In Life and Leadership, Being Principled Counts – ALWAYS!
One of the outstanding features of Influential Leadership is that we can use it to audit whether a person has practiced Influential Leadership or not.
Our leadership is clearly defined through the Influential Leadership System Architecture, so there is nowhere to hide what we do and what the outcomes are.
This feature, its auditability, is the element that legacy-style (mis)leaders dislike the most.
Legacy leadership provides cover for misleadership because there is no clear and systematised philosophy, principles and behavioural attributes, and most importantly, the nature of outcomes is ignored.
It is a contradiction in terms that leadership can have unproductive outcomes when its purpose is to influence and shape events, conditions and circumstances for the better.
As we know, legacy leadership tends to end up as misleadership.
Let us do an audit to illustrate the point about misleadership.
The past week served up another example of how misleadership at the highest levels of power influences people’s lived lives and future for the worst.
I isolate just one Influential Leadership behavioural requirement to prove the point:
Being PRINCIPLED.
(Click the image above for a clearer view)
Our audit target is the president of the United States, Joe Biden, touted as the “leader of the free world”.
(I hyperventilate when I hear or read that phrase, but let the matter rest.)
Here are the salient points:
- A Russian politician, Navalny, who has opposed president Putin’s never-ending rule was murdered or died in a Russian prison on 16 February 2024. Navalny was imprisoned on contrived charges.
- The US president, Biden, as the front man for the USA, predictably mumbled about instituting another 500 new sanctions against Russia to punish Putin and Russians for Navalny’s death.
- The USA and the countries it bullies have already instigated over 16,500 sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
- About 11,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on 24 February 2022.
- Israel, a US ally, has killed over 30,000 Gazan Palestinians and about 300 Palestinians in the West Bank portion of Palestine since 7 October 2023, after an incursion into Israel by Palestinian Hamas fighters. Israel is also attacking sovereign countries in its neighbourhood, is committing genocide and practicing apartheid. Furthermore, Israel defies multiple United Nations Resolutions prohibiting settlements on Palestinian lands.
- The USA has and still supplies Israel with bombs, bullets, missiles, military intelligence, and provides international diplomatic protection for Israel at the United Nations with multiple vetoes in the Security Council preventing a cessation of the war.
So, what is the point?
What PRINCIPLE is Biden applying in his contradictory and inconsistent treatment of Russia and Israel?
Is Biden being PRINCIPLED in such behaviour?
Let it be clear. All wars of aggression are wrong and are condemned.
If the Russian invasion and killing of civilians is wrong (it is), so is the Israeli mass killings, occupation and apartheid in Gaza and the West Bank.
However, Biden imposes sanctions on Russia for (probably) murdering a politician, yet Israel is rewarded and protected for murdering 30,000 people, and counting.
What is the leadership principle?
There is none.
It is expediency at best and complicity at worst (it is).
Being principled means, we apply our established principles, no matter what.
The evidence is before us, Biden is a misleader.
Yes, he’s the president of a powerful country. Yes, he can generally do as he pleases. But, as we discussed last week, power is not what defines an Influential Leader!
It is exactly this sort of misleadership that Influential Leadership seeks to replace.
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre offers such a persuasive argument for the necessity to be anchored to our PRINCIPLES, no matter what.
Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation:
they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in
mutiny against their rigour…
If at my convenience I might break them,
what would be their worth?
One of the risks of using a high-profile person and example, as I have done, is that the rest of us are tempted to imagine that leadership belongs to these powerful people, not you and me.
Let it be clear.
Influential Leadership belongs to each of us as we go about our lives, in whatever capacities we function in our homes, schools, teams, workspaces, communities and countries.
Each of us must choose to lead, and each must be principled.
Biden is not a leader but a misleader. His misleadership has consequences for the world.
But what about you and me?
Mai, the question is whether you and I are proper leaders, influencing and shaping our lives and world to be better?
We must not expect others to do what we do not do.
Go first, lead.
Regards,
Colin @ Karoo
We Activate Apex Skills!
Leadership Weekly Note: 1024.040324
e: colind@karoo.world
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