On Leadership
(or .. a leader is someone who does these things:)
Ten Points of Leadership
1. Decide to lead
Choose one thing you want to change.
Tell a trusted friend: “I decide . . . . “ . [Use the present tense.]
Let yourself feel and say whatever thoughts/memories come to mind.
At some point you will start thinking of specific steps you need to take.”
Telling your decision is important even if you have made it a long time ago.
Communicating your decision will bring your 'stuff' to the surface - let yourself feel it.
It doesn’t seem to depend on the scope of the decision (“I decide to never yell at my children again” or “ I decide to end racism in my city.”)
Making a decision contradicts the feelings of powerlessness and insignificance that are installed on us as young people.
2. Allocate resources wisely
Figure out how to use your time and energy well.
Use your wisdom and intelligence.
Think & Listens with your allies will help.
It is difficult to know when to say no, to refuse to help. It is also simple.
When I asked Harvey, “How do you know what to do?” he answered, “At any moment you do what makes sense.”
You will be pulled in different directions.
The more you lead and feel the fear, the more people want your attention.
This makes it challenging, because we never expected to be leaders.
We are pleased to be wanted.
It is important to check whether your actions are consistent with your long-range goals.
Be sure to build strong RC* networks. It is important (necessary if we want to change the world) to lead within RC and in the wider world. Infuse the power of RC into your wide world work.
3. Build alliances
Build close, honest relationships with others - especially with people who are different from you.
No one person has enough understanding to do this work in isolation.
We fall into the trap of generalizing from our own limited experience.
Listen to the many different stories from other backgrounds (class, etc.).
Don't generalize from listening to one person of a different background than yours.
4. Seek unity Make friends.
Where do you agree? What do you both want to do to make the world better place for people?
Work to increase understanding.
Center your efforts on a progressive policy and program (e.g. ending war, hunger, poverty, child abuse),
rather than painful emotion. (e.g. burning the US embassy.)
Learn about what will bring about the political change that you want to see.
5. Identify new leaders and support their development.
There is a great need for leaders. No one person has enough time, energy or a wide enough perspective to bring about the transformation of society.
It is particularly beneficial and necessary to support leaders who have different backgrounds and identities then yourself.
This requires you to identify areas of unawareness in yourself and to learn from their perspectives.
6. Distinguish between tactics and strategies.
A tactic is an attempt to improve a particular situation, e.g. elect a particular person to office, call a strike, stop a development that will pollute a river.
These are important struggles.
Choose ones that you can win and use them to make friends, build confidence, organize, and learn.
But don’t confuse tactics with overall strategy.
You can lose a particular battle, but the struggle can still be useful in developing a larger strategy to transform society.
Strategies are long range.
They depend on organization, discharge, and building unity.
Organize, organize, organize!
Building strong RC communities is organizing for World Wide Change!
7. Prepare yourself to handle attacks effectively
Attacks and diversions are often initiated by privileged groups or individuals who feel uneasy and threatened by change — particularly change that will promote a more just society, or by people who use attacks in order to get attention for themselves, feel important, or to compensate for being silenced by their parents and other authority (religious or educational, for example).
Attacks are attempts to decrease the effectiveness of a person or a group.
Individuals who are attacked by vehement criticism and threats may become afraid or silenced — or be so distracted or confused by the attacks that they function less effectively.
People seeing someone else attacked may also be afraid to speak out.
People also attack groups in an attempt to undermine their ability to implement more equitable policies and practices.
Rumors and innuendos about sex, money, or motives are often used.
8. Get enough exercise, rest, discharge, and play.
Have fun. If you are exhausted and stressed you cannot have fun and you cannot lead effectively if you are not enjoying it.
Distinguish between worry and productive work.
They are different phenomena.
9. Choose to be hopeful – and communicate hopefulness to others.
Many young people are inundated with messages that they cannot make a difference.
That and their confusion about the irrationality they see in the world (war, poverty, abuse, oppression, etc.) creates patterns of apathy and hopelessness which some people try to disguise as apathy or cynicism.
There is good reason to be hopeful.
And communicating hopefulness to others will help build a community of wide world changers around you.
10. Don’t seek perfection!
You will fail.
You can’t be perfect, but you can be effective.
Attempts at perfection come from childhood distress, for example recordings such as,
“If I were perfect, my father would approve of me.”
Julian Weissglass (revised May 2005)
RC
* RC = Re-evaluation Counseling.
Re-evaluation Counseling is a process whereby people of all ages and of all backgrounds can learn how to exchange effective help with each other in order to free themselves from the effects of past distress experiences.
Re-evaluation Counseling theory provides a model of what a human being can be like in the area of his/her interaction with other human beings and his/her environment. The theory assumes that everyone is born with tremendous intellectual potential, natural zest, and lovingness, but that these qualities have become blocked and obscured in adults as the result of accumulated distress experiences (fear, hurt, loss, pain, anger, embarrassment, etc.) which begin early in our lives.
Any young person would recover from such distress spontaneously by use of the natural process of emotional discharge (crying, trembling, raging, laughing, etc.). However, this natural process is usually interfered with by well-meaning people ("Don't cry," "Be a big boy," etc.) who erroneously equate the emotional discharge (the healing of the hurt) with the hurt itself.
When adequate emotional discharge can take place, the person is freed from the rigid pattern of behavior and feeling left by the hurt. The basic loving, cooperative, intelligent, and zestful nature is then free to operate. Such a person will tend to be more effective in looking out for his or her own interests and the interests of others, and will be more capable of acting successfully against injustice.
In recovering and using the natural discharge process, two people take turns counseling and being counseled. The one acting as the counselor listens, draws the other out and permits, encourages, and assists emotional discharge. The one acting as client talks and discharges and re-evaluates. With experience and increased confidence and trust in each other, the process works better and better.
Others
interesting change of paradigm-thinking
on Leadership
The 60 Second PhD in Leadership
1. Make a list of all things done to you that you abhorred.
2. DON’T DO THEM TO OTHERS. EVER.
3. Make another list of things done to you that you loved.
4. DO THEM TO OTHERS. ALWAYS.
And you thought leadership was complicated.
Source: Dee Hock, founder of Visa
Dee Hock on Management
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/05/dee2.html
Dee Hock on Leader-Follower
http://futurepositive.synearth.net/leader-follower/
cross a great quote from Dee Hock in an article at Good2work.com:
“Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.”
Wiki
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