Discovering the Leader in You | where does leadership fit in your life?
As counselors and trainers of executives and as advocates for
improving the human condition through leadership development,
we've noticed in recent years that increasingly more clients seem less
sure about their path of leadership. Despite having had high levels of
achievement and an unwavering dedication to work and career, they
admit, when pressed, that something just doesn't feel right. They're
uncertain about whether they're spending their best years doing what
they really want to do and whether, at the end of the day, the leadership
path they have chosen will ultimately be fulfilling.
This concerns us because we believe that the need for effective leadership has grown. We need strong leaders not only at the top of formal
organizations (corporations, nonprofit organizations, and government
agencies, for example) but also at all levels in organizations and in our
communities and families. Each of us has multiple opportunities to lead
every day if we choose to do so. Our hope is that in reading this book,
you will find clarity about the role of leadership in your life so that you
can lead more effectively in whatever situation you face.
Leadership is a hot topic, as shown by the flood of journals,
books, Web sites, blogs, and training programs that now discuss what
it is and how it's best practiced. Search the Web using the word
leadership, and you will generate well over 100,000 hits. Search university
offerings, and you will see classes and degrees in leadership. Pick up
1
2 Discovering the Leader in You
any newspaper or news magazine, and leadership is a prominent topic
covered.
Leadership can certainly be read about, studied, and taught, but
individuals rarely think about leadership as a vocation, even though
acquiring its skills demands the same kind of conscious decisions
as acquiring a technical specialty or pursuing an educational degree. At
some moment early in your life, someone may have urged you to select
and develop an area of technical knowledge. But has anyone ever asked
you to consider specifically how leadership would fit into your life or
urge you to select and develop it as a special skill?
We wrote this book to encourage you to make more conscious
choices about why, when, how, and where you lead. We think it's
critical that you connect your leadership to those things you find most
essential in life. Leadership is not just about developing a brilliant
strategy or executing a task perfectly. We believe that the most effective
leaders are those who commit themselves to getting better day by
day and week by week and then apply their skills to improving the
lives of other people in the organizations in which they work or their
communities.
This chapter explores questions and issues that leaders like you are
raising and explains how the rest of this book can help you resolve
them on a personal level through structured introspection, discussion,
purposeful questions, and short cases of leaders who have experienced,
as television sports journalist Jim McKay used to say, ''the thrill of
victory and the agony of defeat.'' In essence, this book addresses these
questions:
• Why do you want to lead?
• Who are you as a leader?
• Are your personal goals, values, needs, and resources such that your
work in leadership can be both personally rewarding and outwardly
fruitful?
• If you now find yourself in a leadership position or hope to be in
a leadership role in the future, do you have a vision of what you'd
Where Does Leadership Fit in Your Life? 3
like your leadership work to accomplish for you personally as well
as for your organization or community?
• Are you clear about when and where you are most effective as a
leader?
THE CHALLENGES TODAY
Leaders must be able to cope effectively with uncertainty and continuous
change. The stress, sacrifices, criticism, responsibility, and accountability
that leaders face can cause us to question our roles as leaders. Some
leaders we work with each week will admit that at times, they are tired,
overwhelmed, stuck, lost, bored, or feeling devalued. Others aren't
feeling much of anything and don't want to be noticed. Don't get us
wrong: there are plenty of leaders who are optimistic and energized.
But our sense is that leaders today are finding the road a bit tougher to
navigate than leaders did in the past.
Leaders' New Questions
The three of us together have nearly a century of experience in
assisting leaders in the development of their talents and careers. As the
world becomes more interdependent and more complex, leaders with
whom we work frequently come to us with questions, and sometimes
concerns, about their place in the world as leaders and the place
of leadership in their lives. The tenor of their questions has changed
recently. Questions about strengths and developmental needs, becoming
a more effective agent of change, confronting structural problems,
organizational politics and difficult coworkers, and minimizing the
tremendous stress of executive roles continue to surface, but they are
being augmented and sometimes even replaced by a different inquiry.
Contemporary leaders ask about personal and professional fulfillment,
service to others, balancing the demands of work with life's other
responsibilities. We hear about job dissatisfaction. We hear about job
insecurity, even among the most senior leaders in organizations. Highly
4 Discovering the Leader in You
rated performers are not immune from having reservations about what
they experience as a lack of sufficient control over both the professional
and personal aspects of their careers. One corporate executive captures
the confusion quite well: ''It seems there have been times in your life
when the options before you have seemed clouded and the trail behind
you so cluttered that you can't seem to clear your feet to move ahead.''
We wonder why such issues seem increasingly common. The
global economic crisis that began in 2008 will no doubt affect people's
perceptions of the future and their career aspirations for some time to
come. Certainly the tasks of leadership in a more interdependent global
world have changed from what they used to be. Advances in technology
fundamentally affect the way that individuals and groups interact. When
you consider how some organizations expect to have access to their
leadership around the clock, getting away from work becomes quite
challenging. We also wonder whether the human potential movement
of the 1960s shifted people's concepts of what constitutes a happy life.
Do the attitudes and expectations of the millennial generation (born
between 1980 and 2000) create different expectations of leaders? When
leaders demand more personal meaning in their work lives, are they
responding to changes in career patterns or family relationships? In the
pages that follow, we explore these and other questions leaders today
are asking themselves and others.
The Problem of Drift
Some people go through life with complete clarity about their goals
as a leader, but most leaders, at one point or another, express doubts
about their capabilities, have questions about how best to leverage their
talents, or are simply confused about the leader within them. We call
this the problem of drift. Drift can feel as if you are going through
the motions but not actually moving forward. It can be short-lived (for
instance, after a challenging meeting or a tough week, you may begin to
wonder whether you can handle the expectations of your team) or it can
be chronic (for example, after five years in a job, you realize that unless
you make a change, some of your life's goals are not going to be met).
Where Does Leadership Fit in Your Life? 5
Think of drift as being opposite to being ''in the zone,'' or in a place in
life in which you are making conscious choices and taking action with a
clear sense of purpose and connection to your core values and goals.
We work with leaders in all kinds of organizations, from multinational to grassroots and from public to private sector. Drift is an equal
opportunity employer that at some point affects leaders from all walks of
life. Whether underqualified, underchallenged, overwhelmed, burned
out, or in some other way miscast, it's not uncommon for leaders to
feel out of place in their current roles, unprepared for the demands
of leadership, misaligned with their responsibilities, unaware of the
unknown factors inherent in a leadership role, or unsure about how to
seize the potential for change and get back on the right track. One goal
of this book is to help you address issues you may have about drift and
about your sense of focus, purpose, effectiveness, and drive as a leader.
We will help you move from feeling a sense of drift to a place where
you reach your full potential as a leader by delineating a process of
discovering the leader in you.
Drift can occur for a number of reasons. Consider these situations,
and see if any are familiar to you:
• You are overwhelmed. Your organization let go of 15 percent of its
workforce. You are now covering the leadership responsibilities
for three departments. How can you be effective with so much
responsibility?
• You are skeptical. Your organization has undergone the third major
restructuring in three years. Change is the name of the game, but to
what end isn't clear. You are responsible for motivating your team
and getting them on board with the changes. How can you do that
when you don't believe in the change yourself?
• You are stuck. You have been doing the same job for the past
four years. Because of your organization's outsourcing to overseas
locations, moving to a new position would require you to move
abroad. You see little opportunity for advancement given your
desire to stay rooted in your community. Your work is critical to
6 Discovering the Leader in You
the organization's success, but the fire in your belly is not as strong
as it once was. How do you get excited again?
• You are lost. Your boss and three other senior leaders have left the
organization. You are being asked to fill in on some of their key
projects, while others in the organization conduct a search to fill
these positions. You didn't want more responsibility, but others
are looking to you for answers. How do you step up to the plate
when you're not sure you can swing the bat, let alone hit the
pitch?
• You are in denial. You have had six bosses in three years. Change
keeps coming, but you don't know what is going to ultimately stick.
Perhaps if you ignore the newest change, hunker down, and pretend
to be onboard, this too shall pass. How long can you wait?
• You are angry.Your spouse lost her job, and the job market in your area
is horrendous. You have decided to move, but you love your organization, your role, and your colleagues. How will you find the right
next leadership role?
• You are unhappy. You have often made leadership and career decisions
based on the expectations of others. You chose your field because of
your father's encouragement. You said yes to each organizational
opportunity because your boss, mentor, or spouse said it was the
right thing to do. But now you realize you aren't doing what you
want to do. How do you break the cycle and find a job that is more
connected to your core values?
• You are pressured. In order to put your three children through college,
maintain your financial commitments to nonprofit organizations
you care about, and contribute to your own retirement account,
you feel pressure to serve in a high-level, well-paying position where
the perks and financial rewards are plentiful. How do you find
respite from the demands of the role?
• You are underchallenged. You are twenty-seven years old and new to the
organization. You believe that you have a lot to give, and yet your
boss continues to ask you to work on routine tasks you mastered
Where Does Leadership Fit in Your Life? 7
several years ago. You see many opportunities to lead, but your
boss seems threatened by giving you too much exposure. How do
you convince her that you are ready for more?
• You are worried. You have been asked to volunteer your time on a
major cross-functional taskforce with high visibility. You have just
had your first child and learning how to manage the role of parent,
spouse, and employee. You are already finding it difficult to keep
up with all of the demands in your life. How can you add still more
work to your plate?
• You are thrilled. You have just landed the marketing job you always
wanted: leading a project team for one of your firm's major accounts.
But this is your first real leadership role, and you are unsure of how
to best organize, lead, and motivate your team. Is there a map to
help guide your next steps?
• You are nervous. You are the first expatriate for the company and are
moving your entire family to Hong Kong. You will be charting new
territory by opening the first office in Asia and leading a culturally
diverse workforce. You are not sure what to do next. Instead of
taking action, you feel stuck in place, almost paralyzed. What do
you do first?
These situations describe the multitude of questions that leaders
at all levels are asking. Given the pace of change in organizations,
individuals who are in a pretty good place can suddenly find themselves thrust into situations they didn't foresee or don't know how to
handle. These situations have both a professional and personal impact
on them.
We have had many conversations with clients who faced one or
more of these issues. Our conversations revealed that many leaders find
themselves in the middle of situations and don't have a systematic way
to navigate to a better place. All in all, they haven't conducted much
of a conscious, guided evaluation of themselves as leaders. Intrigued by
drift, we probed further by asking, Have you thought about the role that
8 Discovering the Leader in You
leadership plays in your life? Has leadership been a conscious decision?
In a few cases, the answers were a resounding yes; the individuals had
indeed given much thought to who they were as leaders and the skills
they wanted to develop in the future. These individuals came across as
self-assured. Some planned to move up to the next level, and a few were
content to end their careers in the jobs they held. In either case, they
stood on solid ground. But most of the leaders we talked with hadn't
been very thoughtful about assuming a leadership position. One leader
described ''falling into'' his position. Another said, ''I don't even give it
a second thought. You know, it's like you just try to get through each
day and do the best you can.''
These conversations, no matter the amount of change or circumstances, confirm our belief that too few individuals actively think about
leadership or are truly comfortable with their identities as leaders. We
are struck by how seldom people in leadership positions consider to
any great extent their work as leaders. We are well acquainted with
people who are so keen on assuming leadership responsibilities that they
have pursued that goal without paying enough attention to the meaning
of the work or the fact that developing others was a critical skill for
being a successful leader. Not only are individuals uncomfortable with
their identities as leaders, more are walking the halls of organizations
disillusioned, dissatisfied, and disconnected. Rather than being active in
tackling the issues before them, they hide out in their offices, work from
home, disassociate themselves from mistakes, and hunker down hoping
that this too shall pass. The main question they ask is, ''Is taking this
leadership role worth the effort?''
The bad news is that the problem of drift has impact beyond
individual discomfort. Since leadership is about having responsibility
for others, drift has consequences that can be challenging and frustrating
for colleagues and families as well. Leading by rote wastes good talent
and energy, dilutes the talent and energy that others muster to create
results, and creates drag on company resources. Perhaps worse, while
in the grip of drift, you can experience a malaise that stands in the way
Where Does Leadership Fit in Your Life? 9
of full commitment and fulfillment. This malaise can be contagious and
infect other members of your team or work group.
If you feel this way, be comforted by the fact that many others do as
well. Do you want help moving out of the drift cycle? If you do, you will
benefit by stepping back, asking yourself some fundamental questions,
and then figuring out how to get back in the driver's seat. The process
can help you gain traction for moving yourself to a place of fulfillment,
commitment, and motivation.
Reflect on the following questions, and write down responses that
immediately come to mind:
• How much of your life today involves being a leader? (Don't limit
your answer to just your work life.)
• Are you currently in a leadership role? How did you get there?
• Do you see yourself as a leader? Are you a leader all of the time?
• How comfortable are you with your identity as a leader?
• Did you choose to become a leader, or did it somehow choose you?
By answering these and other questions we pose throughout this
book, you will be making the decision and commitment to move away
from drift. Deane Shapiro wrote in Precision Nirvana, ''When sitting just
sit. When walking just walk. Above all don't wobble'' (1978, p. 149).
We believe this is good advice to you, and we add this corollary: When
leading, lead; when following, follow; but take action always.
FROM DRIFT TO CLARITY:
A FRAMEWORK FOR CHOICE
AND ACTION
Many people who are in or are considering leadership roles can benefit
from a systematic look at themselves as leaders. By paying attention to
all the different aspects of leading, you might gain useful insight into
your short-term situations and long-term plans.
10 Discovering the Leader in You
Choosing Leadership
Demands for leadership come in many guises and are not always
clearly signaled by job title, job description, or status. For example, a
researcher discovers that her position involves interacting with clients
who are using products that the researcher has studied. When she
realizes that her research will have more value if she gets out of the lab
and sees how customers actually use those products, she leads a revision
of her organization's research protocols. Or a senior graphic designer
realizes that he spends more time attempting to inspire good work from
freelance artists from all over the globe than he spends creating images
of his own. Collaborating with these artists requires a deep knowledge of
culture and context. The designer needs to develop skills around leading
a charge to break down the barriers between in-house and outsourced
talent. Or a community organizer working at a nonprofit has to tap into
the collective capabilities of local citizens, and in the process she helps
to build a community's capacity to address poverty.
In other words, at all levels in an organization, individuals can
and do become leaders. Sometimes they explicitly and intentionally
step forward to take on a leadership role; sometimes they are asked to
do so; sometimes the leadership blossoms organically from their daily
practices. Even if you are not designated with a formal title (for example,
you don't have a manager title or you don't supervise a staff), if you
pay attention and build your self-awareness, you can daily discover
opportunities to lead.
The Discovering Leadership Framework
Knowing that most current and prospective leaders had never systematically looked at the situation they find themselves in and tried a more
integrated approach to their solutions, we developed the Discovering
Leadership Framework (Figure 1.1). Its purpose is to help you better
see the role of leadership in your life. It will help you reach the point of
saying, ''This is the perfect role for me,'' ''I am just not suited to this
work,'' ''This is how I can lead more effectively,'' or ''Yes, this is why
I lead.''
FIGURE 1.1 Discovering Leadership Framework
Current
Organizational
Realities
Current
Personal
Realities
Impact and
Legacy
Leadership
Vision
Leadership
Values
Leadership
Profile
12 Discovering the Leader in You
The five areas of the framework will help you organize your thinking
by logically connecting important career and life issues with leadership
development activities:
Current Organizational Realities
The problem of drift and what leadership opportunities are available
to us is always embedded in a larger context. This context differs by
individual. It can be as broad as the social, economic, and global trends
that have an impact on leadership today. It might be more specific to
your industry. Is it one of growth (the energy industry) or one of decline
(the U.S. textile industry)? It might be specific to your organization if
there are structural changes, cutbacks, or new ventures. It might be
the context of your current or potential leadership role. Do you have
a new boss or a difficult employee? Organizational culture and climate
are part of your context as well. The point is to understand the broader
circumstances that define your leadership situation and why you feel
adrift. Context also refers to the new demands and expectations leaders
face, the main views of leadership in your organization, and their fit
with your own view or philosophy. We have included the costs of
leading as part of the organizational context. We know these costs are
often specific to the organization, role, and other circumstances that an
individual leader faces.
Your Vision
A vision for your life is your ideal future state. It describes what you
see as the overall purpose of your life: what dreams you want to achieve,
what goals you want to accomplish, the people you want to be with,
and the kind of life you want to have. This framework takes a specific
look at your leadership vision. More specifically, what is the role that
leadership plays in your life? We believe that being purposeful about
what you want in life is important to being purposeful about what you
want in your leadership situation. A leadership vision helps you out of
drift. Without an articulate leadership vision, you will have a difficult
time evaluating the leadership choices presented to you.
Where Does Leadership Fit in Your Life? 13
Your Values
Values are the standards or principles that guide your beliefs, decisions, and actions. Understanding your values and leveraging them as
a foundational cornerstone of your leadership choices is a critical contributor to effective leadership. Articulating your motivations and values
and understanding their role in your work as a leader isn't an easy task.
Neither is figuring out if your motivations and values align with your current role or with your organization's values. Examining your motivations
and values may give you more insight into why you feel adrift.
Your Leadership Profile
Your leadership profile is your personal leadership tool kit and what
you draw from to lead. It can include many things, such as competencies,
styles, and experiences. Through careful analysis of your profile, you
can identify what you see as your strengths and developmental needs.
Your leadership profile further defines who you are as a leader and what
you bring to leadership roles. Knowing your profile helps you clarify
why and how you lead, why you might be adrift, and how to take action
to move in a more positive direction.
Personal Realities and Expectations
You have a personal life that has an impact on your work life and
a work life that has an impact on your personal life. Often we tend to
compartmentalize these two areas of our lives when we would benefit
by thinking in a more integrated and holistic way. At the end of the day,
you are one person, whether you are at work, on vacation, or at home.
How you integrate all aspects of your life with your responsibilities as a
leader is one of the most challenging that you will face.
These five areas of the framework are closely related. Our goal in
presenting this framework is to help you make more conscious, unifying
connections that will help you move from drift into clarity.
14 Discovering the Leader in You
THE UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY
OF DISCOVERING LEADERSHIP
As authors, we share a belief that individuals should choose fulfilling,
meaningful work that they are passionate about. What is it that you
really want to do? This is a key question to discovering the leader in
you. If you are not doing what is meaningful to you, think hard about
whether you need to find something else to do. In Man's Search for
Meaning (1959), Viktor Frankl observed that a life without purpose is a
life full of pain and hardship. Thus, one of the most important tasks for
a leader is to find an anchor point of deep purpose and to draw on that
anchor point during good and bad times.
Consider what Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, told the Stanford
University graduating class of 2005. Given the success of Jobs and the
innovative industrial designs that flow out of Apple Computer, you
might expect a speech about creativity, about pushing limits, about
looking beyond the horizon. But the core of his commencement address
was about the utter importance of loving what you do, even when times
are challenging:
I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz [Steve Wozniak]
and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20.
We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just
the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over
4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation—the
Macintosh—a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I
got fired. . . . What had been the focus of my entire adult life was
gone, and it was devastating.
... I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from
Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of
being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to
enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT,
another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing
Where Does Leadership Fit in Your Life? 15
woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the
world's first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now
the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable
turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and
the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's
current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family
together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't
been fired from Apple. . . . I'm convinced that the only thing that
kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what
you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only
way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you
haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters
of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great
relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So
keep looking until you find it. Don't settle [''You've Got to Find
What You Love,'' 2005].
Jobs's advice is as relevant to individuals who are well into their careers
as it is to newly minted graduates. Without meaning, creative leadership
can't flourish.
Even if you do discover what you really want to do as a leader,
leading is still hard work, and it comes with both pleasure and pain.
Discovering the leader in you is not for the faint of heart. It requires
deep introspection about what is important in your life, what you would
like to pursue as your legacy, and whether you are willing to genuinely
seek and act on feedback from others.
Peter Drucker often encouraged people to think about their legacy.
He suggested that if you don't know what you want to be remembered
for by the age of fifty, it's doubtful that you will leave much of a
positive legacy (2001). To discover the leader in you requires that you
regularly evaluate what you want to contribute in life. Drucker argued
that considering this question is one of the best ways for you to renew
16 Discovering the Leader in You
and reinvent yourself. Don't put this off until late in your career. Even
if you are just starting out on your leadership journey, set aside time
each year to evaluate the larger question of legacy. If you keep this in
the front of your mind, year in and year out, you'll have a better chance
of fulfilling your true potential.
We believe that leadership can be learned, that self-awareness is
critical to leadership development, and that people can learn, grow,
and change so that they can become the kind of leader needed for the
context in which they live and work. That's not to say that everyone can
develop or needs to develop into great leaders. But most great leaders
are great because they take the time to learn, grow, and get better; in
other words, they are made, not born.
Our philosophy and approach resonate with the work on mind-set
by Carol Dweck and her colleagues at Stanford University. Consider
that scientists used to think that personality and intelligence were
hardwired (fixed) at a very early age. We now know from a large body
of research that while all humans have some hardwired characteristics
and abilities, their capabilities and skills are not predetermined. Those
attributes are heavily influenced by the perceptions that people have
of themselves, the actions that they take, their life experiences, and
the contexts in which they have lived (Dweck, 2006; McAdams, 2006).
Dweck (2006) writes about the importance of having a growth mind-set
(a belief that your skills and effectiveness are malleable by cultivation and
practice). People with a growth mind-set ''believe that a person's true
potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it's impossible to foresee
what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training''
(p. 7). Dweck has shown that managers who have a growth mind-set
appreciate talent but do not rely on talent alone to ensure that their
employees are effective. Instead, these managers invest in developmental
conversations, coaching, mentoring, and other interventions to ensure
that their employees become more effective and don't remain stuck.
The idea that one's potential is never known and continual investment
in acquiring knowledge and skills can lead to more effective leadership
is an empowering one.
Where Does Leadership Fit in Your Life? 17
It's unrealistic to think that you can develop a high-powered growth
mind-set overnight. Rather, view the development or nurturing of this
mind-set as a marathon rather than a sprint. You can best develop
your leadership skills by deconstructing big developmental challenges
into smaller, more manageable chunks. Small changes in your behavior
accumulate over time and can lead to substantial, substantive change.
In short, leadership must take on meaning, and you have to define
its significance to you. You must also focus on developing the skills
that you believe are important to help you address your goals. To do
this, you must believe that you can improve, and you must have deep
self-awareness of what to work on to produce the greatest gains in
leadership abilities.
EVERYDAY, EVERYWHERE
LEADERSHIP
Although the leaders we counsel speak about their roles in terms of
their jobs and careers, few spontaneously consider leadership roles away
from the office—as a parent, a community volunteer, a fundraiser, a
political campaign worker, or a club member, for example. The next
time someone asks, ''What do you do?'' think about this: Embedded in
that question are assumptions about social status, economic success, and
individual power. Defy those assumptions and your own expectation
that the person asking the question wants to hear only about your work.
Talk about your interests, your mission in life, or some topic other
than your job. Reclaim what defines you as a person (not what's on
your business card) and what you hope to accomplish in your life (not
the business goals you're responsible for completing by the end of the
quarter).
Although this book focuses primarily on questions of leadership
at work, we urge you to think about leadership opportunities outside
your own organization. Many of the ideas in this book carry over to
non-job-related leadership. A leadership role in family and community
18 Discovering the Leader in You
situations allows you to try new skills, styles, and levels of responsibility.
Such opportunities often allow more flexibility in terms of the length
of time you hold a leading role and how long you choose to do so.
For some people, the best expression of their values may be to remain
individual contributors at work and leaders in a nonwork setting.
Whether in an organization or in less formal situations, you can
gain greater understanding and mastery of your leadership potential and
practice with systematic self-assessment. You can also overcome some
of the passivity that perhaps has led you into a position of leadership
that you never made a decision to enter and where you may now feel
less than fulfilled. If leadership opportunities are important to you (and
given the need for leadership around the world in all kinds of situations,
we hope that they are), you'll benefit by becoming more aware of how
your personal vision, goals, and other aspects of your life can enhance
or direct your choices. You can master and enjoy a life filled with
leadership, as you choose it.
WHAT'S NEXT
Each of the next five chapters covers one component of the Discovering
Leadership Framework. Chapter Two asks what you see happening in
the turbulent world of organizations, what impact those changes have
on leadership, and what forces are shaping your current feelings about
being a leader. Do those forces present opportunities for you to develop
as a leader?
Chapter Three explores the important role that leadership vision
plays in effective leadership. Do you work from a vision that provides
meaning, purpose, energy, and passion to yourself and others and how
does your leadership vision connect to who you are as person?
Chapter Four asks you to assess your motivations and values to
see how they are reflected in your life and how strongly they serve as
a basis for leadership. This analysis will help you uncover conflicts or
disconnects that might interfere with your leadership work.
Where Does Leadership Fit in Your Life? 19
Chapter Five is about your awareness of your own particular skills
and qualities related to leadership. It leads you through an inventory of
your own leadership competencies, roles, learning styles, and knowledge.
It will help you pinpoint talents and skills where you show strength and
others where you may want to improve.
Chapter Six considers the impact of a leadership role on the other
aspects of your life. It suggests ways in which your life at home and at
work can be more mutually integrated and supportive.
Chapter Seven brings you back to the Discovering the Leadership
Framework and helps you identify themes and patterns among the
various components of the framework. From this analysis we hope that
you gain more clarity about why, how, when, and where you lead.