The centrepiece of today’s Alpha Weekly Note is about influential leaders being self-aware and its reflection, the understanding of self through others’ lives — the necessity of being able to ‘walk in another’s shoes’.
Influential leadership has eight behavioural attributes. While they are all equivalent, there is one that is first amongst equals, and that is self-awareness, and its abovementioned analogue. There is a passage in Module 8 that sets up this relationship between self, and others, as follows:
Self-awareness is rightfully about ‘the self’: self-knowledge, self-understanding and self-efficacy. But at the tail-end of this conversation, we must keep in mind that self-awareness is also deeply appreciating the circumstances and conditions of others. This complementary side of ‘self’ is not about us directly, but indirectly it is the element that gives a complete picture, a fuller knowledge of ‘self’ and how we and others fit into our social domains, and the greater social system. It is this side, the other side of ‘self’, that helps to power our capability to exercise leadership.
We are taking an excursion with a young Alex to obtain a practical sense of this attribute, and by implication, his practice of influential leadership.
Last week an Alpha Programme learner submitted her contribution to Assessment 11. The second question in the assessment asks learners to tell a story about someone who they have witnessed practicing influential leadership. They could relate how they themselves had managed a leadership moment, or anyone in their social domains – from a family member, to circle of friends, or work colleagues, team members, or even others known through their public persona.
Of course, the person in question would not need to have completed Alpha because people can practice the essence of influential leadership even though they are not formally trained through Alph.
The Alpha learner chose Alex for her observed leadership moment experience. The next four paragraphs set out her observation.
My choice of a person who is an example of an influential leader is eight-year-old Alex. He is of Slovakian parentage, living with his parents and sister in Austria, fluent in Slovakian, German and English, an ice skater and the most caring boy I’ve come across. The family came to visit us in August for 16 days and we took them on a road trip to show them our favourite sights of South Africa, covering more than 2,800 kms [from Pretoria to the Kruger Park, through the Free State and Karoo, and then Cape Town].
The challenge for Alex was that he always gets car sick. To our amazement, this never happened, and he ended up showing incredible emotional maturity, intelligence and an advanced social awareness far beyond his tender age.
We had hired a nine- seater van and let him sit between the two front seats, on a booster seat to make it a safe place for his small stature. This prime position between his dad and my husband helped him overcome any nausea by affording him a bird’s eye view of the road ahead, always looking ahead. He rose to the occasion by proceeding to ask questions continuously all the way as we drove through the country: he noticed everything and was very aware of the signs of poverty, neglect, disrespect and suffering in the people of South Africa. He wanted detailed explanations for reasons and several times asked us to give money to beggars and followed up by pondering what had gone wrong in these poor people’s lives, where they lived and under what conditions. We had our hands full trying to explain the social set-up in our country, often delving into the Apartheid past for the truth to be made clear to him.
What impressed us so was how acutely aware he was of the lack in others, worried about their future. In his dealings with them, he took pains to look them into the eyes, smile at each one, greet them politely, and see them as people individually. This behaviour has the potential for becoming a caring, brave, thinking and principled leader. He demonstrated to the rest of us how to care about the lot of others. This is an influential leader in the making. I honour him for this.
There are many layers to Alex’s story, but for this Note I highlight six points to inform our week’s leadership practices:
- Self-awareness, and an ability to walk in another’s shoes. This goes further than seeing people’s conditions relative to one’s own, but also feeling and wrestling with the situation. It implies being affected by such matters. It is my sense that Alex was deeply conscious of his own place in the world and was able to step into another’s shoes to feel the difference that the universe had served.
- Thinking. Thoughtful. Questioning. Curiosity. These are all essential ingredients in practicing influential leadership. They are element in our social agency and behavioural attributes. Alex displayed them all.
- Doing. What must we do to change things for the better? Alex hoped that alms would give poor folk some reprieve, even if only for a moment. What is it that we must do?
- People are at the centre of influential leadership. No matter who I am, or who you are — do we treat each other with dignity and respect? Is what we do for the betterment of us, or is it about me to the exclusion of others? It seems to me that while Alex was interested in everything, people and their conditions mostly fascinated him.
- I reckon the adults in the holidaying group were the ones with prime leadership moments each time Alex asked his searching questions. Alex was seeing the word with new eyes; they had not yet been glazed over by adult customs, (un)thinking, and habits. Influential leadership equips us with new lenses to see the world properly. Here was an eight year-old, too young to formally learn influential leadership, but practicing it nevertheless, and in so doing, teaching adults through his example. One of the taglines from the way we define the Alpha_Generation is: Never too young, never too old. It is indeed so.
- Influential Leadership is a system of leadership that exists within our over-arching social system, which in turn exists in other ever-larger systems. This is why we refer to the influential leadership system, because it recognises that ‘everything is connected to everything’. Thus, what we do as individuals has downstream consequences, either of a productive nature or not. There are never neutral consequences — what we do falls on one side of the ledger or the other. There is no suspense account in our leadership.
To change the world for the better, it starts and ends with ourselves and the people in our sphere of influence.
The practice of leadership is the most powerful lever we have to matter, to make a difference, and to live better lives.
Regards,
Colin Donian
Shaping lives for the better
* ‘Edits added for clarity.
Leadership Weekly Note: 211122
e: colind@karoo.world
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