Achieving Your Full Leadership Potential (Part 1)
Learn how to grow toward your full potential and improve your leadership.
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Here is the truth we need to face. Command and control and fear-based leadership has become the norm in too many organizations contributing to low morale, toxic culture, and even mass layoffs. In contrast, exceptional leaders have a much different leadership approach that sets them apart from others that allows them to make a positive difference in the lives of people, teams, organizations, and communities.
The bottom line up front is if you want to become an exceptional leader who transcends their ego and self-interests to make a positive difference in the lives of people, teams, organizations, and communities—a difference maker—then you need to develop a personal leadership approach that sets you apart from others.
Think about this: Have you ever had the opportunity to witness an exceptional leader who invests in other people’s development and can inspire them to higher levels of growth and performance? What does that look like? And how can you be like that?
Organizations and individual leaders spend billions of dollars on leader development products and services, but collectively they are still missing the mark in that they are not giving leaders, organizations, and talent development professionals: (1) a modern, comprehensive, and holistic approach to developing leaders who inspire people to higher levels of motivation and performance, and possess both the leadership competence and capacity to and lead in today’s a rapidly changing, increasingly complex, hypercompetitive, and socially disconnected world; and (2) a framework and a process that identifies what the pinnacle of leader development looks like—so they have a north star to strive toward—and a guide that helps them achieve it.
Recognizing this problem during my doctoral program and when I started my career in leader development, I developed a new, paradigm-changing leadership and leader development approach intended to develop extraordinary leaders who not only achieve results, but make a positive difference in the lives of people, teams, originations and the communities they are a part. And I refined over the years as I designed, updated, and managed important Department of the Defense and Marine Corps civilian leader development programs, and I continue to use it with my current clients. This approach significantly improves and reimagines outdated leader development models still used today because it integrates a broad range of contemporary multidiscipline scholarship, best practices, expert insights, and informed recommendations on leadership with decades of empirical research in adult learning and human development. It is based on the principles that: (1) we have to effectively lead ourselves before we can effectively lead others; (2) we have to transcend our selfish interests and limiting beliefs before we can transform our organizations; and (3) leader development is human development (they are one and the same).
This approach provides leaders, organizations, and talent development professionals with a guiding philosophy to leadership and leader development to develop leaders who inspire people to higher levels of motivation and performance, and possess both the leadership competence and capacity to and lead in today’s a rapidly changing, increasingly complex, hypercompetitive, and socially disconnected world; and equips them with a holistic framework that identifies what the pinnacle of leader development looks like, so they have a north star to strive for, and a process that helps them achieve it. At the heart of this approach is helping you transcend yourself from being self-centered and immediate gratification oriented, to a leader that is morally grounded, people-centered, service-oriented, future-focused, and growth oriented, described as follows:
The 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 are usually taught ethics, codes, rules, or laws established by society, and not the values and principles that lay a moral foundation. But here’s the deal: Ethics are a social construct, morality is personal—we all have a moral compass—albeit they do not all 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 anyway, especially when they think they can get away with it. Our personal morality represents our character, our values and beliefs, and our ability to make moral decisions in absence of rules or laws. It shapes our motives and our priorities and manifests itself in our behaviors, actions, and decisions. Because we are leaders, people are watching us more closely, and our character is always on display—and people will judge us by what they see. Your leadership lesson is this: You must not only champion positive moral values and principles, but live them. Exceptional leaders are trustworthy!
The second quality is People-Centered. People follow leaders who care about them and the greater humanity we are apart. 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. From customers to employees and stakeholders, people are the whole reason that people created our organizations and institutions in the first place. The leadership lesson is: You cannot ignore the human element in leadership, and you must be focused on bringing people together to build relationships, teams, and communities within your organization Exceptional leaders are relationship builders and community builders.
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. It is about being transcendent. Ancient philosophers and modern scholars agree that having a purpose bigger than your self-interests contributes to true happiness and life satisfaction. Most people, if they have a choice, will follow somebody who is part of something bigger, more purposeful, more meaningful, than somebody who was out for their own personal gain. The leadership lesson is this: Exceptional leaders are transcendent. In rising above their own ego and self-serving interests they can inspire and lead positive transformational change in people, teams, in organizations. 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. You must be able to analyze the strategic environment, understand the key elements within it and both the linear and non-linear connections between them, see the emerging conditions as they occur, and envision the possible futures that could result. Then you must determine the desired end state to strive for and create a vision to inspire others to pursue it with you. Your leadership lesson is: Exceptional leaders know how to play the long game. Gain strategic awareness and lead strategically.
The fifth quality is Growth Oriented. Having leadership competence gives us the ability to succeed in known situations, projects, or tasks based on knowledge and skills that we could readily apply. Having leadership capability, on the other hand, means being able to learn, solve problems, or simply figure things out without any instructions. We need both to meet the complex leadership challenges we face today, but we can only develop both if we have a growth orientation—a deliberate effort to keep learning and growing. The leadership lesson is this: Building leadership competence and capability relies on developing your whole self toward realizing our full potential, and in doing so your leadership will improve.
So, these five factors address the essence of a modern transformational approach to leading people, and are at the core of a leader’s mindset. While this original approach will take us far in becoming exceptional leaders, it needs to identify what the pinnacle of leader development looks like so you have a North Star to aim for, and a structure and a process to help you achieve it. Structure comes in the form of a framework that gives us solid foundation for developing our leadership and a blueprint to build on, while a process works within the framework to give us the strategies, practices, and methods to be successful at each level. I will go into this deeper in the next article.
Yet there is more to the story, which leads to the sixth leadership lesson: Exceptional leaders put others first and serve the greater good. They view leadership as a privilege and not only focus on their own growth and development to be the best that they can be, but also demonstrate what exceptional leadership looks like by setting an example of competence, humility, selflessness, and moral character. Their leadership approach can be described as transformational and servant leadership focused.
“Don’t just be a leader people want to follow, but also be a leader that makes a positive difference. Be a Difference Maker!