Brought to you by Jeff Thoren, DVM  

We all have the capacity to be great.  Greatness comes with recognizing that your potential is limited only by how you choose, how you use your freedom, how resolute you are, how persistent you are -- in short, by your attitude.  Do you have the will to lead?

This month, philosopher/consultant/author, Peter Koestenbaum helps us reconcile the often-brutal realities of business with basic human values and to create a new language of effective leadership.  “Unless the distant goals of meaning, greatness, and destiny are addressed,” Koestenbaum insists, “we can’t make an intelligent decision about what to do tomorrow morning -- much less set strategy for a company or for a human life.”

Here’s this month’s feature ...

Do You Have the Will to Lead? by Polly LaBarre

From -- Fast Company, Issue 32, March 2000

Highlights from the article:

• Nothing is more practical than for people to deepen themselves.  The more you understand the human condition, the more effective you are as a businessperson.
    

• There’s a terrible defect at the core of how we think about people and organizations today.  People feel pressure to meet ever-higher objectives in all realms of work, wealth, and lifestyle but there is little or no tolerance for the kinds of character-building conversations that pave the way for meaningful change.  The average person is stuck, lost, riveted by the objective domain.  That’s where our metrics are; that’s where we look for solutions.
    

• Think of leadership as the sum of two vectors: competence (your specialty, your skills, your know-how) and authenticity (your identity, your character, your attitude).  When companies and people get stuck, they tend to apply more steam -- more competence -- to what got them into trouble in the first place.  But you’re not likely to make progress using competence as your tool.
    

• Progress requires a commitment to two things:

1. A dedication to understanding yourself better.  Personal reflection generates the inner toughness you need to be an effective person of action -- to be a leader.

2. A change in your habits: how you think, what you value, how you work, how you connect with people, how you learn, what you expect from life, and how you manage frustration.

• The central leadership attribute is the ability to manage polarity.  We can’t get around life’s inherent contradictions, ambiguities, and conflicts.  How we act, how we respond to these polarities -- that is where we separate greatness from mediocrity.  Tough choices are a daily requirement of leadership and to make difficult decisions each individual leader must begin by redefining, from the inside out, who they truly are.
    

• We are not what society and randomness have made us; we are what we have chosen to be from the depth of our being.  One of the gravest problems in life is self-limitation: We create defense mechanisms.  We refuse to fulfill our potential.  We live only marginally.  We place unnecessary limits on our own creative thinking and growth.
    

• Personal transformation comes from having the courage (i.e. the will) to deepen ourselves, to tap into the inner strength and energy that produces fundamental change.
    

• But what about organizational transformation?  How do you motivate other people?  Not with techniques, but by risking yourself with a personal, lifelong commitment to greatness -- by demonstrating courage.  You don’t teach it so much as challenge it into existence.  You cannot choose for others.  All you can do is inform them that you cannot choose for them.  In most cases, that in itself will be a strong motivator for the people whom you want to cultivate.  The leader’s role is less to heal or to help than to enlarge the capacity for responsible freedom. 
    

• Taking personal responsibility for getting people to implement strategy is the leader’s key polarity.  It’s like being a parent: you are 100% responsible for how your children (or the people in your organization) turn out.  And you accomplish that by teaching them that they are 100% responsible for how they turn out.

For the full text article, go to ...
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/32/koestenbaum.html

The New Leadership Mindset

To learn Peter Koestenbaum’s “new language of leadership,” we need to develop an awareness of the current mindset or perspective that we’re coming from and how that approach impacts our effectiveness and our ability to grow and change.

Many of the circumstances that seem to challenge and block us in our daily lives may only appear to do so based on the framework of assumptions we carry with us.  Draw a different frame around the same set of circumstances and new possibilities surface.  Find the right framework and extraordinary accomplishment becomes an everyday experience. 

There are two basic mindsets from which we, as human beings, can operate.  We can assume that life is about simply surviving and struggling to get ahead in a world of limited resources.  Or we can embrace a mindset that allows for unlimited possibilities and abundant opportunity.  The former often results in defensiveness, inflexibility, discouragement, inactivity, and failure while the latter is associated with curiosity, learning, energy, inspiration, and success.  Which mindset sounds most familiar?

The mindset we choose makes all the difference.  A mindset of opportunity and possibilities is much more conducive to learning, and people who are more frequently engaged in learning activities perform better as leaders.  The best leaders approach each new and unfamiliar experience with a willingness to learn.

Next Month

Explore most corporate or business-school curricula on leadership and you’ll find a mind-numbing list of skills that an aspiring leader must master.  Have we overcomplicated the role of a leader?  Is it possible that true leaders have a unique ability to make things simple?

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