An Overview

An Overview

The primary colours of ‘The Karoo’, the place, are the ones I see when I look across its parched landscape towards a setting sun. Burned orange. Dark green. Two shades of brown. Warm, down to earth colours.

The vast blue sky of The Karoo is not missing, it is merely held in reserve for a special purpose. Blue, Cerulean Blue, is the colour we use to identify our leadership target – the reason we aspire to be capable influential Leaders. Wherever you see the Cerulean Blue, you know you are looking at a leadership Moment; the event, the instance, the occasion or the situation that activates our social agency.

Leadership Moment

The concept of a ‘leadership Moment’ is central to influential Leadership. While we explore and define it in Module 9, that is some way off. We need a working definition to guide us between now and then.

A leadership Moment is a social circumstance (an event, or instance, or occasion or situation) at which we face the opportunity or challenge of making a material life decision (that impacts ourselves and others).  It is a circumstance that activates the practice of influential Leadership.

Examples are –

  • a scholar deciding what subjects to take in their final school years,
  • the member of a sports team who invents a new move that changes the nature of the game,
  • a business executive who must decide how to rescue an ailing business, or
  • a person who asks themselves, what are they going to do in their retirement, to still matter to others.

The infographic below right is a system’s view of influential Leadership. The Cerulean Blue star represents leadership Moments that ‘step’ into our lives, which we are either in a position to respond to, or not.

Leadership Moments happen for each of us, anywhere and anytime; they might be opportunities or challenges, huge or not so big, but they are as part of life as taking a breath.

As influential Leadership Activists, everything we learn, all the knowledge and skills we develop during and after Alpha are always about such moments. Alpha equips us to choose to apply our social agency to make the most productive leadership decision at each leadership Moment.

So, while leadership Moments are the reason why we must become capable influential Leaders, each part of the curriculum builds our social agency to be capable influential Leaders.

However, while such moments are the reason for being capable leaders, the purpose of leadership is always to change things for the better.  This is the singular purpose of influential Leadership, in every domain of our lives – from our homes, to school, work-places, at play, in our communities – to change things for the better, inclusively.

The Alpha Program builds a new leadership approach and practice that equips people to meet the opportunities and challenges of the 21st Century.

The infographic below right is a program (curriculum) view of Alpha.

Part 1: getting things Ready, prepares us for how we get to and understand the rationale of influential Leadership. Part 2: the influential Leadership System works through the influential Leadership architecture, the leadership activator (leadership Moment) and the outcome of influential Leadership. Part 3: influential Practices, helps us to appreciate how we live influential Leadership in our lived (daily) lives.

While for the purposes of learning influential Leadership we move in a linear fashion through the material, it is important to appreciate that it is a system and each of the elements is a function of the greater whole.

The graphic below represents the influential Leadership System as a functional construct within the larger social system. We examine each of the components of the system as we work our way through Alpha.

Take note that this rendition of the system is in the first person; it emphasises the personal nature of influential Leadership. In other words, influential Leadership agency is My CAPABILITY…