LEADERSHIP ESSENTIALS
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Mobilizing people to confront tough, intractable problems, overcome differences, and move beyond the natural resistance to change requires uncommon courage and skill.
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Leadership – mobilizing people to effect change – demands entering unknown territory. It, of necessity, requires experimentation and improvisation, and the will to risk dead ends and missteps.
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Leadership is an activity, not a position. Anyone can lead, anytime, anywhere.
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Leadership occurs not when those in authority offer answers, but when essential questions are kept on – and key people kept at – the table long enough for shared answers to emerge.
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Leadership for a change is difficult, risky, and rare. Change involves discomfort and loss.
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Leadership, thus, requires taking these into account.
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Set goals that are "SMAART": Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Aggressive, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
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Your purpose must be clear.
ELEMENTS OF AN EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP CULTURE
Take stock of your team:
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Are visions and goals clearly articulated, aligned, and alive?
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Is there a sense of shared accountability and responsibility?
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Are whispered criticisms and “water cooler” talk brought into the open and discussed?
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Is smart risk-taking rewarded?
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Are diversity and voices of dissent honored?
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Is individual growth (personal and professional) nurtured?
SUGGESTED READINGS
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Arbinger Institute, Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box, Berrett-Koehler, 2010
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Frank Barrett, Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz, Harvard Business Review Press, 2012
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Ronald A. Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers, Harvard University Press, 1994
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Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, Harvard Business Press, 2009
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Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky, “Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis,” Harvard Business Review, July-August 2009
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Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Leadership on the Line, Harvard Business School Press, 2002
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Ronald Heifetz and Donald L. Laurie, “The Work of Leadership,” Harvard Business Review, December 2001
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Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, Immunity to Change, Harvard Business Press, 2009
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Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, “The Real Reason People Won’t Change,” Harvard Business Review, November 2001
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Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization, Harvard Business Review, 2016
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Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations, 2016
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Ed O’Malley and Amanda Cebula, Your Leadership Edge, Kansas Leadership Center Press, 2015
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Otto Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges, 2016
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Kenwyn Smith and David Berg, Paradoxes of Group Life: Understanding Conflict, Paralysis, and Movement in Group Dynamics, Jossey-Bass, 1997.
LEADERSHIP QUOTATIONS
“That people can be lifted into their better selves is the secret
of transforming leadership and the moral and practical theme of this work.”
- James MacGregor Burns
“A community is too heavy to carry alone.”
- Midrash
“Mobilizing people to confront tough problems, overcome differences, and move
beyond the natural resistance to change requires uncommon courage and skill.”
- Jay Kaufman, Founding President, Beacon Leadership Collaborative
“Leadership is purpose with courage, even in the light of uncertainty.”
- Petra Falcon
"Leadership requires motivating people to
undertake the adaptive work they’d rather avoid.”
- Hugh O'Doherty
“Leadership entails dispensing loss
to your people at a rate they can absorb.”
- Marty Linsky
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists.
When his life is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say 'we did it ourselves.'”
- Lao Tsu
“Management is doing things right.
Leadership is doing the right things.”
- Peter Drucker
“Leadership demands surfing the edge of chaos.”
- Richard Pascale
“The only thing that is permanent is change.”
- Heraclitus
“I’m all for progress. It’s change I can’t stand.”
- Mark Twain
“The most important words ever written on the maps of
human knowledge are terra incognita — unknown territory.”
- Daniel J. Boorstin
“A ship in harbor is safe.
But that is not what ships are for.”
- John A. Shedd
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
- Albert Einstein
“We made too many wrong mistakes.”
- Yogi Berra
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
“An effective leader simply loves the people,
tells the truth, and knows when to go away.”
- Evaristo Matsuaire