is built through a shared intention of a group of people, not the control actions of one. This comes through the peoples’ collective choice to follow the passion of its leadership, whether one person or many.
As you develop your personal ability to lead, remember that all groups want leadership at a primordial level and will find it without any external stimulus. The most compelling and constructive leadership for groups comes through calm, assertive, and deeply inspired direction. One does not need to use power to lead a group but will use whatever power is available toward an external mission. When you lead from a place of inspiration, people will naturally gravitate toward you. Your ability to sustain that passion and maintain your direction will keep them with you.
In summary, we have examined several aspects of leadership and why the ability to inspire others matters. Our ideal of a connected and dynamic leadership starts from a place of solid personal inspiration. It is about the power of purpose—of passion—and it leads to an engaging style of personal connection. This leadership runs deeply through the limbic system and creates a web of emotional connection through the phenomenon of contagion. Leaders who come from a place of inspirational presence have an effect on groups that stimulates their creativity, opens their sense of vision, and expands their thinking. These leaders offer a compelling direction for others and lead through their passion and heart connections, rather than through power, control, or authority. While there are compelling reasons from a human perspective to lead from this stance, there is also strong evidence of the positive impact it can have on organizational performance. Let us take some first steps in learning how to embody this leadership style.
QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF
Inspiration
• When have I felt the most inspired?
• What was I doing, thinking about, learning, or living?
• Am I still doing that?
• Can I get more of that in my life?
Presence
• Whom have I known whose presence I felt from a distance?
• What was it about that person that got my attention?
• What do I know about how that person lived that made him or her unique?
• How transparent am I?
• How do others experience me?
Power
• How important is the use of power to me?
• Do I know when I most want to use power to get my way?
• Whom have I seen use power in the most advanced and constructive way?
Authority
• What is my tendency to lean on authority in my relationships with others?
• How does authority impact me? Do I rely on a person’s authority to inform me how to relate to them?
• What is the most positive and constructive way I know to use authority?
Exercise for advancement
Take some time to write out a description of how you will be when you are leading from a place of inspiration, and you have opened yourself to others in an authentic way. Pick the time frame in the future. Include all of your senses. Write down how others will perceive you and what this ability will allow for you in your life.
CHAPTER 2—LEARNING TO LEAD
You can’t teach what you don’t know, and you can’t lead where you won’t go.
—Rev. Jesse Jackson
Although we talk about leadership as if it is a new science, it is a topic that has been explored for millennia. Many different approaches to leadership have been well documented and studied. When you begin a deeper study of the subject, you will find that there are numerous starting points. Some are based on the ability to manipulate others (à la Niccolò Machiavelli) or to lead armies to victory (à la Sun Tzu); some focus on skills and behaviors (à la Kurt Lewin); some look at the motivational ability of the leader (à la David McClelland); some are based in power (à la John Kotter); and some are based in authority (à la Max Weber). Each of these has its success story and obviously makes sense in some context. This approach to leadership is a combination of two groups of skills: individual and group. The group skills are essential to overall leadership ability, but the basis is in the individual, with who you are as a person and where you want to go.
The act of leadership is a combination of skills and unique worldviews that combine to allow leaders the flexibility to create new conditions, to move the hearts and minds of others, and to manifest reality that would not have emerged otherwise. There have been many individuals who have exhibited great leadership in their fields, including (among others) artists, scientists, scholars, musicians, and explorers. Their pioneering efforts created new possibilities and encouraged change around them from people who had learned from either their example or their tutelage. Many of these pioneers had little or no interest in whether anyone else went in the same direction as they went. They were simply following their own passion. That, in itself, is a fundamental part of leadership—the piece that begins at home, deep in the soul of the creator. That is the part that cannot be falsified. It is true passion. Very often, these people lead by creating movements or new thoughts that others imitate or adopt later. The act of individual creativity, however, often does not have a number of immediate followers, nor does it necessarily have the intention of having others follow.
Then there is another category of leaders, those who are emphatic in their desire for others to share in their path and to create better conditions for many people. These leaders are much more concerned about the efforts and results of groups of people, not just their own efforts. The ability to lead yourself and follow your own passion is still the starting point, but this form of leadership also requires a broader understanding of how groups and organizations work. These leaders must have a means to fully grasp and order the entire system with which they are working. For example, a person with a passion for clean fuels and a sustainable environment can spend his time in the lab creating the technologies, or he can become a social activist, creating broad change that requires clean fuels and a sustainable environment. Each would have different levels of involvement at the group level. While the first example requires the creative spirit and discipline of personal passion, much of that energy is turned toward the technology and mechanics. In the second, much of the energy is turned toward the people who are using that technology. Both require the fundamental passion to fuel the creativity. Both are immensely valuable to our world, and both have their lessons. Both can benefit from the ability to tap into their inspiration and allow their presence to impact the people with whom they are dealing.
LEADERSHIP STARTS AT HOME—WHO ARE YOU AND WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
I have heard two approaches to living your life. One old adage is “Bloom where you are planted.” I greatly admire and respect the ability of people who make the most of any situation. Martin Luther King, Jr., said it like this: “If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets as Rafael painted pictures, sweep streets as Michelangelo
