Achieving Your Full Leadership Potential (Part 1)
Learn how to grow toward your full potential and improve your leadership.
Listen to the Podcast on Substack
Listen to the Podcast on Spotify
Listen to the Podcast on YouTube
Article
Here’s the truth we need to face. Authoritarian, fear-based, and exploitative leadership approaches devalue people, destroy morale, and stifle performance. In contrast, exceptional leaders lead people, teams, and organizations to higher levels of motivation, growth, and performance. Exceptional leaders make a positive difference in the lives of people, teams, organizations, and communities. Exceptional leaders are difference makers!
So, what kind of leader are you going to be?
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 graduated high school last year and just completed their first year of college at George Mason University.
Daniel: What do you mean by exceptional leaders?
Dr. Tim: I’m talking about the top 1% of people in leadership positions— leaders who lead themselves effectively and lead others to higher level of motivation and performance. These are people who really get what it means to lead others as privilege, a duty, and a service. Does that answer your question?
Sean: In previous episodes you talked about a crisis in leadership, can you elaborate on that?
Dr. Tim: Certainly. Our world is continually changing and becoming increasingly complex, hypercompetitive, volatile, and socially disconnected. We need effective leaders at all levels who possess the leadership competence, and capacity, and transcendent approach to effectively lead people and organizations to higher levels of sustainable performance.
Unfortunately, we have ineffective and disengaged leaders who fail to accept responsibility, take action, make decisions or simply can’t lead, and we have self-serving, and immoral leaders who focus on short-term profits and use authoritarian, command and control, fear-based, and exploitative leadership to get what they want.
While these kinds of leadership can work in the short-term, the evidence shows that they can be disastrous to an organization’s success in the long-term because these approaches devalue people, destroy morale, contribute to a toxic work environment, and ultimately hinder employee performance and retention. However, an abundance of evidence also shows that a leader’s character, credibility, competence, and ability to connect with people matter in leadership and contributes to higher levels of motivation, morale, performance, and even retention.
But toxic and ineffective leadership are symptoms of a larger problem—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.
Sean: Can you explain how we are not developing our leaders?
Dr. Tim: First, too many of our organizations today do not invest in leader development, and second, many people in leadership positions do not take responsibility for their own leadership growth and development. Some might be good managers, but not good leaders. The other side to this is that some of those organizations who are investing in leader development are often doing so in an uneven, sporadic, or incomplete way, or are providing outdated leader development instruction.
Daniel: What do you mean by good Managers, But Not Good Leaders?
Dr. Tim: A great question. Although the terms leadership and management are often used interchangeably, they are not synonymous. They are two separate things. Generally speaking, management is a position in an organization, and focuses on managing resources, schedules, and other types of things, whereas leadership is about people and the complex relationships between them with the social systems, groups or organizations, that bring them together with in the greater environment and society. This includes—influence, communication, collaboration, common purpose, goals, and values, and other people related activities. Managers are trained to rely on scripted processes, procedures, and checklists to do their jobs, which only cover known situations.
In contrast, leaders are required to adapt to different environmental and social situations and navigate leadership’s complexities to accomplish specific goals within a specific mission or purpose. Managers manage things, leaders lead people. Does that explain it?
Daniel: Yes.
Dr. Tim: So, believe it or not, organizations and individuals spend billions on leader development products and services every year, and while they may get an abundance of tips, best practices, and insights from a variety of sources, they are not getting is a holistic and comprehensive approach, structure, and process to developing transcendent leaders who can face today’s complex challenges and transform organizations to higher levels of morale and performance.
Sean: So, what is the solution?
Dr. Tim: The solution to toxic and ineffective leadership lies in ensuring leaders not only have leader development to begin with, but the right leader development. What does The Right Leader Development look like?
The right leader development must provide a modern, comprehensive, and holistic approach to leading and 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 rapidly changing, increasingly complex, hypercompetitive, volatile, and socially disconnected world, a framework and processes that shows us what the pinnacle of human and leader development looks like—giving us a north star to strive toward—and process and structure a to help us achieve it.
In doing so, it will give us a modern, 21st century leadership and leader development approach that will not only help us increase our leadership competence and capacity to face today’s challenges and lead in the uncertain future, but also give us standards that raise the bar on how we train, evaluate, select leaders —and hold them accountable.
Look, 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 structure in the form of and effective approach, framework, and process to help you identify where you are in your leadership growth journey and help you grow holistically. Unfortunately, most traditional leader development programs fall short in doing this.
Daniel: What does this look like?
Dr. Tim: The approach itself 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 three principles:
(1) We must effectively lead ourselves before we can effectively lead others
(2) We must 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.
Daniel: What do you mean byleader development is human development?
Dr. Tim: I already said that leadership is about people and the complex relationships between them, and in this sense leadership is also personal—it is about who we are and the factors that define us and are shaped by our unique backgrounds and experiences. This is why leadership can be informed by science, but remains and art because our individual values, beliefs, motivations, attitudes, character, and personality all play a role in our leadership approach, decision-making, and ability to gain the trust, respect, and cooperation of others.
Leadership encompasses all our intellectual, emotional, moral, physical, and social abilities working together.
This is why I say leader development is unlike any other form of training or education in the professional realm, because leader development is human development. They are one and the same. Does that make sense?
Daniel: Yes.
Dr. Tim: The approach I’m talking about provides leaders with a guiding philosophy to leadership and leader development that helps leaders improve their leadership and grow toward their full potential. At the heart of this approach is helping leaders transcend themselves from being self-centered and immediate gratification oriented, to a leader that is morally grounded, people-centered, service-oriented, future-focused, and growth oriented.
The framework provides the necessary structure for holistic leader development and serves as a continuum in that each level builds on the others to guide emerging leaders toward becoming senior leaders, whereas the process that catalyzes and facilitates holistic human growth and shows leaders what the pinnacle of leader development looks like, which not only gives them a north star to strive for but also helps them identify where they are in their leader development journey.
Sean: What does all that mean?
Dr. Tim: Good question. What this means is that if you want to achieve your full leadership potential and be a leader who makes a positive difference in the lives of people, teams, organizations, and communities, then you need to understand the Transcend to Transform leadership and leader development approach, framework, and process I am going to show you in detail over the next three episodes.
Daniel: What makes you qualified to do this?
Dr. Tim: First, I’ve been in leadership positions for more than 40 years in the military, in government, and in private business, and the focus of my doctorate and post doctorate work was on leader development. I have spent more than quarter of my career designing, updating, and managing important Department of the Defense and Marine Corps civilian leader development programs, and developing leaders in private practice.
During my career, I have seen my share of toxic and ineffective leaders and my share of exceptional ones. I am adamantly opposed to the authoritarian, command and control, fear-based, and exploitative leadership that dominates our organizations today and am an unapologetic advocate for morally grounded, human-centered, service-oriented, future focused, and growth-oriented leadership that focuses on developing people, teams, and organizations to achieve their full potential. Any other questions?
Sean /Daniel: No.
Dr. Tim: I want wrap this up with three key leadership lessons.
First, exceptional leadership starts with you. If you want to improve your leadership, you must take responsibility for your growth and development and do the necessary things to grow toward your full potential.
Second, before you can effectively lead others, you must effectively lead yourself first.
Third, before you can transform organizations or make a positive difference in the lives of people, teams, organizations, and communities, you must first transcend your selfish interests and your limiting beliefs.
The key takeaway is this: 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. Understanding this approach is the key to becoming an exceptional leader. This is the focus om the next episode.
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!