At Joyful Jubilant Learning we are just now between our two-book study on learning to lead within the strengths revolution, as proposed by two different men, Marcus Buckingham of Go Put Your Strengths to Work, and Tom Rath of StrengthsFinder 2.0.
I’ve written a post there that may interest you from the standpoint of studying leadership, even if you are not yet riding the wave of the strengths movement. Yes, I do believe the word ‘yet’ in that last sentence fits.
Flickr photo credit.
Identifying your strengths and using them as well as you possibly can is part of nānā i ke kumu, looking to your inner source of power and well-being. Strengths management is a gift you give yourself first. Then, if management is your calling, you give it to others, offering yourself transparently as an example. Which gourd are you? I think I may be that third one in the back row, stretching to see everyone else!
At JJL, I write of these five requirements for those who feel they are destined for leadership:
First, the desire to lead. I had a boss who was fond of saying that “desire is nine tenths of anything you set your mind to doing” and over the years I’ve come to realize how right he was, and still is. If in this project [at JJL] with us, he’d be asking, “just how bad to you want this?”
Second, an impatience with following, and recognition you need a following. Leadership requires you to put your self-belief and confidence on stage, while holding hands with the humility that gets you your own followers. You need to cultivate followship, but honestly, you have no intention of returning to their ranks —and they need you not to.
Third, a future-focused idea. The idea can be about a wealth of different things, but to compel us to leadership it has to somehow create a picture of the future that is magnetically exciting, pulling us ever toward reaching it. At JJL we adopted the idea of the strengths revolution, with the intention of learning more about it first. The goal I ask you about, is your self-directed intention to lead. What is it?
Fourth, visionary clarity, and the ability to articulate it. It’s one thing for the person with an idea to go for it, but for your collaborators and followers to ‘get it’ and go the distance with you, you have to be a champion who can explain vision, mission, and values, and explain them enticingly well. You have to be a catalyst, and a pretty charismatic one.
Fifth, great management. Up on that stage with you and your humility is a great manager who will own the action steps everything takes, crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s. This is where the habit-creation of Step 6 comes into play in MB’s book; great management keeps great processes thriving.
Do any of these thoughts on leadership give you another idea with how you might Kūlia, and Break Thrū! this month?
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