Walking on Water: Intuitive Leadership - creating a life without stress

The things intuitive people do differently

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You literally ask the universe what you want to do and you totally feel yourself moving forward or backwards based on what you should or should not be doing. I do agree with Sarah. One need to just overcome the fear and go for it. As said by Sarah, at that time you should reconnect with your higher intentions and go for it. Now coming to your video presentation, i loved it Marie. You presented it as if you are a professional actress, really loved it. Thanks for such wonderful video making. Neither one of us could figure out whether she was afraid or if her instinct was telling her to run!

This is so helpful! Thank you so much for this! Hey Alana, with relationships it may be a bit more tricky, because you are so emotionally involved. It can sometimes be difficult to see clearly. If you need help with that, please go get it! So glad you answered this question Marie! Your tips are really great to help me sort out what makes sense and what I can leave behind.

Looking forward to hearing more! Within 15 minutes of reading your articles, while at my art gallery, I had more drive and started to actually fall back in love with my business,and then people out of nowhere started calling me. Thank-you for helping me start to pull out of the gutter of my business! How come I ALWAYS feel contracted when fear arises and that is often, I can tell you, actually it happens each time I want to take a baby step in direction of my dream coming true. I have to warn people that intuition is not always correct. I thought that my life was very much blessed.

I traveled, had a home, was at the top of my game in my profession. Then, I wanted to help people who were horribly taken advantage of. I was working on this after I got laid off from work. The unemployment ran out. I thought — why should I do tha? I said — well, evidently someone wants me to do this. So, I worked with the individual for one year — the project was done. So, I waited and waited and waited and waited weeks turned into months months turned into years 2 of them.

Now — the money is gone and because I have been out of work for so long, it is damn hard to go back. I have been looking since March. I feel like giving up on this but I have bills to pay. This is the last month I have of money and I have a mortgage due. I am reaching out to Unclaimed Property for my state to just make the bills this month. Why did all of the synchronicities stop?!?! Why was I not given a definite lead, a solid direction? In truth, I should have been done for back in May — that was when my savings officially ran out.

I then got pointers to other things that covered my bills but just barely — not food or gas money. I had to go to a different account for that. I did not have the programming skill for one part of this — a solution immediately came. Hell, everything came — just long enough to get you so far in.

I did not have the connections to make this happen — not in the least — without connections, the whole thing is just trash. Why open so many doors, and opportunities just to leave me in the desert? This has rocked me to my core. I had so many blessings and stuff in my life that I wanted to help out and give back to the world. The irony is — in doing so, everything that I have worked for for over 20 years is at stake.

Yes, I know — God only wants absolute good for you — I know. I had lived it for many years. It was the only reason why I did this thing. If I had, I would not have taken the extension, gone back to work and would not be in this mess now. It seems you might be in the midst of the very lesson and light you need to experience your best life. If you do not become bitter and lose all faith I believe you may find your best strength right where you are.

You must know that your spirit path will not always be an easy one. The biggest gifts in your life perhaps will not come from the experiences that were easy and gifted to you. It may be incredibly hard for you to see but as a stranger and a friend who took the time to read and allow your energy to enter my life for a minute to soak it up and share what I hear the universe say. This is the biggest gift of your life. I look forward to what is to come from you.

I hope that one year from now you will come back and share where your journey has taken you. I suspect a life beyond your wildest expectations if you are able to step back into faith and trust that intuition is not always going to give you the easiest way out. Even when it appears that it may. You know how that works.

You give what you are, vibrationally, we feel it. I send you blessings and wishes to remember who you really are, beauty. Eww, never thought of it this way, because sometimes I DO wonder! Like the whole spectrum of human emotion. Use one to double-check the other. Look at the aspects: WHAT of it do I feel nervous about? Take the whole thing apart, and look at all of its aspects. I love your tip about how to tell the difference between fear and intuition. This video helps people to use their intuition for decision-making.

I hope you like it. Develop Your Intuition for Decision-Making. So what a great idea…Ask friends, if they would follow these directions: Thank You Marie, The video and strategies were very helpful. I need to overcome my fear by turning it into action. I have been struggling to get started on a project for last couple of years.

I had a morning reflection this morning about Jesus walking on the Ocean relating it to all the probllems I am facing turning into strong waives hitting me everywhere nocking me down, but when I go down deep I see a Dolphin friend lifting me up not letting me drawn because there is a Better Tomorrow with a strong sunshine reflecting on the Ocean. I hear the peaceful sounds of the waives coming my way lifting me up to the highest point and letting me know you shall overcome fear no more do not be afraid because the spirit of Jesus is within you to lift you up to make you strong and to know that walking on water is a simple act of love.

Great topic and thanks for the great reminders. I will go forth with confidence! Love this vid and return to it often. Could that resistance come in the form of contraction, dread, etc?? Love it, great stuff about fear vs intuition. From now on i will be paying more attention to my contracted and expansive feeling before making a decision. Great question and great tips! Even though they recognize it intellectually, the fear runs deep…and it gets mixed up with a negative gut feeling. For example, an acquaintance was about to get engaged. Great couple, met both of them, really good vibes.

And she was just blocked. But she was stuck. Eventually she did get married and things worked out well as far as I know. But I do wonder about these cases where fears run so deep and always cause body reactions that point to the negative. Great beliver in gut reactions and learning to trust them. There is science to back this up, it is our second brain, see this brilliant article from New Scientist:. Marie, Thanks very much for the episode, its been a good lecture with good illustrations, Many times fear dominates especially when am exposed to something new for the first time but when i pick!

I see intuition brings this, and in the process i can easily make a review. Its also better to know the way how fear comes about in detail, we shall get a good therapy out of the signs of fear after reaching an agreement. However I came across a great book called The Magicians Way by William Whitecloud, all about learning to use your heart and self-belief to let go of the outcome and focus on the end result. I especially like your intro that having fear is normal.

We need to accept it as part of our lives and take action anyway. I get excited when fear hits me. These two tips are a great way to choose what actions to take. When I have an idea for example, but I feel almost sick to my stomach, I need to trust that I either should not act on it or that the idea needs tweaking until it feels right.

I must say that you are crazy hilarious and so smart. I love all the tips you give and your shining personality. The advice about expensive and contracted is one of the best I ever heard; you are so right listening to our body is important in decision making and would help us make less mistakes if we took the time to simply keep calm and listen. Thank you Marie and keep empowering woman. Just launched the scariest project of my life: In such a short video you said so much that is core meaningful! I am looking forward to seeing more of your videos.

I found you through the Food Babe! Looking forward to using your information to go for my dream! Thanks so very much! I would like to thank universe for guiding me to this video. The expansion and contraction is very different … I just hope I can trust them…. Thank you so much for providing thought provoking and interesting answers to our questions, esp….. All jobs have their good and bad days, too.

Just coming into a new business, there is definitely some fear of this new adventure, but I also have some much excitement that I know this is just part being human. I have joined your feed and look forward to seeking more of your great post. I find that the best advice in the world usually either underscores or brings into focus something I have long held to be true but had never considered in depth or taken the time to define. Thank you for the clarity you brought to a concept that is actually very dear to my heart.

Not sure how this link even came to me, but I too appreciated the explanation between expansion and contraction. At 50, I am navigating some huge changes and as someone grounded in science, I have mostly stuck to pro-con lists and more analytic type processes. What are these hitches about? How do others navigate them?

Loved the Christmas tree face. Makes it so much easier to move forward. My husband and two daughters have booked and payed for an international trip to the USA end of January to go to the Superbowl and we sort of planned it spur of the moment and booked really fast. I just constantly had this apprehensive feeling about the trip and I just assumed that it was because of how quickly we booked and spent so much money. However, now a few months on and I am still feeling apprehension, with a little dread and fear when I think about the flight.

Do I change the date that we fly! I feel like the expansive vs. When it comes to starting a new business for example, at some point, I feel like research, business analysis, competitive evaluation etc is needed…. I noticed that initially, with some of decisions I become so excited I wanna dance I guess that would be expansive feeling , but just when I start thinking about it, the memories of similar events and experiences come back, I reason all the things that would not work for me in that situation and I get this bad feeling right in my stomach. When I decide not to do that, I have even worse feeling in my stomach because I think I made the wrong choice and lost opportunity.

How could you explain this? You have the choice. The question posed in this video got me so excited! I always knew there was more. Thank you for this video. I have made the painful decision to forgo the promotion and return to where I was originally based. It has shaken my foundations, but luckily no long term damage has been done. Thank you again Marie xx. I feel totally contracted with the thing I think I need to do. According to what you just said, I should stay away. I remember feeling expansive when I did it. I barely broke even…but I broke even. I have a meeting with an associate of mine soon.

Still feeling like I should do it even though everything inside me is saying NO! Thank You for this video and some truly interesting advises. You know, recently I have encountered many kinds of new fears. I started to work in a new place. New feeling, senses, double fears and doubts. Since I remember myself, I have been training to overcome every fear I bump into. It worked and it still works…sometimes.

However, I still work on my frightening, everyday. You know how it goes, I think there is some provocateur inside of me which always provokes and mocks at me. For instance, today I feared to enter the room for some reasons, and I was indecisive or contracted! And You know, it did happen, and I feel so confused right now. On the one hand I have to overcome my fear, and on another hand I have to listen to this barely sounding voice. What should I choose? I wanted to ask You, what is the right way of overcoming and facing my fears?

Should I listen to my provocateur or not? And when I feel contracted, should I do a thing I think about doing? I really want a harmony inside. Hana, Thank you so much for tuning in to our episode, and sharing some of your thoughts and fears. We have a couple wonderful MarieTV episodes that talk about that feeling of not being good enough, so I thought you might like to check these out for a few ideas for facing your fears and dealing with your provocateur:. These are some of my favorites for dealing with that negative voice in my own head, and I hope they provide some great tips and inspiration.

Thanks for reminding me how important it is to listen to myself. Often I wondered about the difference between Fear vs Intuition. Thank you for sharing this nugget of wisdom! I get what your saying but what if you keep going back and forth.. I have felt as you said expansive before and contracted over the same situation.

Any ideas as to why or what I should do? In this video you said to trust the expansion versus contraction, but then you closed with a quote about Stephen Pressman and that the more important something is, the more you will resist it. The latter is a fear of leaving the comfort zone.

Leading Matters: John L. Hennessy on the Leadership Journey

I hope this clarifies things! Great video- it contains valuable insight. I would like to add some food for thought though. By nature, introverts tend to go within so contracting is more natural. This might not be the best indicator under these circumstances.

I definitely agree that seeking guidance from those close to you is a great way to go. I absolutely hear you on feeling that contraction as an introvert, and can remember those feelings coming up many times. I do think there are ways of doing the things we have to and yet still appealing to our introverted tendencies and strengths in the process to be able to feel that expansion. Did you catch our episode with Susan Cain? After watching this video, im still a little confused. I wanna try everything that goes beyond my comfort zone and increase my exposure so as to gain more experiences and become a better person along the way.

Whenever I thought of overcoming the challenges that I am going to face, I feel a sense of fulfillment and the confidence that I am gonna gain. However, some of these challenges is something I fear and I feel contracted or even threatened. Is there any explanation for this? Do you think perhaps the feelings of contraction and expansion are nervousness or anxiety about taking action? No matter what, follow your heart because it knows the way.

Old school swearing Marie! I think I just fucked up the mcdonalds jingle, if anyone got that. It help a lot, glad i was landed in here by no intention. We love when that happens! I absolutely love your humor! So important to be silly and to laugh at ourselves from time to time. I know playfulness is so important in life!

We have to take and make the time to laugh have fun and bring out our inner child! I enjoyed the video, but I am still confused. When I think of the thing I am trying to decide to do or not, my body reaction and thoughts would suggest a more contracted state and to decide against it. However, years ago I feared driving so I did not drive and I also felt contracted but I did it anyway and I still experience anxiety even when I think of driving over a bridge but I do it anyway so that I have freedom and I am not controlled by my fears.

I now do not know if this new choice where I feel contracted is something I should try to do despite my fears or forget about it. Hope that makes sense. This is a great question, and makes total sense. Another episode you might love to help sort through some of the legitimate issues raised in your subconscious is the episode we did with Dr. My name is Alek. I am a 31 year old U.

Army Veteran living in Schweinfurt Germany. I have been looking for advice to whether my gut decision is the right one to make and have came up with the decision to just take a Leap Of Faith. I got out of the Army after my deployment back in and stayed in Germany because of the fact that I have a daughter and at the time was married to a German citizen.

I have decided that I should go ahead and move back to the U. Bill and get a degree that hopefully will give me a shot at a better life over here in Germany. I will be leaving this country with nothing but my suitcase of clothes. The hardest thing is the fact that my daughter who is about to be 6 will remain in Germany because she lives with her mother who has sole custody not by choice. However, I have that strong feeling inside me saying I should go back and do the G. Bill and things will work out. So I can see the fear vs.

Intuition thing clear as day. I am going to just take a leap of faith that the reason I feel the urge so bad to go back has to be a sign and that things will work themselves out. I been save by my gut instinct last when I worked in Jerusalem, some voices telling me not to go. If I gone that morning I will be one of the victims of bus suicide bomber. Is it possible to have both expansive and contracted feelings at the same time??

I worked very hard to crack two interviews and negotiated a great salary for the job!!! Do you really think it is? Chinmaya, I so hear you there! I woke up a month ago with the strong feeling of heartache right in the pit of my stomach and I had a feeling someone from my past was thinking of me. Since then the emotions and feelings have not stopped and I feel as though I am reliving the past which was happy and every time I tell myself not to think of the situation something tells me not to stop thinking of it.

I actually enjoy it and have had a very vivid of exactly how I wanted the situation to go with this particular individual. I have even smelled the same smell in the air from that time in my life and in different things and then all of a sudden that smell will be gone and I have flashbacks of dreams where this person will be there but I just cannot see them. Someone please help these thoughts race through my mind daily now. It does sound like your intuition is trying to tell you something!

Read the body language to understand if a person would do something or if they like your idea! Marie, you are brilliant! And I should listen to it. My body, or what feels like my body, instantly said no. Thanks so much for sharing, Kira! If your fear of potentially not having those great experiences is greater than the fear of camping itself, this may be a great opportunity to step out of your comfort zone and try something new.

I also wanted to share this episode where Marie talks about her own experience with fear and how to follow it: Your email address will not be published. Do Not Send Email Notifications. Skip to content Search. I'm Marie You have gifts to share with the world and my job is to help you get them out there. Developing a Respectful Mind. Ignition Points How do you lead in a situation where you are not in control? The answer is a qualified no.

Thompson defines seven ignition points—functions or tools you can develop and use to create unique value to your organization. The Acid Test of Leadership. The Courage to Initiate Relying on a single person to lead the charge reflects a dysfunctional concept of leadership.

Fear vs. Intuition: How To Tell The Difference

No one person can do everything. No wise leader would. Leadership is a group activity. There is an implied interdependency. Everyone has the capacity for leadership. Often what most people lack is the courage—the courage to initiate. Initiative means moving outside your comfort zone.

It means seeking out opportunities and being willing to act. Nearly everyone can see a need or see where changes need to be made. What is uncommon though, are people who are willing to take the initiative; to do something about it. Leadership is not always seen in the brightest or the most talented, but it is always found in the courageous. The CEO mindset involves taking the time to think about the forces that are shaping the future of both you and your organization.

Managing yourself in this way is important not only to the organization but also to your own personal development. Looking for Leaders Recently someone was lamenting to me the lack of new leaders in their organization. Maybe they were looking for leaders in all the wrong places. We commonly look for what looks like leadership.

We look for people who stand out self-promoters. We look for clones people who are just like us. We look for the smartest person in the room technically competent. We look for people who did a good job for us promote as a reward. All too often I see people being chosen for leadership jobs on the basis of superficial personal traits and characteristics.

I just feel in my gut he can do the job. How she ever boiled down all that data onto the PowerPoints is beyond me. She certainly had the committee in the palm of her hand. Such a morale builder and motivator! We need to look deeper. It seems there are more responsibilities and pressures than ever before. Of course, hardships and stress always accompany accomplishment. Successful people have exceptionally high levels of tenacity and persistence and a general hardiness.

Kouzes and Posner find hardiness an important ingredient for leadership success: Increasing your hardiness has a lot to do with your context setting agility. As Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs explain, Context setting agility includes scanning your environment, anticipating important changes, deciding what initiatives to take, scoping each initiative, and determining your desired outcomes.

At the same time, increasing your agility level can increase your capacity for dealing with stress. The thing I had to do was to try to relax. Winston Churchill certainly had it. Focused and On Track. The Study of Leadership In a keynote address in Tokyo, Peter Drucker made the following observation about an aspect of leadership—management: There are management tools and techniques. There are management concepts and principles.

There is a common language of management. And there may be even a universal "discipline" of management. Certainly there is a worldwide generic function which we call management and which serves the same purpose in any and all developed societies. But management is also a culture and a system of values and beliefs. It is also the means through which a given society makes productive its own values and beliefs.

Management must, indeed, become the instrument through which cultural diversity can be made to serve the common purposes of mankind. At the same time, management increasingly is not being practiced within the confines of one national culture, law, or sovereignty but "multinationally.

Of course, along the same lines, leadership encompasses far more than the business or political environment we typically confine it to. From being the act of a few, it has become a personal responsibility. The issues we face today require a multidimensional understanding of leadership that is broader than most academic studies would give it.

Many times leaders are promoted because of a strong record of achievement, only to derail later because of their inability to adapt. For example, an individual may be good at demanding high performance from his or her followers, or have strong technical ability. However, those strengths are not sufficient when, for example, big-picture thinking or relationship building are also essential to success. To prepare yourself and others for growing challenges, you need the clarity of thought and flexibility to understand your own weaknesses and develop new talents. The survey shows that business leaders fail across the board at setting clear objectives, motivating staff and weeding out poor performers.

He suggests that you repeatedly practice making judgments of other people and reflect on why you might have missed in some cases. Did the individual have the potential you saw in them? How good are your judgments compared to others judgments on the same individual? They consistently deliver ambitious results. They continuously demonstrate growth, adaptability, and learning better and faster than their excellently performing peers. They seize the opportunity for challenging, bigger assignments, thereby expanding capability and capacity and improving judgment.

They have the ability to think through the business and take leaps of imagination to grow the business. They are driven to take things to the next level. They come to the point succinctly, are clear thinkers, and have the courage to state a point-of-view even though listeners may react adversely. They ask incisive questions that open minds and incite the imagination.

They perceptively judge their own direct reports, have the courage to give them honest feedback so the direct reports grow; they dig into cause and effect if a direct report is failing. They know the non-negotiable criteria of the job of heir direct reports and match the job with the person; of there is a mismatch they deal with it promptly.

What differentiates a connected leader is the way in which they impact and influence those around them and this is largely determined by the way in which they view good leadership. More than even our individual skill-set, how we see the role of leadership greatly determines the impact we have on others and the success we will have as leaders. Our impact is the result of a number of factors. Using the iceberg metaphor, above the waterline for all to see, are skills and knowledge. On their own, they do not differentiate between average and superior performance…. But it is below the waterline that the real differentiators lie.

Performance will differ depending on how people see their role. If doctors believe that their primary role is solving problems, their behavior is likely to be different from that of surgeons who see their roles as healers. Often we see the "smartest person in the room" or " the leader of all leaders" mind-set to thinking about leadership.

With this mentality we won't have the necessary ability to work well with other leaders and developing community. As Jean Lipman-Blumen wrote in Connective Leadership , "leaders cannot just issue orders; instead, they have to join forces, persuade, and negotiate to resolve conflicts.

The Go Point Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. Leadership Agility What is leadership agility?

Walking on Water Quotes

Like agile organizations—organizations that anticipate and respond to rapidly changing conditions by leveraging highly effective internal and external relationships—leadership agility is the ability to take wise and effective action amid complex, rapidly changing conditions. Without a framework, leaders often handicap themselves in a number of significant ways.

Leaders tend to operate from intuition and experience. While both can serve a leader well, neither is infallible: Leaders tend to become leaders because they are technically competent. Being good at something singles them out for promotion. But what makes people effective at one level can make them ineffective at another. Leaders tend to operate with the skills that were most useful two levels below their current level.

In part because of the way they were chosen for the leadership track, they tend to maintain the mind-set of the level where they last felt real mastery. Few leaders are taught to lead. Because most leaders learn intuitively from experience, that experience is seldom analyzed with any depth, consistency, or systematic feedback.

A few leaders have the good fortune of being taught informally by a particularly effective boss or mentor, but such teachers are rare. Even fewer leaders are taught formally; academic institutions focus on the organization of work more than on the application of leadership. Many corporations offer inhouse programs, but few combine strong teaching with the kind of in-depth coaching that guarantees its application.

Leaders tend to stop learning in midlife. By the time people hit their forties, many rely on their previous knowledge and have only a shallow commitment to ongoing self-education and self development. Few leaders lead from a clear sense of purpose. Even fewer lead from a clear sense of noble purpose. Few leaders know how to pass on what they know.

Not having been taught, they have little idea how to help others develop their leadership skills. Bell writes, "To overcome these obstacles, leaders need some guidelines; they need a framework for understanding and exercising great leadership. Leaders stand or fall not so much by their talent or lack of it as by their understanding or misunderstanding of what great leadership is. He demonstrates how these three dimensions, when properly integrated and applied, will greatly enhance the quality of your leadership. Essentially, it is a blueprint for leadership development. He has created a leadership pyramid founded on basics such as a desire to be in charge, and the corresponding ability, strength, and character that all leaders—especially the great ones—must possess.

From there he divides leadership characteristics between analytical reptilian leadership characteristics and those of the nurturing, engaged mammal. While we generally have a tendency to lean one way or the other, we must develop a capacity to deal effectively with both the reptilian economic and performance issues and the mammalian soft or people issues. Both are vital and most people are, of course a complex mix of the two. We need task-oriented, no-nonsense Reptiles to ensure the work gets done and done well. We need people-oriented, nurturing Mammals to maintain the human community through which work gets done.

The authors have put together an online Nature of Your Leadership Self-Assessment that will help you to determine your preference—mammalian or reptilian—and thus the kind of functions you naturally gravitate to. The scoring is automated. The corresponding web site for the book graphically explains the Leadership Pyramid as well. You can read Chapter 1 online: I wouldn't say anyone is born a leader. There have been some studies that indicate people who have been exposed to psychologically traumatic experiences are better leaders.

They've had to overcome trials and tribulations. So they're more inclined to be challenging and look deep within themselves for what they believe in. Leaders like that learn to be clear about the story they're telling about where they have come from and where they're going. Teaching people to control risk is much easier than teaching people to create it. And it's essential for companies to draw the distinction between leadership and management. It's just wrong to use them interchangeably. Managers tend to react.

Leaders tend to seek out opportunities. Managers follow the rules. Leaders change the rules. Managers seek and follow direction. These are profound differences. Of course you need both. But organizations fail to recognize the difference. Organizations start to fail when they start to produce too many managers and not enough leaders. Or too many leaders of a certain type. The lesson in the corporate world, how can you simulate that [traumatic experience] in the corporate world without destroying people. How can you learn from it without becoming a casualty.

This might be called imposing context. This is not just a cursory overview but an understanding of what we really think on issues we would rather not think about. Like a nighttime traveler attuned to every sound in the forest, the leader must be aware of all possibilities lurking in the shadows. For we can neither challenge not transform what we cannot see.

What you believe about human nature influences your leadership style. If you believe people are fundamentally good—good meaning that they're trying to do their best, they're self-motivated, they want to perform—then your fundamental leadership style will be one way. It will be empowering them, getting obstacles out of the way, and setting high goals while maintaining standards.

If you believe people are fundamentally bad—if you believe people are constantly looking to get over and get by and won't do anything unless they're watched—then you'll tend to lead with a very transactional management style that's built primarily around rewards and punishments. Tight supervision, a controlling type of leadership style characterized by a great deal of social distance between leaders and led. The better we understand ourselves, the more authentic the contribution we can make— shed the image and do the job. The Fred Factor for Kids Too I'd thought I'd pass this along for the Father's Day weekend.

Additionally, the absence of a dad from so many homes plays a direct role in a number of social ills. Kids in father-deprived homes are more likely to be abused, poor, prone to drug abuse, prone to poor scholastic achievement, and prone to emotional and behavior problems including suicide and crime. A study if violent criminals in U.

Looking for Leaders Where to find good leaders has always been an issue. In our search we unfortunately find it easiest to gravitate to the role players —. The best leadership examples are found in the home by parents who are involved in their communities. People can do small things, like build a community park in their neighborhood, or big things like run for public office or join community groups. Be a leader in your family. Their examples profoundly affect the kind of leaders they become.

Additionally, leadership needs to be modeled by the parents. It helps if you view all of this in the long-term. The big picture view assists in smoothing out the immature peaks and valleys and helps keep your goals on track. Here are some not comprehensive ideas to think on: Take time to know your child. For example, an assertive, outgoing personality is a great trait in a leader, but without self-control it can be seen as overly aggressive and controlling.

Powered by Movable Type 3. Leading Blog Main Page Leading Matters is about the journey. The stories he tells here are revolve around the ten elements that shaped his journey and how he relied on these traits in pivotal moments. The elements are relevant to any leader at any level. As he observes, the higher up you go the crises just get bigger and come faster. He begins by discussing the foundational elements: He then links them together with courage. Finally, he shows how collaboration, innovation, intellectual curiosity, storytelling, and creating change that lasts, helped him reach his goals.

Here are some of his thoughts on each element extracted from his stories: Arrogance sees only strengths, ignores our weaknesses, and overlooks the strengths of others, therefore leaving us vulnerable to catastrophic mistakes. Authenticity and Trust Authenticity is essential to building trust. Consider the wisdom popularly attributed to Socrates: So this is part of the practice: If you take a leadership role as a step toward a personal goal of gathering ever-greater titles, awards, and salaries, you will never see true success in that role.

Recognize the service of others. As a leader it is easy to get wrapped up in big projects and ambitious initiatives, and, in the process, to forget the smaller, but no less important, individual acts of service taking place all around you. Much of that service supports and enables the widely celebrated success of others. Empathy Empathy should always be a factor in making decisions and setting goals.

Empathy represents a crucial check on action—placing a deep understanding of and concern for the human condition next to data can lead to decisions that support the wellbeing of all. Empathy usually implies compassion and perhaps charity, but we are looking for more than that: Courage, on the other hand, compels a leader to take that right action. While many people can discern what is right and true, acting on that discernment is more difficult. Even if risk-taking is against your nature, for the good of your organization, you must find the courage to practice it.

Collaboration and Teamwork Most significant endeavors will be accomplished by a team. Certain ground rules circumvented interteam rivalries. First of all, I reminded everyone of our shared goal: Further, to support innovative, cross-disciplinary thinking, I set a second ground rule: To this, I added a third ground rule: This led to my final ground rule: Innovation presents great opportunities for smart entrepreneurs, not the other way around.

Intellectual Curiosity Beyond personal enjoyment, though, this lifelong curiosity has served me well in my career. It has enabled me to engage in meaningful dialog about the world and its future. In challenging moments, great leaders show their true character. Storytelling If you really want to inspire a team to action, best to engage them with a story. Once they become receptive—once they can imagine themselves as part of your vision—you can back your story up with facts and figures. When you turn that dream into a vivid story, you make it so attractive and so real that people will want to share it with you by joining your team.

When it came time to respond to change, these companies moved quickly and efficiently, because every employee already understood the company identity and therefore knew how to respond without direct coaching. In every profession and career, as we climb to higher leadership positions, the role of facts and data decreases. Legacy means the institution serves people more effectively now than it did when you arrived.

The context of leadership has changed, but the fundamentals of leadership have not. It is still working with people. And that has never changed. It is organized around six practices. The six practices are practical and provide a useful guide taking responsibility to lead and improve your effectiveness.

Building a Unifying Vision Organizational success requires a bold and compelling vision that brings people together and inspires them to achieve extraordinary results. The vision needs to be exciting, clear, and simple—and stakeholders should be involved in its creation. Developing a Strategy Implementing a strong, measurable strategy is the key to realizing a vision. A great strategy is composed of key actionable choices about what to do, and what not to do to create distinctive value. Getting Great People on Board Smart and dedicated people help bring strategies to life.

Executing strategies skillfully begins with recruiting, developing, and retaining high-performing talent. People need feedback to grow and incentives to feel recognized. Focusing on Results The experience of achieving short-term results motivates teams to strive for even more. Setting high expectations and sharpening accountability is necessary for high performance. Sold metrics and reviews can help this process become an organized one.

Innovating for the Future Balancing current performance while investing for tomorrow is a key for enduring success. By keeping an eye on the demands of the future, leaders can continually drive innovations that will reshape the company to keep up with a changing world. Leading Yourself In order for leaders to lead others, they need to know and grow themselves.

Feeling healthy, energized, and balanced also helps leaders do their best work. You shouldn't wait to be anointed a leader. Step up and take the responsibility now. Seizing the leadership opportunity and making the leadership difference in fact requires courage and also an ability to look beyond the every day and near-term tasks of basic management. The ground is shifting under your feet. The only way to stay relevant and therefore effective is to invest in building your skills as a leader. As you take on more responsibility, the demands on you as a leader change.

Didn't See It Coming

When conditions change, you have to change too. Complexity skills are often what got you in the door. They are about changing how you do what you do. How you approach doing the job having done so. How you think and behave so your people eagerly receive your leadership. Getting the how right is the challenge when it comes to sophistication.

Complex challenges are easier to wrap your mind around. You can measure them. Sophistication challenges are not as clear. They can be more painful as they get into more personal aspects of who you are as a person. But distinguishing between the two challenges is critical. Responding to increased levels of sophistication demands that you do something much harder. You must fundamentally rethink how you spend time, where you focus energy, how you communicate, with whom you develop relationships, and how you look at the big picture to understand when, where, and how to act. As you rise as a leader, sophistication skills take on greater importance.

What are the new capabilities on which your leadership success will depend? More importantly, which skills that you value today should you deemphasize—or resist exercising at all? No matter how good your complexity skills are if you fail to access your sophistication skills by regularly challenging yourself as to what and how you do what you do, you risk stalling as a leader. The authors identify seven inflection points that can trigger a stall in your leadership. You then must craft a narrative that carries your people forward on an inspirational, shared, purpose-based quest—a story that can guide their actions when you are not there to give specific direction at every new turn.

Develop the ability to persuade and influence rather than control. Leading Change Stall When you struggle in your ability to explain and lead change Determine how readily employees and stakeholders receive and embrace your messages about change, and then offer new behaviors and practices for engaging people, so they grasp, welcome, and act on your initiatives. Combine empathetic understanding with discernment, creativity, and determination. Authority Stall When your authority slips in the eyes of followers Assess your own sources of leadership authority and invest in your own self-development.

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Focus Stall When you fail to focus your time and energy to have the most impact Anticipate this stall by examining how you allocate your time and energy. What should you be doing and what should you let others do? Become a leader of leaders, multiplying your own leadership success through the success of others. The authors walk you through each of these stalls to help you overcome or avoid them. Of course, self-awareness is key here—understanding the impact you have on others.

Elevate your view and understand where you are and determine where you need to be. They call for a three-part approach: Every stall is an opportunity for growth. Any one of them has the potential to derail even the best of leaders. While they may creep up on us, we can see them coming and apply the proper antidote. And even though these seven challenges never really go away, we can create some life habits that keep them at bay.

Nieuwhof writes from a been-there-done-that Christian perspective about the issues as they manifest themselves in our lives and follows up each one with a chapter on how to combat it. These issues affect everyone and some you'll find hit close to home. The seven challenges are: Cynicism Disappointment and frustration often end in cynicism.

Ask them and they know all about it. It may get us in the door, but character is what determines how far we go. Technology just makes it worse. Eliminate hurry from your life. And this comment could pull any of us up short: For me, the sense that a conversation is going nowhere always carries with it an underpinning of judgment and even arrogance on my part.

Which, of course, should drive me right back to my knees in confession. Irrelevance Irrelevance happens when what you do no longer connects to the culture and the people around you. That gap is a factor of how fast things change relative to you. Change staves off irrelevance. Get radical about change. Surround yourself with younger people.

Seek change to transform you. Burnout Burnout saps the meaning and wonder out of life. Signs of burnout include among other things: Getting out of this state begins by admitting it and then figuring out how to live today so you will thrive tomorrow. What does that look like? Nieuwhof recommends some concrete steps you can take to bring you back from burnout. Go deep enough and take enough time to recover so that you begin to feel gratitude for the process. Emptiness Ironically, success often makes you feel empty.

Humility will win you what pride never will: Other people naturally gravitate toward people who live for a cause beyond themselves. The practical advice found here will benefit anyone on their leadership journey. Editors Ken Blanchard and Renee Broadwell have collected some good essays on the subject. The servant aspect of servant leadership is all about turning the hierarchy upside down and helping everyone throughout the organization develop great relationships, get great results, and, eventually, delight their customers.

Covey says that trust is essential. They serve first and they extend trust first. Leadership is the by-product and positional authority is, at best, an afterthought. They stay humble by turning the organizational chart upside down and serving others. They communicate to their teams the goals and values that form their culture so that everyone stays in focus.

They are aware of their own strengths and weaknesses—through feedback and by following the greatest servant leader of all time [—Jesus]. And they continually strive to do the right thing. It is not based on a series of transactions, but on the promise of being there when someone needs you most.

They are setting up a transactional relationship that is likely to promote self-interest. Just like any relationship in which trust is the basis, it is the combination of a lot of little things that makes all the difference. Now I know better. Our message is always given to an audience of one—the person we are serving.

In serving others, our message is our lives. We must live our message for our message to have life. One person at a time means we will never be too busy to help one person in need. To lead effectively we must understand what is going on inside of us, so that we can lead ourselves. Only when we have developed a consistent habit of doing that can we then better understand and lead others and then collectively our teams and organizations. In The Mind of the Leader , authors Rasmus Hougaard and Jaqueline Carter of the Potential Project, report that there are three mental qualities that stand out as being foundational for leaders today: Mindfulness, Selflessness, and Compassion.

They call it MSC Leadership. All three work together and enrich the others. Mindfulness Mindfulness is about managing your attention and in turn managing your thoughts. Mindfulness enables us to respond to our circumstances instead of reacting. The two key qualities of mindfulness are focus and awareness. More specifically, a stronger sense of selfless confidence arises, helping you develop the second quality of MSC Leadership: Selflessness combines strong self-confidence with a humble intention to be of service. Selflessness is often thought of as weak by the uninitiated.

It is important that selflessness is combined with self-confidence. You become an enabler. You have a strong focus on the well-being of your people and your organization. Leaders are three times more likely than lower-level employees to interrupt coworkers, multitask during meetings, raise their voices, and say insulting things.

We have seen many leaders that think they are above the mores of everyone else. Mindfulness plays a big part in that. In this way, compassion arises as a natural outgrowth of selflessness. Wisdom gives compassion a compass so that choices can be made that are thoughtful and holistic. This includes sometimes doing things that are difficult bit will benefit the culture and the organization in the long term. This book provides a well-articulated and comprehensive look at these essential qualities of leadership. Charles Dawes was often one such guest. In Portrait of an American: Dawes by Bascom Timmons, he quotes from Dawes diary about one such gathering: He was considering the appointment of a minister to a foreign country.

There were two candidates. The President outlined their qualifications, which seemed almost identical. Both were able, experienced, honest, and competent. Each was equally entitled to preference from a political standpoint. Then he told this little story, an incident apparently so unimportant that, except for its consequences, it never would have been told, an incident so trivial that the ordinary man would have forgotten it.

But McKinley was not an ordinary man. The President said that, years before, when he was a member of the House of Representatives, he boarded a streetcar on Pennsylvania Avenue one stormy night, and took the last seat in the car, next to the rear door. An old and bent washerwoman, dripping wet, entered, carrying a heavy basket. She walked to the other end of the car and stood in the aisle.

Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog: Personal Development Archives

No one offered her a seat, tired and forlorn as she looked. One of the candidates whom the President was considering—he did not name him to us—was sitting in the seat near which she was standing. He was reading a newspaper, which he shifted so as not to seem to see her, and retained his seat. Representative McKinley arose, walked down the aisle, picked up the basket of washing, and led the old lady back to his seat, which he gave her. The present candidate did not look up from his newspaper. He did not see McKinley or what he had done. This was the story. The candidate never knew what we then knew, that this little act of selfishness, or rather this little omission of an act of consideration for others, had deprived him of that which would have crowned his ambition of perhaps a lifetime.

Dawes relates this lesson: We never know what determines one's career in life. Indeed, it may be these little forgotten deeds, accumulated, are the more important factors ; for it is they which must, in many cases, provide us with the opportunity to do the greater deeds, and we unconscious of it. Why comes this reward in life? Why that disappointment or failure? We cannot know with certainty. This we can know, however, and this story illustrates it: There is no act of kindliness, however small, which may not help us in life; and there is no act of unkindness, however trivial, which may not hurt us.

The habitual doing of kindness always adds to our happiness, for kindness done is duty performed. Unkindness always breeds an unhappy spirit, for unkindness is duty neglected. They may have cause for concern. This externalized perspective is futile. It robs the complainer of their growth potential. How can we be proactive in developing strong character in our up-and-coming leaders?

Mentor emerging leaders on character-based issues. This includes taking personal responsibility, developing determination, knowing how to do what is right over what is easy, being trustworthy in all areas of life, and being accountable for their choices. If your up-and-coming leader is playing this game of externalization, challenge him or her to think more constructively. When they focus on leveraging their internal skills, strengths, and resources, finding creative solutions becomes easier.

Build Confidence by Leveraging Strengths Some Millennials believe they possess an unlimited well of knowledge just because they are able to find the answer to just about any question on Google or YouTube. This phenomenon is validated by research. Yale doctoral candidate, Matt Fisher, and his colleagues Mariel Goddu and Frank Keil, conducted fascinating research on this topic. They asked people a series of questions that appeared to be general knowledge but were actually difficult to answer. Some of the participants had access to the internet and others not.

Use an assessment to enable your emerging leader to discover his or her strengths. The insights gained will build confidence and aid productivity, performance, and engagement at work. Support your Millennial leader with personal mentoring to gain confidence. They will develop the ability to turn perceived failures into stepping stones to move forward and achieve greater business results. It is a powerful mentoring tool to help your Millennial leader get a deeper understanding of where they can create win-win synergy.

And, is there something I care deeply about all the time at a core level? Guide your emerging leader to figure out which aspects of his job energize him or her. This knowledge helps them to discover their core passion. Present your Millennial leader with opportunities to make a positive contribution to their community and to the world. It will enable them to align their personal and professional goals, and you will be rewarded with a highly motivated, dedicated, and focused employee. Will you be left high and dry when your Baby Boomers retire?

Step up and take action to implement real-world, rubber-meets-the-road leadership development strategies. Prioritize time to transfer skills, knowledge, and experience to boost accountability, build confidence, and maximize collaboration in your up-and-coming leader so that your business will thrive even after your last Baby Boomer has retired. She is a member of Forbes Coaches Council, is a leadership and sales development expert and author of the new book, Millennials Matter: The careers of one-half to two-thirds of managers and leaders will derail.

These archetypes are present across all organizations, genders, and levels of seniority. Captain Fantastic These people are human wrecking balls known for being insensitive, arrogant, dismissive and emotionally volatile. This archetype gets more people into trouble than any other. In short, they lack interpersonal skills.

Cast relates a conversation he had with Stuart Kaplan, the director of leadership recruiting at Google to make this point: As you progress [in your career], your relationship with others is more important than your knowledge of and relationship with data. This need kicks in as you move into middle and upper management.

You have to suppress your ego, let go of having the answer and embrace the relational world. It becomes less about having competencies and more about engendering trust. The Solo Flier The Solo Flier is a strong individual contributor, but they have difficulty building and leading teams. They create problems for themselves by overmanaging which makes it difficult to build and lead an effective team. Some research studies state that it affects over half of managers who derailed.

They lack curiosity preferring the status quo. They protect themselves by being rigid and aloof and acting with complete assurance. Then, when challenged with a contrary point of view, they become combative and aggressive, like Captain Fantastic. That is, they lack a holistic understanding of the organization. They struggle with converting ideas into action. Say no when you have to and delegate task to keep things moving. Having the Right Stuff To avoid derailing, you must learn to lead yourself first.

And of the three, taking the initiative is the most important. Avoiding derailing requires that you continuously reflect on your performance. Know where you want to go and understand where you are. Then take steps to bridge the gaps. Cast provides abundant examples of the archetypes and corrective measures for each. We are all a work-in-progress. Carter Cast provides an assessment on his website to find out where your career is vulnerable. The better you become, the better your leadership becomes. It is a misconception of leadership that if you engage in the best practices of a great leader, you will become that leader.

Applying the idea that if I do this or if I have this quality I will become a great leader like my chosen mentor, can derail your leadership development. That said, there are principles you can discover that if adhered to will propel you in the right direction. Harvard professor Nancy Koehn illuminates some of these principles for us in Forged in Crisis as seen through the lives of five exemplary leaders: These principles set the stage for leadership effectiveness, but the decision to step into leadership is yours alone.

We have to work at it. We can all get there. Leaders are not born, they are forged. Each of the leaders Koehn has chosen faced an uncertain outcome in the midst of a crisis. Shackleton was marooned on an Antarctic ice floe trying to bring his men home alive; Lincoln was on the verge of seeing the Union collapse even as he tried to save it; escaped slave Douglass faced possible capture while wanting to free black Americans held in slavery; Bonhoeffer was agonizing over how to counter absolute evil with faith while imprisoned by the Gestapo; Carson raced against the cancer ravaging her to finish her book Silent Spring, in a bid to save the planet.

The crisis that can break one person can give birth to leadership in another. Koehn brings out key lessons common to these people as they struggled with their thoughts in what were do or die situations. Here are some of the lessons that we should all take to heart: It took each of them some of the way. But then, interestingly, ambition ceased to motivate and influence them as it once had. As they discovered a larger purpose and embraced it, each found his or her impetus, strength, and validation in the mission itself.

It was not willful blindness or forced optimism. They knew what they were up against. Time and time again as president, [Lincoln] refused to be goaded by the force of his own emotions or of those around him into taking precipitate action that might compromise his larger mission. Even when he was at his most frustrated, he managed somehow to acknowledge his feelings without acting on them in a way that was destructive to larger matters. They came out the other side of calamity without falling through the floorboards of doubt, without giving up on their mission and themselves. They were not born leaders.

They became leaders through successes, but mostly through failures and mistakes. Leaders can come from anywhere. As we look around the world today, if we are looking for larger-than-life heroes, we misunderstand what leadership is. Although these leaders appear to be larger than life to us now, as you read their stories you see that they are you and me.

They are ordinary people in turbulent and trying circumstances. They were often overwhelmed and depressed, but they kept moving on. What distinguishes these people from many of the leaders we see today is their approach to the experiences of their lives. Throughout their lives, they purposefully extracted the lessons they needed to grow. It was thoughtful and intentional. If you go through life any other way, you are just collecting experiences to no end.

Experiences alone ensure nothing. We must reflect on them to gain insights and learn from them. All of the lessons these leaders learned are relevant to any leader in any situation. James in northwest Spain. I first walked that trail — miles over 29 days — in and have returned twice since. My passion for discovering new hiking trails was what drew me to the Camino, but the lessons from the Camino are what keep me going back.

Here are five of those lessons that have helped me become a better leader. Welcome Help When you walk for a month, you inevitably get lost. I realized that they were sitting there specifically to help direct lost hikers. It was their pastime. That experience taught me that welcoming help from others was not just about the specific piece of help I received when I asked. It also made the person helping me feel good and be invested in my success. Ever since the Camino, I have vowed to be more welcoming of help from others, at work and beyond. I plotted out a 29 day itinerary that optimized my distances per day and found a bed I could reserve each night.

That exercise took days, tapped my analytical skills, and resulted in a large spreadsheet that I was proud to show off. That is until I realized that I had recreated the same itinerary that several guidebooks had already figured out. People have been walking the Camino for over years.

Instead of taking a step back to see what I could have learned from others who went before me, I plunged right into the task. Since the Camino, I am more thoughtful when I start a new project to look for lessons from the past. Think About the Future Any trail that has remained popular for over years can teach us how to build longevity in our organization.

That same ethos is important for leaders. Leaders need to think about their successors as they make decisions in their jobs. Their goal should be to leave their role and team in a better position than they inherited it. Everyone dresses in much the same way while walking, giving few clues from their outward appearance about their background.

Hikers learn to reserve judgment about others. Instead of silently critiquing others, hikers support each other as they go through the same difficult challenge of walking across a country. They may not know how or why another person got on the trail, but they know the shared challenges they are facing and simply focus on those. Stretch Yourself Walking across a country sounded like a crazy thing to do before I did it.

By doing it, I gained self-confidence to do other bold things. Walking the Camino emboldened me to check off a goal that I had long thought was beyond my abilities — writing a book. While I was walking the Camino, I thought a lot about my career and the leadership lessons I had learned.

I decided to write a book about those insights. That book, Lead Inside the Box: This week, my third book, The Camino Way: I recommend hiking the Camino to anyone who can. The combination of the physical challenge, the alone time for introspection, and the opportunity to meet people from around the world is a wonderful means of self-improvement. Prince can be reached at www. S MART used to be a quantity game. I get more things right. The new smart is about quality.

Specifically, the quality of your thinking, your listening, and your relating and collaborative skills. Those skills, while uniquely human, are not what we are typically trained to do and require a deal of messy personal development. We will need to become better thinkers, listeners, relators, and collaborators, while working to overcome our culture of obsessive individualism in order to thrive in the SMA.

Humility is the mindset that will make all of this possible. In short, say the authors, we need to acquire and continually develop four fundamental NewSmart behaviors: Quieting Ego Quieting Ego has always been the challenge for us humans. Managing Self—Thinking and Emotions We need to get above ourselves to see ourselves impartially.

Otherness To create these new behaviors and mindsets, it should become obvious that we need to enlist the help of others. It means creating opportunities for people to connect and build trust. He has written at least a dozen books on leadership that I am aware of. The Power of Positive Leadership summarizes much of his thinking and provides a great introduction to all of his other work.

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