Achieving Your Full Leadership Potential (Part 2)
Learn how to grow toward your full potential and improve your leadership.
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The leadership lesson here is this. Exceptional leaders never stop growing. They know what the pinnacle of leader development looks like and continually strive to achieve it. In doing so, they model the way for others and lead them to higher levels of motivation and performance. Exceptional leaders make a positive difference in the lives of people, teams, organizations, and communities. Exceptional leaders are difference makers.
So, are you willing to do what it takes to achieve your full potential and become and rise above the crowd to become an exceptional leader.
In this article, I discuss achieving your full leadership potential with my sons Daniel and Sean, who are emerging leaders in their own right, and are striving to be the best that they can be. They recently started their second year at George Mason University.
Dr. Tim: Daniel, would you mind recapping the leadership crisis from the last episode?
Daniel: Sure, ineffective and disengaged leaders are failing to lead, and command and control, fear-based and exploitative leadership approaches are devaluing people, destroying morale, and ultimately impeding performance.
Dr. Tim: Great, that’s certainly a common problem across our organizations. But what’s the larger problem?
Daniel: We are simply not or not properly developing our leaders, nor are we setting the right leadership standards on which to hire and develop leaders or hold them accountable.
Dr. Tim: Yes, this is because most leader development approaches, programs, and courses fall short, because they lack a modern, comprehensive, and holistic approach, framework, and process for helping leaders increase their leadership competence and capacity to inspire people and organizations to higher levels of motivation and performance.
Dr. Tim: Sean, what is the solution?
Sean: The solution is that we need to ensure leaders not only have leader developments to begin with, but the right kind of leader development.
Dr. Tim: Absolutely. You can find plenty of leadership tips and recommendations to help you lead better in books, articles, and podcasts. But if you want to achieve the pinnacle of leader development in the most direct route, you need to understand the structure and form of an effective approach, framework, and process to help you identify where you are in your leadership growth journey and help you grow holistically.
So here’s what this looks like. To grow toward achieving your full potential and the pinnacle of leader development, you need a leadership approach that helps you transcend yourself from being self-centered and immediate gratification-oriented to serving a higher purpose, helps you grow toward your full potential, and guides your leadership decisions and behaviors. You also need a framework that provides the necessary structure to enable your holistic growth, and a process that catalyzes and facilitates your growth and shows you what the pinnacle of leader development looks like so you have a north star to strive for and guide you toward reaching it. Let’s start with the leadership and leader development approach.
Daniel, what does this approach do for leaders?
Daniel: The approach provides leaders with a guiding philosophy to leadership and leader development that helps them improve their leadership and grow toward their full time.
Dr. Tim: And what approach do exceptional leaders, the top 1%, have that sets them apart from the toxic and ineffective leaders and lead people to higher levels of motivation and performance?
Daniel: They have an approach that helps them transcend themselves from being self-centered and immediate gratification oriented to an exceptional leader who serves a higher purpose and makes a positive difference.
Dr. Tim: The Transcend to Transform Leadership and Leader Development approach I developed while designing, updating, and managing important Department of Defense and Marine Corps civilian leader development programs does all this. And I continue to use it today in my business developing exceptional leaders who make a positive difference. At the heart of this approach is cultivating leaders who are morally grounded, people-centered, service-oriented, future-focused, and growth oriented. Let’s break this down.
First quality is morally grounded. People follow leaders they can trust, and the quality of our character is the biggest reason people will follow us. The problem is we’re usually taught ethics, codes, rules, or laws established by society, and not the values and principles that lay a moral foundation. Ethics are a social construct. Morality is personal.
We all have a moral compass, albeit they do not always point the same direction. Ethics only guide us in known situations, and without a good moral foundation, many people ignore rules and laws and do what is right in their own eyes, especially when they think they can get away with it.
Our personal morality represents our character, our values, beliefs, and our ability to make moral decisions in the absence of rules or laws. It shapes our motivations and our priorities and manifests itself in our behaviors, actions, and decisions. Because we are leaders, people are always watching us more closely, and our character is always on display. People will judge us by what they see.
The second quality is people centered. People follow leaders who care about them and the greater humanity we are a part. Since the beginning of time, our ability to survive and succeed as a human race relies on our ability to communicate with, connect with, and collaborate with other people. We need other people to survive and succeed, and people are the whole reason that people created our organizations and institutions in the first place.
The third quality is service-oriented. People follow leaders who serve a noble purpose because it gives them purpose and meaning. Being service-oriented means putting your ego and self-interest aside, to serve a higher purpose or something that is bigger than you. Most people, if they have a choice, will follow somebody who is part of something bigger, more purposeful, more meaningful than somebody who is out for their own personal gain.
The fourth quality is future focused. People follow leaders who can articulate an inspiring and meaningful vision because it gives them something noble to strive for. must understand what is taking place in the world around you, have a vision for an ideal future you could create, and have a plan to achieve it. You must continually analyze the strategic environment, understand the key elements within it, both the linear and nonlinear connections between them, see the emerging conditions as they occur, and envision the possible futures that could result. From there you can determine the desired in state to strive for and create a vision to inspire others to pursue it with you.
Fifth quality is growth oriented. People follow leaders who are capable and competent. In order to do this, we must be able to continually challenge ourselves to do new and difficult things, and to strive to keep learning throughout our lifetime. Having a growth orientation requires you to recognize that you do not know everything and there is much more you can learn, especially from others and being open to new ideas and perspectives. It’s called intellectual humility. Second, you need to be able to suspend judgment until all of the facts are in. Third, you need to adjust your thinking based on new information. It’s called transformational learning. And fourth, you need to be able to check your biases and challenge your beliefs and assumptions, which are a key aspect of metacognition.
So these five qualities are the essence of a modern transformational leadership approach to leading people and organizations to higher levels of morale and performance, and by itself will take you far in becoming exceptional leaders. Does that make sense?
Sean and Daniel: Yes.
Dr. Tim: So here are your leadership lessons for today. First, exceptional leaders are trustworthy. People follow leaders they can trust, and the quality of our character is the biggest reason people will follow us. So be morally grounded. Know what the right thing to do is, and do right by all people.
Second, exceptional leaders care about people. They put others first and serve the greater good. People follow leaders who care about them and the greater humanity that we’re all apart. So be people centered. Know the people around you and look out for their welfare.
Third, exceptional leaders are transcendent. In rising above their own ego and self-serving interest, they view leadership as a privilege, put others first and serve a greater good. Most people, if they have a choice, will follow somebody who’s part of something bigger, more purposeful, more meaningful than somebody who’s out for their personal gain. So be service oriented. Know when and how to serve and add value. And do add value. Draw others into service with you and equip and empower others instead of rescuing.
Daniel: What do mean by empower others instead of rescuing them?
Dr. Tim: Good question. We equip people when we teach them how to do things on their own and empower others when we give them agency and autonomy to do them. It boosts their capability and their confidence as well as their self-worth.
Fourth, exceptional leaders lead strategically. They have a vision for an ideal future and have a plan to achieve it. They lead with purpose and intentionality toward noble goals and have an inclination for progress and innovation. People follow leaders who can articulate an inspiring and meaningful vision because it gives them something noble to strive for. So be future focused. Envision the possibilities and have a vision for a better future and have a plan to get there. And know what is taking place in the world.
Finally, exceptional leaders take responsibility for their growth and development and do the necessary things to grow toward their full potential. In doing so, they model the way for others and inspire them to do the same. People follow leaders who are competent and capable. They follow leaders who can show them how to be better and more successful. So be growth oriented. Do the necessary things that foster holistic growth and continually challenge yourself to do new and more difficult things.
The key takeaway is this: Exceptional leaders lead with integrity, care about people, serve a higher purpose and the greater good, and have a noble vision to strive for. And they never stop learning.
Remember, “Don’t just be a leader people want to follow, but also be a leader that makes a positive difference. Be a Difference Maker!