Posts Tagged ‘investment’

The Quintessential Leader Perspective on the Struggle To and For Change

Posted: January 19, 2015 in Qualities of a Quintessential Leader, Quintessential Leadership, Quintessential Leadership is an Art
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martin luther king 1966

“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Greek word agōnízomai, from which the English word agonize comes, means to struggle intensely. Real change involves real agony. As Dr. King so astutely observed, change is not inevitable.

Inertia is our natural state. Inertia is comfortable. But inertia is also stagnant. Too often, we settle for inertia as our state of being because it’s easy and because that’s the way we (or someone before us) have always done things, have always thought about things, and have always been.

Inertia, as all of us who’ve studied physics know, requires a lot of force to overcome. But, for change, the force comes primarily from within us in the elements of desire, choice, and action combined. (more…)

Choice or Force: Which is Quintessential Leadership?

Posted: October 23, 2014 in Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership, Qualities of a Quintessential Leader, Quintessential Leadership, Quintessential Leadership is an Art
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key component of quintessential leadershipI recently heard a discussion that contrasted the way God and Jesus Christ interact with humanity now (the terms “hands off” and “choice” – or free will – were used interchangeably) and the way the Bible says they will interact with humanity in the future (the term “hands on” was used).

Words are important. The way we construct and present words to present ideas are important. And the way we define relationships (such as similarity and contrasts) with words is important.

Equally important is whether we listen, how we listen, and whether we are critically thinking about what we hear or we just accept it at face value as being accurate.

Quintessential leaders pay very close attention to both sides of this equation at all times.

Therefore, for example, if someone sets up a contrast, then they present two opposite things. If  interchangeable words are used on one side of the contrast, then there are, either expressly stated or implied, interchangeable words on the other side of the contrast. Since it’s a contrast, the words (stated or implied) on each side are opposites of each other.

So, in the discussion I talked about above, if “hand’s off” equals “choice” (which was expressly stated) then, in contrast, “hand’s on” implicitly equals “no choice.” And the lack of choice equals force.

But is that true?

Is it accurate?

And is it consistent with the written record we have that shows how God and Jesus Christ (whom we are repeatedly assured are consistent, don’t lie, and have the same character and characteristics forever) have interacted with humanity, who they created, from the beginning?

The answer is “no.” While I could go to many places in the Bible to prove this, I will use the first example I immediately thought about to refute this, which is in Genesis 4:3-7.

The conversation (and I have no doubt it was a lengthy one but we just see the summary here) between the Lord and Cain shows explicitly how God and Jesus Christ lead humans and what that relationship has looked like, looks like, and will always look like.

The Lord (I AM in the Old Testament and Jesus Christ in the New Testament) had the ability to force Cain to do the right thing. But He didn’t do that.

Instead, He laid out the big picture of the framework within which Cain had to operate. He educated Cain on the options he had and what the consequences of executing those options were. Then He coached Cain on which option would lead to a successful outcome.

But Cain had to choose which option he wanted to pursue. Why?

force unquintessential leadershipForce can get the results a leader wants, but while force may win the battle, it loses the war.

A person who is forced to do something, whether by fear, intimidation, coercion, or bullying, is passively participating, but they have no investment, no commitment, no heart, soul, and mind conviction behind their actions. 

Using force puts all the accountability and responsibility on the shoulders of the person exerting the force.

Finally, force requires a total shutdown of logic, reasoning, and critical thinking (all attributes that humans were created with and are expected to use). Essentially, force creates rote action accompanied by suspension of all the unique elements of our brains and our consciences that make us human. 

In other words, force creates the same superficial and unknowing conditioned responses in humans that Pavlov’s famous experiments created in dogs.

choice quintessential leadershipWhen choices are presented, on the other hand, they require active participation on the part of the people they are presented to. Choices carry responsibility and accountability, and they require logic, reasoning, critical thinking, and action.

Not all choices carry the same weight and, therefore, may not require a total heart, soul, and mind investment and commitment (for example, choosing between eggs and toast or cereal for breakfast), but all choices, when they are executed, have some level of investment and commitment.

Choices also create a partnership between leaders and their teams. There are obligations on both sides and there are rewards on both sides. One of the greatest rewards can be growth as good choices are made that lead to greater progress and productivity, resulting in successful outcomes for everyone.

Even bad choices serve a vital purpose. They help us to learn what not to do the next time. As we deal with the accountability and responsibility of the consequences of bad choices, it spurs us to critically think about what we did that led to those consequences and to think about what we will change in the future to produce different – and, hopefully, better – results.

God and Jesus Christ are the epitomes of quintessential leadership and the models we as human quintessential leaders strive to perfectly and totally emulate in who we are, what we are, how we are, and how we lead.

So, choice or force: which is quintessential leadership?

“Qualities of Quintessential Leaders” – New Book Available Now!

Posted: September 13, 2013 in Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership, General Things about Quintessential Leadership, Qualities of a Quintessential Leader, Quintessential Leadership
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qualities-of-quintessential-leadersQualities of Quintessential Leaders is now available on Amazon and on The Quintessential Leader website (go to The Quintessential Leader home page, and click on the “Get 10% off eBooks purchases of $10 or more for a limited time only!” link and you’ll receive a 10% discount on all downloadable eBook orders of $10 or more). 

My book description says it all:

“If you are reading this, you are in a leadership position for someone. 

Substitute the words “example,” “mentor,” or “role model,” “teacher,” “coach,” “parent,” “grandparent,” “aunt,” “uncle,” “friend,” and “neighbor,” in addition to the traditional functions associated with leadership positions for the word “leader,” and you’ll see we all fill leadership positions for the people around us.

How are we doing? Qualities of Quintessential Leaders will help us all to answer that question and to find out how to improve and change so that we pass quintessential leadership qualities on to all those whose lives intersect with ours.

What we do and how we do it will make a far greater impact than any words we can ever say. This book will help ensure that the footprint each of us leaves behind is one that is imitable.”

How you can purchase Qualities of Quintessential Leaders:

Paperback: Qualities of Quintessential Leaders (http://www.amazon.com/Qualities-Quintessential-Leaders-Sandra-Ross/dp/1492714151/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1379106861&sr=8-2&keywords=qualities+of+quintessential+leaders)

Kindle: Qualities of Quintessential Leaders (http://www.amazon.com/Qualities-of-Quintessential-Leaders-ebook/dp/B00F5YOJ12/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379106861&sr=8-1&keywords=qualities+of+quintessential+leaders)

icon_best_value Qualities of Quintessential Leaders in The Quintessential Leader‘s online store as a downloadable PDF eBook (http://shop.thequintessentialleader.com/Qualities-of-Quintessential-Leaders-QLDR-QualitiesBKDownLoad.htm)

Recommended Quintessential Leadership Articles from the Web – 5/10/13

Posted: May 13, 2013 in Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership, General Things about Quintessential Leadership, Myths and Misconceptions About Management, Performance Evaluations That Work, Qualities of a Quintessential Leader, Quintessential Leadership, Quintessential Leadership is an Art, Team Building & Development
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Please take some some time to read the Quintessential Leadership article recommendations for the week of May 10, 2013 that are listed below.

In Josh Bersin’s article, he asks the valid and relevant question of whether the traditional – and unproductive and archaic – annual performance appraisal system that most organizations still use should be replaced with a different system. The traditional performance appraisal system is tied to monetary raises and is a once-a-year-event where team members hear – or read – what their supervisor liked and didn’t like about their past year’s job performances. Usually, the only outcome of this system is frustration because this is the first time team members are hearing about things they did that didn’t work, needed to change, or needed to improve. 

Lack of communication, which I believe is an intrinsic problem in all organizations, is inherent in this “hammer-over-the-head” method of evaluating team members. It does not produce positive results and often leads to attrition among the most gifted and talented team members an organization has. In my eBook, Building Teams for Performance, I give a detailed “what-it-looks-like-in-practice” guide to using performance evaluation systems the way that Josh Bersin correctly concludes they should be used.

Quintessential Leader Articles Review 5-10-13Todd Smith gives a quintessential leadership trait in “Making Your Weaknesses Relevant,” by challenging all of us, as quintessential leaders, not to make excuses for our weaknesses – which we all have – but to face them and change them.

Does it ever seem like you’re in over your head? As quintessential leaders, we will have times that we are in over our heads, but Mike Myatt gives some very practical advice about how to be in over our heads without drowning.

In my post, “Quintessential Leadership News for Week Ending 3-15-13,” I challenged each of us, as quintessential leaders, to look into mirrors, not through windows as we examine ourselves and our path as quintessential leaders to make sure there’s a total match-up between what we say and what we do and are. John Baldoni offers an excellent followup to that post with this article.

In Michael McKinney’s article, Better Decision Making, he discusses the quintessential leadership balance between facts and feelings as being a key determinant in the quality of our decision-making. Feelings and emotions have their place, but they should never be the engine that drives us because they are transient and unreliable. Decisions made using feelings and emotions as the primary driving force often leave us in a worse position than if we had done nothing at all.

The Quintessential Leader blog routinely looks at why unquintessential leadership makes organizations dysfunctional. John Bossong rejoins this discussion with his article that looks at how we can identify unquintessential leadership through the signs of an unhealthy organizational culture.

The last article recommendation this week, written by Kristina Lacida, highlights, as “The Mysteries of Quintessential Leadership Revealed” discusses in detail, the differences between being a “boss” and being a “leader.” 

I hope all of us have had productive, forward-looking and forward-moving quintessential leadership weeks. I’m sure we’ve had our challenges, our missteps, and our failures. But each of those give us an opportunity to learn and to grow.

And, when it’s all said and done, we get back up and we recommit to our goal, our purpose, one step, one choice, one decision at a time. This, my friends, is a marathon, not a sprint.

May the distance we cover between now and the next time we get together be better in every way than the distance we’ve covered already.

Recommended Quintessential Leadership Articles from the Web – 5/2/13

Posted: May 2, 2013 in Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership, General Things about Quintessential Leadership, Myths and Misconceptions About Management, Qualities of a Quintessential Leader, Quintessential Leadership, Quintessential Leadership is an Art, Team Building & Development
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As is the case with all quintessential leaders, I read a lot and I read widely. I read very little fiction, but when I do, I’m very selective, looking for substance and relevant rather than fluff and popularity. 

As an aside, I am one of those rare, it seems, people who eschews the idea of escapism and “feel good” when I am investing my time, energy, and effort into something.

If I don’t learn something or there are not some deep and meaningful principles I can come away with to think about and apply, then I’m simply not going to spend my time with it.

Because I am human, there’s a limit on time for me. I certainly don’t want to come to the end of my quota to discover that I wasted the majority of it.  

In pursuit of my commitment to quintessential leadership and my desire to be, at all times, in all ways, a quintessential leader, I am constantly reading articles on leadership and thinking about how and if they fit the quintessential leadership criteria.

Here is a summary of some articles I’ve read recently that certainly point to the quintessential leadership model in some way. I’d like to share those with you and encourage you to read them.

This article on 8 ways leaders undermine themselves from Forbe’s is a good overview of the subject I discuss in-depth in Building Trust and Being Trustworthy.

In conjunction, part of building trust and being trustworthy includes the ability to admit we are wrong when we are and taking responsibility for fixing what we’ve broken quickly, without blame, without excuses. This article by Amy Rees Anderson on this quintessential leader trait is excellent.

Mike Myatt’s article on why organizations suffer from leadership dysfunction offers a very good tie-in to the subject of organizational dysfunction, which I elaborate on in the Quintessential Leader blog post, “Organization Dysfunction – A Total Absence of Quintessential Leadership at the Top.” I encourage everyone to read both articles because, as Myatt correctly observes, we’re seeing leadership dysfunction become the organizational norm, instead of the exception.

Another must-read article from Mike Myatt demands that each of us examine our commitment to be quintessential leaders. Why? Because he discusses the 10 things every leader should challenge. These 10 things must be on our minds continually and the challenges to them must be continual.

This separates quintessential leaders from everyone else. As I ask myself constantly, I urge you to ask yourself: am I a quintessential leader or am I everyone else?

As I discuss in “Quintessential Leaders and Investment, Action, and Authenticity,” what you and I do and are reveals how great our investment in quintessential leadership is and how authentically we are living and being quintessential leaders.

A thought-provoking article by Manie Bosman on how unquintessential leadership traits – bullying and micromanaging among others, which I cover comprehensively in “Unquintessential Leadership” – affect us neurologically and lead to measurable negative outcomes, and if not changed or eliminated, will eventually lead to catastrophic and total failure.

An atmosphere of fear, intimidation, threats, and power plays is not something a quintessential leader will either create or tolerate. This is all around us in every part of our lives to one degree or another. What do you and I, as quintessential leaders, do about it?

The last article, by Dan McCarthy, is entitled “Is it Time to Create Your Own Succession Plan?” As quintessential leaders, this must be an integral part of our team-building process. For a framework of what this looks like in practice, I recommend “Building Teams for Performance.”

Each time I acquire a new team to build and lead, this is one of the first things on my to-do list: to identify the person or people who have the qualities that, combined with my coaching and leadership, will enable them to replace me.

No one is irreplaceable. And nothing is certain in life but death and taxes.

Therefore, a quintessential leader who wants to ensure that the legacy and foundation he or she is laying continues after he or she is out of the picture, must identify, coach, and grow his or her potential successor(s). To do anything else is unquintessential leadership. 

This post gives some good resources for quintessential leaders. I hope they will provide benefits, insights, and growth as we continue on the path of quintessential leadership.