Posts tagged good courage
A Greater Victory (originally published with Lead Change Group)
Aug 6th
Earlier this week, Mike Henry graciously published this post on the Lead Change Group blog. Comments to date have been fabulous! You can find it, and the wonderful comments, here.
For the benefit of those unable to visit the Lead Change Group, “a peer-based open-source leadership community dedicated to applying character-based leadership around the globe to make a positive difference,” I take this opportunity to republish the post in its entirety.
~Pam Knox, Head Coach, Western Oregon
We all know leadership when we see it. The problem for most of us is this: we expect leadership greatness to look something like a CEO, the Chairman of the Board, or the President. We have somehow come to a place where leadership is commensurate with graybeards waxing long on the wisdom of the ages.
You are invited to view a clip that’s proof positive leadership is anything but old people (mostly men) telling everyone else what to do. You see, leadership never was about power, position, perks, prestige, or privilege. Instead, it’s always been about people, and it has always manifested itself as someone of character. Anne Frank said, “Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness.”
Mallory Holtman, the conference home run king, embodies this goodness. Her Central Washington softball team is behind in the second game of a double-header in a quest for the conference championship. As you may guess, there’s a lot at stake. Every decision matters, especially with their opponent at bat. On the second pitch in the top of the second inning of the second game with two runners on, Western Oregon senior Sara Tucholsky hits her first career home run. But there’s a problem. Only a true leader will do what Mallory does next.
Mallory and her Central Washington team went on to lose the game that day. But what they found will carry them — and all of the graybeards who realize just how much they have to learn from young & emerging leaders like Mallory — through a lifetime: leadership is love.
The next time we go looking for leadership, let us remember leadership without love is no leadership at all.
What makes the hottentot hot?
Jul 1st
Thank you for dropping by! Thursdays are Servant Hearts day. Gracious leaders around the world guest post to NorthFork’s blog, A Servant’s Heart, sharing their fabulous insights regarding the serving nature of leadership. We’re delighted you’ve joined us. Be prepared for a variety of experience!
Today, we are happy to welcome Steve Broe back with a generous second heaping helpin’ of leadership lovin’. It’s my sense the basis of authentic leadership — servant leadership — is love, integrity, trust, and hope. But, as Steve shall soon articulate in his post, there’s more. Courage is essential for the servant leader. A beloved Frank Baum character knew this all too well.
Those who have seen Frank Baum’s televised version of The Wizard of Oz recall these famous lines of the Cowardly Lion.
Drawing us into the serving nature of leadership, Steve’s post reminds us a battle, not unlike the Lion’s, rages as we endeavor to thwart ego’s hold over us that we may more readily place others at the center of our service … and our leadership. Moreover, Steve helps us discover there is no need for a ‘Triple Cross’ to imbue us with “Courage” because, in large part, good courage is never far away; we can always find it where we find our servant heart.
“Ain’t it the truth? Ain’t it the truth!?”
The Courageous Leader Challenges the Ego
by Dr Steve Broe (Scottsdale, Arizona)
Courage. Observers find this quality in great leaders, yet we know that leaders with courage are not strangers to fear. A person can make a brave choice, and know powerful fear at the same time. We remember the leader for courage, yet fear may have been present.
Somehow, a courageous act propels one beyond the immobilization felt when fear grips the heart. Leaders know this dilemma, and take the bold act. We celebrate leaders when the courageous step makes a difference, hastening a better world.
Even understanding the world around us can be an act of courage. I think sometimes our ego acts to hide us from information that doesn’t support our vision of ourselves. It’s natural, our image protection system (that’s the ego) finds ways to shield us from negative news. The world can be hard, and the effective person must learn to deal with truth. The ego is not a good mirror of the world; it will show us the world as we want it to be.
A courageous person challenges the ego, applies critical thinking, and looks at the world as it is. “Tomorrow’s greatest leaders are those with the courage to face reality and help the people around them face reality,” said Harvard professor Ronald Heifetz. Courage may involve challenging conventional thinking and helping others to do the same.
How is it possible to challenge the ego? Don’t we hold a single view of the world? Actually, no. Our views of the world are mutable; when we shift perspective, our mind reassures us that we are consistent. The ego makes sure that no matter what we do or think, we are always “right.” The mind is not the same as the ego, and one can challenge the ego’s position. The ego is a constructed view of the world. The mind is a “prior,” it came first. The ego adds interpretation and judgment to life experiences. The interpretation of the ego works like a filter on understanding and decisions.
Ego will tell us, “Don’t hurt yourself. You don’t need to be a hero. The courageous thing is to protect one’s interests.” The mind has the power to look at a situation, compare what is going on to personal values, and make a decision — without the help of the ego.
When I perceive a situation around me, I pay attention to what I can know. I might have measurements of force, and estimations of morale. My ego is the first to rush in with interpretations of what is going on. As the perceiving leader, I decide to question my own assessment, and ask myself, “What else could be going on?”
For example, suppose that I see many large boxes of dog food left in front of my neighbor’s house. The factual evidence is a reckoning that someone has brought dog food in large boxes. The interpretation might be, “my neighbor has a dog.” In many cases, the interpretation will be good. Nevertheless, I don’t know about a dog just by looking at the delivery.
Even though the ego tells us, “My neighbor is keeping a dog,” the delivery could mean several other things — such as the neighbor won the dog food in a contest, the delivery was made to the wrong address, or someone is playing a joke.
The courageous person is willing to consider the facts. The ego may demand attention and insist on its counsel being followed. Sometimes we may follow the ego because it is the easiest thing to do — after all, not everyone will see their ego as separate from their mind. The ego is so seductive a voice — a voice that is quite aware of our personal needs, what gets us going! — that it is a compelling guide to our action. The ego is not always wrong, however it knows how to get our attention.
The effective leader chooses wisely, given all available information. If the leader has confused his center with the ego, it may require an act of courage to ignore it. One tactic of the ego is to send feelings of fear when its counsel is ignored. Fear is a powerful deterrent, one the ego understands how to deploy.
There are three effective strategies to respond to the ego’s tactics. First, one can think critically. Learn to recognize fallacies and emotional responses. Secondly, one can pause and reflect in one’s spiritual center. The more regularly that one returns here, the less influence the ego will have over the mind. Third, one can cultivate spiritual health. Yoga, T’ai Chi, and prayer may serve you well here, and they are not the only practices that nourish the spirit.
The leader requires courage to move beyond the limitation of the ego. Becoming a positive change agent for the world has always been a spiritual journey. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage,” said French author Anais Nin. Courage is one of the virtues necessary to grow in spite of ego’s fear.
Yearning to be heard
Oct 3rd
Earlier this week, I dropped back in on Sarah Robinson’s blog, Maverick Mom. Her latest post, Finding Your Voice, is a great reminder that life is a journey and each of us have the perrogative to re-write our story. Indeed, it’s most certainly a necessity because, as Sarah aptly points out, we all need to be part of the conversation!
Each of us possesses a unique work in life and, only with exceeding unfruitful effort, can we contain an innate yearning to share it. It is to that end we must find our voice and be ourselves. Like a good wine, however, we cannot rush the process. Margaret Atwood tells us, “We can only find our own meaning in our own time.” Let no one fool you. It is much easier to talk about finding our voice than it is to actually uncover and share it. A battle rages deep within us that pits our desire to be liked, accepted, and appreciated with an inconvenient calling to serve—to speak out for those who have not a voice of their own. Luciano Pavarotti said, “The rivalry is with our self. I try to be better than is possible. I fight against myself, not against the other.” This is an important matter.
Oft times, it appears we are left with little choice but to set aside everything we stand for as we search for our true self. In the subtle convergence of time and place, we are surprised to learn our voice, through authenticity and personal truth, seems to finds us—in so doing, it gives our life rich intonation. It also gives us the courage not only to open a new door in our life, but to walk through it—to cross a threshold to newfound freedom.
Courage, however, can be evasive, but it is necessary all the same. You see, not every door will open to self-actualization; many will present challenges, trials, and tribulations that cause us to shake in our boots. Others will illuminate our greatest fears: isolation, loneliness, despair. Perseverance brings success. As many of Sarah’s readers have indicated, there is a unique door for each person that leads to the right path; we need only to find it, open it, and walk through. For me, the key to that door, the key to finding my voice, was to realize my voice was never really mine; it belongs to everyone and it must be used for the benefit of all.
Part of my uniqueness, much like that expressed by Colin Lewis, was shaped in my early years. As a child, I was involved in an auto accident that came precariously close to taking my life. I essentially recall every detail and, even at a young age, was impressed with the notion life is fragile. We should make the very best of it. As time progressed, I became more aware of my existence and realized it is no longer good enough to simply make the best of my life; I must do what I can to make life better for others. To do so means stepping out of my comfort zone. It also means stepping headstrong into the comfort zone of others. Such, for me, is finding one’s voice.
From where I stand, our tendency, time and time again, is to shake the hand of a well-dressed business man before we reach out to the homeless. Our tendency, time and time again, is to fear what we think can happen to us forgetting all the good that can come to another if we but extend our hand in friendship. Something Mother Teresa said comes into play here: “Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received (aka, our voice!) and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.” We are easily ashamed, I suppose, because our tendency, time and time again, is to think of our voice as merely another unworthy instrument to be heard among the roar of millions when, in fact, our voice—just one voice—has the power to illuminate the prevailing darkness that holds so many hostage. You see, our voice, when used to help another, is without limit; it remains unbounded. It is during those times when we step out of our comfort zone and, as warranted, invade the comfort zone of others, that we not only end the silence of our own misfortune, but we end the misfortune that affects so many others. Our voice, in responding to the pleas and the cries of others, proliferates, swelling over the banks of a mighty river much like love swoops in as a fair luminous mist curling to fill empty spaces and uninhabited places of the heart.
Having found our voice, we cannot be selfish with it; nor, should I think, we would want to. Our voice finds us because we are the only one in all of Creation who can use it for the good of humanity. It finds us because no other exists who can wield it, like King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, in pursuit of truth, honor, freedom, and love. You see, when you get right down to the heart of the matter, our voice really isn’t ours at all. It belongs to humanity, and it wants to be heard. And, it seems to me, those around us need to hear it.
Leadership tenets
Jul 11th
Not all are called to be leaders. I do not pretend to know whether leaders are born. What I might believe does not matter. In all likelihood, leaders are born but, as Peter Drucker so eloquently puts it, “there surely are far too few to depend on them” (Hesselbein, Goldsmith, & Beckhard, 1996, p.xi). Put another way, “when leadership is viewed as a nonlearnable set of character traits or as an equivalent to an exalted position, a self-fulfilling prophecy is created that dooms societies to having only a few good leaders” (Kouzes and Posner, 1996, p. 109). Warren Bennis, in his book, Leaders, puts it this way, “nurture is far more important than nature in determining who becomes a successful leader” (Bennis and Nanus, 1985, p. 223). Another view asserts, “leaders grow; they are not made” (Handy, 1996, p.5). One thing is absolute: leaders are special. Truly great leaders
tend to exhibit certain personal traits that are more a part of their character, more innate. They include high ethical standards in which a person consistently attempts to ‘do the right thing;’ an unusually strong bias for action fueled by a high rate of personal energy and an almost uncontrollable desire to achieve; a propensity for lifelong learning, curiosity, and continual improvement. Many leaders also possess an unwavering self-confidence that frequently translates into courage in the face of adversity, the willingness to take risks, and a sense of destiny—a personal belief that they are meant for something special, perhaps even greatness” (Phillips, 1999, pp.24-25).
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was such a leader. While still a youngster, he told his mom, “Mother, there is no such thing as one people being better than another. The Lord made all of us equal, and I’m gonna see to that” (Phillips, 1999, p.29). As an adult, Dr. King asked Americans to realize,
there comes a time when people get tired. We are here this evening to say to those who have mistreated us so long that we are tired—tired of being segregated and humiliated; tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression. We have no alternative but to protest. If we protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in the future, somebody will have to say, ‘There lived a race of people … who had the moral courage to stand up for their rights. And thereby they injected a new meaning into the veins of history and civilization’ (Phillips, 1999, p.39).
The famous biographer and historian, Douglas Southall Freeman, spent virtually his entire life studying the essence of great leaders. He was driven by a perplexing question, “What sets great leaders apart?” Freeman concluded that the power of their leadership came from their common adherence to three basic tenets: professional competence (i.e., know your stuff), service before self (i.e., take care—and lead—your people), and superior character. The greatest of these is character; it is the foundation of humanity. If leaders cannot be trusted by the people they represent, their credibility will be lost and no one will then follow. Many people have a basic understanding of leadership—they know it when they see it—but just what, exactly, is great leadership?
In his landmark book entitled, Leadership, James MacGregor Burns came closest to a pure definition of leadership when he wrote (Burns, 1978, p.19),
Leadership is leaders inducing followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and the motivations—the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations—of both leaders and followers. And the genius of leadership lies in the manner in which leaders see and act on their own and their followers’ values and motivations.
Leadership, after all, is not a destination; it is a journey. Leaders “listen to others with genuine empathy; they seek first to understand, then to be understood” (Covey, 1990, p.123). How else can they understand and act for the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations of the people they represent? Burns identifies two modes of leadership—transactional and transformational leadership. The relations of most leaders and followers are transactional—a first-order social exchange that is manifest in relatively incremental improvements to productivity and performance. This narrow reactionary focus, in transactional leadership terms, is akin to “a thermometer, reflecting the environment” (Nice, 1997). There is a better alternative.
Poplin (1992) calls on bosses “to be the servants of collective vision” as well as “editors, cheerleaders, problem solvers, and resource finders.” Such are the transformational leaders. It takes little effort to recognize the transformational leaders of history. Mohandas K. Gandhi, for example, had the ability to translate an idea into reality and sustain it. His goal was “not to defeat the British in India, but to redeem them through love, so as to avoid a legacy of bitterness” (Phillips, 1999, p.57). Throughout his campaigns of nonviolent resistance, he created a new method of dealing with oppression that he termed “Satyagraha.” Satya means truth which equals love and graha is force. Satyagraha thus means “truth-force” or “love-force;” it is also translated to mean “holding onto truth” (Garrow, 1986, p. 43; King, 1963, p.150; Phillips, 1999, p.57). As a result, his followers considered the importance of absolute values, the need to reconcile power with service, and the necessity to make decisions and take actions that are bounded by moral principles. Jesus is another example. The Hartwick Institute reminds us, “Evidence from the Bible suggests that Jesus, perhaps more than any other individual, has shaped the discussion of the virtues which a leader ought to possess and the techniques which leaders ought to use to motivate those whom they lead.” In fact, Jesus’ views of divinely inspired leadership are articulated in his teachings and exemplified in his actions—He practices the very leadership He preaches. And there’s no doubting Mother Teresa was a transformational leader. Though she rarely spoke in public and never built a huge corporation, she became a symbol of selflessness while inspiring millions to serve the poor. A less prominent fictional example of a transformational leader is evident in the movie, Dead Poets Society, where a newly appointed teacher, as a Hartwick Classic Film Leadership case attests,
inspires a love of poetry and intellectual freedom among his young students at a strict New England prep school. In the process, he encounters the profound resistance of his teaching colleagues and administrators. His students are given the opportunity to grasp how difficult it is to bring about change in entrenched cultures and, additionally, are encouraged to focus on alternative ways in which that change might be implemented.
In essence, change is what leadership is all about.
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