-serving as it is structured with rules that serve the organization, not the customer.

As a leader gives birth to something new, something that adds to the quality of life of others, he or she also has to nurture and care for that new creation. Because nothing is birthed full-grown, leaders need patience, love, commitment, etc. to bring a new moment, idea, business, or organization so that it is robust and effective.

I have often written that Neuro-Semantics is about performing meaning and enriching performance with meaning. Given that, then the culture we want to create is that of a performance based culture. That means one where actually acting on what we do, translating ideas into actions, taking great ideas and actualizing them in performance, walking the talk, and closing the knowing-doing gap is important. This is equally true for leaders. They have to be creating and adding value to those they lead.

5) Leaders live the vision

If adding value is the exterior facet of leadership, the interior aspects of leadership is living the vision. Gandhi put it most succinctly, “Be the change that you want to create.” This speaks about the importance of a leader living the vision that he or she sees. This speaks about personal congruence and authenticity.

While Howard Gardner (Leading Minds) recognizes and distinguishes that this and yet asserts that this is not so true or important for “thought leaders.” Those who lead via their ideas, models, concepts, etc., especially those who lead from ivory towers, are not required to “walk their talk.” Gardner illustrated with Einstein. His own personal life did not (perhaps could not) validate or invalidate his thoughts about special or general relativity in physics. Yet when Albert Einstein was invited to be the first Prime Minister to the newly formed nation of Israel, he declined. In his letter he said that he had no training and little aptitude for leading people and so declined the offer.

If leadership is a co-created social construct arising from interpersonal interactions, then it inevitably involves sharing of one’s authenticity. It involves hearing what the leader truly thinks and feels, truly believes and cares in, truly envisions and wants. Leaders who only tell what they think people want to hear undermine the very heart and soul of leadership.

In this leadership is not only what one does, but what one is. It’s about one’s being—one’s inner heart and soul. In Daniel Goleman’s work on applying the concepts of emotional intelligence to leadership (Primal Leadership), he has described what he called “emotional resonance” that enables one to provide emotional leadership. It is this inner side of leadership that calls upon the leader to be direct, straight, forthright, warm, respectful, honest, caring, to be his or her word, etc. The more they determined their position from opinion and popularity polls, the less authentic their voice and contribution.

To facilitate that, a leader has to have an open and receptive frame of mind to feedback, to the giving and receiving of feedback, to taking on board reflections from others, and integrating changes in one’s own behavior and lifestyle. To not do that is to say, “I’m above this and will not make myself accountable for walking the talk.” And that attitude will essentially prevent any kind of long-term durable leadership. (See The Magic of Feedback articles on the website)

These very personal and intimate facets call upon leaders to be the kind of person that people want to follow. Now you know why the leadership criteria in Neuro-Semantics has both being and doing competencies and put congruency as one of key criteria for Neuro-Semantic leaders. Given that we are leading out in models, patterns, and experiences for enriching lives, empowering people to run their own brains and manage their own states, these are the areas that we have to “walk the talk” in order to make the talk credible. This is our vision and mission in Neuro-Semantics.