People
Answer the three questions below, based on your lived experience:
- What is the purpose of leadership?
- What should the purpose of leadership be?
- Is there a gap between ‘is’ and ‘should’?
NOTE. It is leadership with a lower-case ‘l’—so it means leadership as a general social construct (not Influential Leadership in particular.)
I know, we all know, that there is a (leadership) gap the size of the Grand Canyon between the ‘is’ and the ‘should’…
(BTW. The leadership gap is just one reason the Influential Leadership System has been engineered!)
We see it and experience it throughout our lived lives—even if at times we do not realize that behind almost every human mishap or catastrophe of any size and shape—is the leadership gap, our own and others’.
In other words, the absence of proper leadership results in a leadership gap, and the consequences are sub-optimal for everyone concerned—the person who fails to lead, their family, the team, the business, the citizens, whoever is involved and touched.
Sure, misleaders and anti-leaders imagine they benefit, but in a zero-sum arrangement everyone is a loser, even those who think they win.
We can point to innumerable examples all around us:
- The learner, family member, school prefect, sport’s team member who chooses to cheat in their exams. Those being cheated lose, the cheater gets a higher grade but what next for them, the system loses…
- The partner, father, team member, manager, neighbour, citizen who chooses to be dishonest by having an affair with a colleague, or paying a bribe to traffic officials when caught breaking the law. Any winners here?
- The father, grandfather, husband, church member, neighbour, country president who chooses to go to war and murder tens of thousands of people rather than seeking common ground and peace. War is hell and breeds more!
We could go on endlessly, the examples are legion.
The Influential Leadership way is 180° different to legacy leadership—in theory and practice!
People—all affected people—are at the centre of Influential Leadership’s Purpose (its intention), its Philosophy and Principles, its Behavioural Attributes and its Outcomes (the consequences).
There is no wiggle room to manoeuvre (other) people to the side while I grab the benefits and run…
The Purpose of Influential Leadership is to influence and shape life events, conditions and circumstances for the betterment of people’s lives.
So, how does this work in practice.
Let us imagine that a newly elected Prime Minster of a country practices Influential Leadership.
This is her Leadership Moment.
She inherits a shambles from her predecessor who was a typical misleader and a lifer (clinging on to power and corruption forever, as they are wont to do).
- The economy is flat, and depends on external financing that will affect future generations.
- The country is riven by many sectarian and competing interests that were fomented by the outgoing fellow, and which have destabilised internal harmony and undermined its collective functioning and a unified approach to the country’s policies, actions and progress.
- The country is at war—shooting wars and every other form—with just about anyone and everything that does not toe their line or agree with them. They build walls, intimidate, bully, threaten, assassinate, occupy, call on other rogues to buttress their behaviours, and ignore any remedial advice.
- The country’s current major armed conflicts with multiple neighbours and citizens risks its very existence and viability as a state amongst the community of world states.
- Previous PMs who dared to alter such entrenched behaviours have been assassinated by the prevailing beneficiaries. Personal risks are tangible.
So, how does the Influential Leadership practicing new PM respond to this massive Leadership Moment?
SHE BREAKS THE UNPRODUCTIVE CHAIN!
She goes first.
She puts people at the centre—all the people—starting with herself—yes, that is our starting point, but not in a zero-sum way.
From self she moves through all the other people who are involved and affected—her ‘own’ people, those outside the tent, those on the other side of the walls, the present people and the next generations…
She takes people with you, especially those who are ‘outside her tent’—the ‘others’.
(BTW. You might recall the Leadership Weekly Note about ‘keeping one’s challengers’ closer than one’s friends. Now is that time!)
She speak as an equal with her deemed enemies who are also her fellow citizens, neighbours and human beings—and might even be close family in the DNA chain.
She says sorry where needs be, and expects the same from others.
She spends as much time, energy, intellect and money building peace as the misleaders did on war.
She keeps her word through her actions.
She thinks and acts strategically—the bigger the Leadership Moment, the more important the long game.
Through her Leadership, everyone wins, even the misleaders as they benefit with everyone else!
Is the Influential Leadership route easy?
Nope.
But that is what Influential Leadership requires.
If we want to influence and shape the world it cannot be a cinch.
The above example is something only a few people face throughout history, but the principles are still the same, no matter how big or smaller the Leadership Moment might be. I use a big moment to illustrate how proper Leadership has enormous consequences, as does misleadership. The one is productive, the other destructive.
The message here is that people are the solution, always, as both subject (the person who chooses to lead) and object (the people who are affected by Leadership).
The Influential Leadership solution starts and ends with people, from me to you to us. We are all better off together than following the Stone-Age approach of legacy leadership.
If you have not yet joined the Influential Leadership Movement, you are invited to do so! Chat with me today.
Regards,
Colin @ Karoo
We Activate Leadership!
Leadership Weekly Note: 4524.041124
e: colind@karoo.world
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