I’ve often said that quintessential leadership is an art. It can be learned by anyone, but some of us are more naturally inclined by personality, temperament, perspective, and experience to being quintessential leaders. For us, it’s an extension of who and what we are.
For those to whom this doesn’t come naturally, it’s hard work a lot of the time. But, no matter how we’re naturally constructed, this is not impossible work for anyone.
Whether we become quintessential leaders depends on whether we want to be and whether we’re committed to it no matter what and we diligently apply and grow in that commitment, with the evidence of that clearly visible in who and what we’re becoming.
So let’s talk about a few tangible ways that quintessential leaders think and do differently from others. I will be identifying and discussing these from time to time and today’s post is the first discussion.
All of these should be things that each of us looks at in our own leadership mirrors to see how much we’re reflecting them. If the reflection is clear, then we need to continue to keep that clear. If it’s dim or absent, then we’ve still got a lot of work to do.
Spoiler alert: we all still have a lot of work to do. None of us are perfect at any of these all the time.
However, these are a few of the baseline benchmarks against which we should routinely measure, in-depth, how our journey to quintessential leadership is going: where we’ve been, where we are, and where we need to go. (more…)
The Quintessential Leader 