In this post-truth, Orwellian society that we now find ourselves in, but as quintessential leaders we must strive not to be part of, deception and dishonesty have become the norm and have become acceptable.
“What is truth?,” sarcastically asked the man who washed his hands publicly of the blood of Jesus Christ before sentencing Him to death by crucifixion at the insistence of the Jews in Judea. (more…)
July 4th is referred to as Independence Day in the United States. Designated as a national holiday in America, July 4th has devolved into little more than the national embarrassingly-cheesy Boston, MA and Washington, DC song-and-dance performances followed by admittedly-beautiful fireworks displays, as well as an excuse for individuals to have a weekend to play with fireworks. (more…)
“I’m so…you make me…I just can’t be around you anymore! I’m leaving!”
“Fine! Go! Walk away!”
“Fine! I will!”
Two otherwise-mature adults, their bodies defensive and tight with rage, turn their backs on and stomp away from each other with whatever led to this emotional climax unresolved in the heat of the moment like two three-year-olds fighting over a toy.
Immature? Yes.
Can we all identify? Yes.
Have we all done it? Yes.
The purpose of this blog is to define what quintessential leadership is, what it is not, and to show what it looks like in practice.
Being quintessential leaders is the goal. Becoming quintessential leaders is a process. And the reality is that none of us are completely there yet.
But we all, if we’re reading this, want to become and are on the path to being quintessential leaders.
Sometimes it’s helpful to take a unquintessential leader moment – we all have them – and analyze it to see what happened and why it happened.
Then, as we think it through, we can identify what steps (i.e., what it looks like) we could have taken and, hopefully, in the future will take to be a quintessential leader in this area of our lives.
Handling the heat of the moment consistently as a quintessential leader is one of the most difficult areas we will routinely encounter in our lives.
We face it, sometimes on a daily basis, as parents, as children, as siblings, as spouses, as friends, and as team members.
Because intense emotions rise to the surface in these encounters, it is difficult, at times, to step back, so to speak, dial down the emotional aspect, and exercise the discipline and self-control not to end up saying things we don’t mean, hurting feelings, and stomping away in anger with nothing resolved.
And sometimes the words we say are so harsh, the feelings are so deeply hurt, and the abandonment so angry and final that incurable wounds are left and relationships are damaged beyond repair in this lifetime.
No one wants this.
So let’s examine what quintessential leadership looks like in the heat of the moment. In the process we will see the places in these encounters where things can quickly either go right or wrong, leading to a domino effect that either leads to strengthening the relationship between two people or, at worst, destroying it permanently.
What causes the heat of the moment?
It’s usually something as simple as a word or a gesture.
Whichever it is, it pushes our buttons on such a fundamental level that our first reaction is extreme and negative emotionally.
When this happens, our gut response is to immediately turn off, shut down, and shut off whatever provoked our emotional firestorm.
We do this with defensive and angry words – most often in the form of a vicious verbal attack designed to hit below the belt for maximum effect – and defensive gestures (finger pointing, aggressive leaning in, etc.).
If this doesn’t shut up the person who has pushed our buttons and they try to explain why they said or did what they said or did, then we get angrier and more determined to stop the source of our emotional turmoil.
We pull out all the big guns of accusation and intimidation, talking over the other person, refusing to listen to anything they say, getting louder, angrier, and more aggressive to stop them.
If that doesn’t work, then finally we spit out the words at the very beginning of this post that convey that our disgust, our hatred (in that moment), and our rejection of that person is so deep that it has rendered us unable to even to complete a thought or a sentence so we have no choice but to leave.
This is an unquintessential leader response.
And our actions and words create anger, hurt, and frustration in the person we’re trying to shut down, so they have an unquintessential leader response as well.
In other words, everyone fails to be a quintessential leader. And if the chasm we’ve created is too wide and too deep to be filled or bridged, we’ve also destroyed a relationship.
What does quintessential leadership look like in the heat of the moment?
First, quintessential leaders put the brakes on after the first gust of their emotional upheaval appears. They know their triggers well, but they also recognize that words and gestures that may mean one thing to them may not mean the same thing to other people.
So, instead of jumping to the conclusion that they know what the other person means by a word or a gesture, quintessential leaders engage with the person to find out what is behind the word or the gesture.
In other words, quintessential leaders put their own ideas, reactions, and assumptions aside and they start a conversation with the other person.
But starting a conversation is not enough.
Quintessential leaders listen to the other person. By listening, I mean they let the other person explain fully what they meant by what they said or did (there might even be an apology if they realize it was wrong or inappropriate) without interruption.
Quintessential leaders hear the words, they process the words, and they don’t make mental assumptions and arguments while impatiently waiting for the other person to get through talking.
Quintessential leaders then affirm that they heard the other person by summarizing what that person said. There may be a place here – if it is appropriate (most of the time it is not) and if it can be done peaceably, kindly, and gently – for quintessential leaders to explain their initial response to the word or gesture the other person used.
It is at this point that potential conflict is defused and a meaningful dialogue that can benefit both people starts. This is part of how we get to know, to understand, and to learn about each other, which is the quintessential leader way.
But what if neither person was a quintessential leader in the heat of the moment and they both ended up stomping off in anger?
There is still an opportunity to be a quintessential leader.
One action does not define who we are. If it did, we’d all be toast.
It is the sum total of our actions that show whether, in the balance, we’re on the path to becoming quintessential leaders or not.
The next opportunity to be a quintessential leader for both people is to reach out and apologize and extend peace.
It doesn’t matter whether we were the attacker or the recipient of the attack in the heat of the moment.
As quintessential leaders we bear the responsibility to, as much as lies within our ability, do the right thing.
It may be that there is no acceptance of or response to our overture to make peace. That doesn’t mean we don’t do it anyway. It is the right thing to do. Always.
If the other person doesn’t accept it or respond to it, then we know that we’ve done what quintessential leaders do and we can have a clear conscience going forward.
And we’ve had a teachable moment for how we need to respond to all our future in the heat of the moments. We can learn valuable lessons even in the worst circumstances and those lessons should change us for the better.
Now is the time we all look in our own mirrors of our own lives. No, as tempting as it is, we don’t look around at everybody else. Look at yourself, just as I look at myself.
Are you and I quintessential leaders all the time in the heat of the moment?
Are you and I quintessential leaders sometimes and unquintessential leaders other times in the heat of the moment?
Are you and I always unquintessential leaders in the heat of the moment?
The odds are favorable that most of us fall into the category of the second question I asked. And that means we need to do some homework.
We need to figure out when we are sometimes unquintessential leaders in the heat of the moment what causes it (triggers, buttons) and why (response) we are.
Then we need to work on addressing those whats and whys so that they don’t light the emotional fire in us that makes us unquintessential leaders.
We can’t hold other people responsible for them (“well, if XYZ hadn’t said or done that, I wouldn’t have reacted that way”). That’s an excuse and a justification that makes everybody but us responsible for the changes we need to make.
This is our work on ourselves in becoming quintessential leaders and no one can do that but us. And some of this work may be extremely painful and it may last the rest of our lives.
But if we’re committed to becoming quintessential leaders, then whatever it takes to reach that goal is worth it.
How are we doing?
A discernible trait of quintessential leaders is that we are continually striving for authenticity in every part of who, what, and how we are. It is an easily-identifiable part of our character which is borne out by our behavior.
One of the easiest aspects of behavior that shows us what both unquintessential leadership and quintessential leadership looks like is in our verbal and written communication with others.
Whether we are authentic or unauthentic is plain to see by what words we say and write and how we say and write them.
The words we choose and the method we use to convey those words provide vital insights into whether we are striving for authenticity or whether we are, at the heart, core, and soul of who we are, either struggling with inauthenticity or we are truly committed to being inauthentic as a matter of course.
I make the distinction between struggling with inauthenticity and being committed to it because it’s important for all of us to understand that quintessential leaders will struggle at times with inauthenticity, while unquintessential leaders don’t struggle at all with it because being inauthentic is a committed way of being for them.
So what makes the difference between struggling with inauthenticity and being committed to it?
Awareness is the difference.
Quintessential leaders who are being inauthentic are not aware of being inauthentic, but as soon as they become aware of the inauthenticity, they commit to changing it immediately.
Unquintessential leaders, on the other hand, are fully aware of being inauthentic and are determined to remain inauthentic.
How do I know this? Because I’ve struggled with inauthenticity at times and not even realized it. However, once it hit me between the eyes, opening my eyes to an area of inauthenticity, I immediately made and fulfilled the commitment to change it.
Not being aware of inauthenticity is a part of the growth cycle for humans and the mature development of quintessential leaders (if all of us were already perfect, we’d have absolutely nothing to do and no place to go and life would be interminably boring and meaningless).
However, it is often the case – to our shame and discredit – that as we who are striving to be quintessential leaders are unaware of our own areas of inauthenticity, we are eager to and constantly pointing, in public venues and in condemning language, out the areas of inauthenticity in other growing-into-quintessential-leaders who are unaware of their own areas of inauthenticity.
This is unquintessential leadership behavior. Quintessential leaders examine themselves and they focus on changing what they need to change. They do not constantly exalt themselves as paragons of virtue and continually look around at everyone else and proclaim, for the whole world to see, their faults and shortcomings.
Instead, they work diligently to be an example, in every area of their lives, of what quintessential leadership looks like. They know that action – their own work on themselves – can be a powerful motivator and teacher for everyone with whom their lives intersect.
They also know that constant and public criticism and condemnation is not only a powerful demotivator, but a lousy example for anyone to follow and emulate (unfortunately, human nature tends toward this kind of behavior, so there are always plenty of admirers and supporters in criticism and condemnation of other people).
So before we look at what authenticity in communication looks like, let’s first look at what it doesn’t look like.
Vladimar Nabokov wrote, “Words without experience are meaningless.” I would clarify this to say that any words spoken or written without experience or empathy (literally the ability and choice to walk in the shoes of someone else’s experience and understand that experience from their perspective) and compassion are meaningless.
Inauthenticity in communication says and writes words that are empty and hollow because the person communicating them either has never experienced what they are communicating about or they lack empathy and compassion, choosing to assume they know something they don’t or choosing to pass judgment without facts, without understanding, and without knowledge.
This is unquintessential leadership because pride and arrogance are behind the communication as well as a total lack of kindness and gentleness. In other words, the communicator believes, even though they don’t have clue nor do they care what they’re talking about, that they are entitled to say or write the words as well as being harsh and condemning in the process.
Inauthenticity in communication is also evident in the common behavior of simply parroting cliches, “conventional wisdom,” and idioms because it seems like the right thing to say or write.
There is no thought or depth that goes into these utterances. In fact, this is the cheap and easy way out: we throw a well-worn phrase that sounds good and we’ve heard all our lives at someone else, check it off our list (while patting ourselves on the back for our generosity and benevolence toward the poor souls we communicated with), erase it permanently, and go blissfully on with our unimpacted lives without missing a beat.
Parroting as a method of communication is unquintessential leadership for a couple of reasons.
The first is motivation. We’re communicating something we’ve always heard – but most of the time have not had to put to the test of veracity through experience – because it makes us feel better, not because it will make the person we’re communicating with feel better.
The second reason parroting is unquintessential leadership is because we are not taking the person we’re communicating with into account at all. We don’t seek insight and understanding by taking the time to really listen to them – we may hear them, but there’s a world of difference between just hearing and really listening – nor do we take the time to think about the kind of communication we would want from someone if we were in the same or similar circumstances.
By simply parroting something we’ve heard but have no evidence or proof of its value and/or truth, we effectively complete dismiss the person we’re communicating with and we tell them we don’t care about them and they are not important enough to us for us to waste our time with them.
So now that we know what it doesn’t look like, let’s discuss what authenticity in communication – quintessential leadership – does look like.
Unfortunately, as Nabokov stated, experience is often how we gain the ability to be authentic in our communication with other people. However, whether we have authenticity in our communication with others still comes down to us making the choice to be authentic.
Choosing authenticity in our communication with other people requires an investment from us. In them. In time. In effort. In carefulness.
In a society where unquintessential leadership abounds, as well as entitlement and “it’s all about me,” the selflessness required for this kind of investment has all but disappeared.
But quintessential leaders know that they don’t have to have experienced something to be authentic in their communication with other people. And because of their commitment to developing unimpeachable character, two of the highly-developed traits they have are empathy and compassion for other people.
Empathy, like most of the other traits that make quintessential leaders trustworthy, is very rare and getting rarer. Most people believe that sympathy and empathy are the same thing and they are not.
Sympathy takes no long-term investment in another person: it tends to be a hands-off, “one-and-done” event.
Empathy, on the other hand, is a hands-on, long-term, hand-in-hand walk through the journey of – and with – another person. It is seeing through their eyes, understanding through their thoughts and emotions, and listening with interaction to know what is really behind their communication (often the words that are said or written have something else entirely behind them).
Compassion is always a by-product of and a companion of empathy. It is understanding, encouraging, invested, gentle, kind, and patient. It can be – and should be – the result of our own struggles, setbacks, and hard times in life.
But because compassion and empathy are so interrelated, many people choose a lack of compassion because they offer only sympathy as a one-time-shot to other people.
These same people also, ironically, do everything in their power to evoke compassion toward themselves, including constant manipulation, self-exaltation, and telling everyone how they are not like all those other poor slobs in the world who don’t deserve anyone’s compassion.
This is the Scarlett O’Hara (Gone With the Wind) syndrome, because like Margaret Mitchell’s infamous anti-heroine, in the end, everything is all about them and they refuse to share the stage of life with anyone else.
Another area that demonstrates the authenticity of quintessential leaders in communication with other people is that quintessential leaders do not parrot cliches, “conventional wisdom,” or idioms. Instead, quintessential leaders consider carefully the impact of their words and how they use them.
Because quintessential leaders are invested in other people, they understand and are sensitive to the needs that exist.
They are also profoundly aware of the power of words, the impact of words, and the effect of words.
They are not cavalier with words, simply letting whatever comes immediately to mind come out in their speech and writing. They always spend a considerable amount of time looking for ways to deeply and encouragingly communicate and avoiding hurt and offense.
They know and understand that even words that may advocate a course correction should build up and not tear down. That can’t be done with parroting something someone else has said or something they’ve heard all their lives. It can only be done with original thought combined with empathy and compassion.
This is just one aspect of behavior that makes quintessential leaders rare in society today.
But each of us is striving to become a quintessential leader, so this must be a behavior we develop, grow, and exhibit everywhere in our lives and model for all the teams we lead in our lives.
I say this often, but it cannot be repeated too much. If you breathe for a living, you lead at least one team in your life. Quintessential leadership is not confined to organizations, and can, therefore, be dismissed by everyone else.
Somebody in your life is looking to you and depending on you to model leadership for them. It might be your children. It might be your students. It might be your family members. It might be your spouse. It might be your coworkers. It might be your friends. It might be the sports team you coach. It might be the volunteer groups you are involved with. It might be anybody.
So, as always, we must look in our own mirrors and conduct a thorough, extensive, comprehensive, and fearlessly honest evaluation of what our communication with other people looks like.
Are we inauthentic anywhere or everywhere in our communication with other people?
If we are, is it because we lack awareness of our inauthenticity in our communication with other people?
Or is it because we’ve deliberately committed to a path of inauthenticity in our communication with other people?
If we find authenticity in our communication with other people, are we committed to preserving that and developing it to the point where it is literally a part of who and what we are all the time?
I can only answer these questions for myself. Each of you can answer them only for yourselves. Do we have the character and the courage to look, to see, to answer, and to change where and if we need to?
How are we doing?
In the first post of this series, the excerpt from chapter 1 included a list of all the components we must develop and have to build trust and be trustworthy.
In the subsequent chapter excerpts detailing the components we need to have and develop to build trust and be trustworthy, chapter 2 discusses honesty, chapter 3 discusses integrity, andchapter 4 discusses fairness, chapter 5 discussesrighting wrongs, chapter 6 discusses accountability, and chapter 7 discusses consistency, chapter 8 discusses sincerity, and chapter 9 discusses setting boundaries.
This post, which includes an excerpt from chapter 10, discusses the component of setting a higher standard that builds trust and makes us trustworthy.
Setting a higher standard should be the first thing people in leadership positions do. Before anything else.
While setting a higher standard goes hand-in-hand with setting boundaries, setting a higher standard establishes evidentiary boundaries of character, which affects every area of our conduct.
These are standards that we adhere to no matter where we are, what we are doing, or who we are with. And they are standards that we expect the members on our teams to adhere to as well.
Let’s look how a lack of setting a higher standard looks in real life. This should have everyone reading this nodding their heads because there is not one of us who hasn’t seen it.
How many times have we seen someone who seems to have a higher standard of conduct when we’re with them and then they deny that by their conduct (words and actions) when they’re not with us?
On social media, perhaps. With other people, perhaps. In different venues than the one(s) we associate them with.
Now let me ask the harder question. What was our reaction to their lack of a higher standard?
If we shrugged it off, thinking it was no big deal, or if we were invited and joined into to whatever the conduct was, then we have not set a higher standard for ourselves either.
Only you can answer for yourself and only I can answer for myself, but if we have not set a higher standard, then we are not quintessential leaders and we are destroying trust and not being trustworthy.
Building trust and being trustworthy is an integrated trait of quintessential leaders.
It is also an integrated trait that all of us – because each and every one of us leads at least one team, small or large, of people in our lives – need to develop and have as part of the core of who we are and what we are. In essence, this trait is at the center of exemplary character and conduct, and none of us should settle for anything less than this in ourselves and others.
Unfortunately, most of us settle for less. A lot less. In ourselves. In others.
The majority of people in leadership positions today are not trust builders and they are not trustworthy. Many of us, frankly, are also not trust builders and trustworthy.
We live in a world that with no moral code as its foundation that expects trust to be non-existent or broken. Look around. It’s everywhere, including, in many cases, very close to you.
And society has become so accustomed to this that it glorifies it instead of condemning it.
Politicians who lie routinely, who line their pockets with money and perks while making decisions that hurt and destroy the people they are supposed to represent, who cheat on their wives because they can.
Arts and sports celebrities who have no regard for faithfulness to their spouses, who live hedonistic lifestyles that destroy their families, the people around them, and, eventually their lives.
Religious leaders who cheat on their wives, who cheat on their taxes, and who scam their congregations both in how they deceitfully handle the word of God and in coercive and corrupt financial matters, acquiring wealth and power in the process.
Business leaders who destroy millions of lives by deceit, fraud, and illegal actions that result in their employees and customers losing everything while they escape any kind of punitive action and instead reap obscene profits and end their tenures – only to go to another financially lucrative position – with golden parachutes that are equally obscene.
And we, as individual leaders for our teams, who cheat on our taxes, who are routinely dishonest with the children (our own and others) and other people entrusted to us, who routinely steal things from our workplaces (you most likely didn’t pay for that pen you’re using at work, so it doesn’t belong to you), who routinely break traffic laws, who will walk out of stores with something we were not charged for and never think twice about it, who will take extra money that we’re not owed in financial transactions without blinking an eye, who cheat on our spouses, who marry until “divorce do us part,” and who, as a course of habit, break confidences of family and friends, gossip about family and friends behind their backs, and destroy reputations in the process.
Maybe we haven’t thought about building trust and being trustworthy at this kind of nitty gritty level.
But until we do – and we develop and have this trait as the core of who and what we are – we will not build trust and we will not be trustworthy. And we will not be quintessential leaders.
Trust and trustworthiness is probably the single most important trait we can possess. And it is also the most fragile.
It can take a long time to build and be, but it can be broken irreparably in a single second.
Therefore, this is a lifetime work on and in ourselves that we must commit to making an integral part of our character by continually developing it, maintaining it, and growing it.
This goal should be our goal.
But it requires courage. It requires diligence. It requires vigilance. It requires continual self-examination. It requires continual change. It requires the ability to, much of the time, stand alone to maintain.
It is not for the faint-hearted. It is not for the vacillators. It is not for the crowd-pleasers. It is not for the pretenders. It is not for the wannabes. It is not for the weak.
But if you’re reading this, I know that you’re not any of those kinds of people. Those kinds of people won’t even read this because it requires time, effort, change, and commitment, and too many of us are, sadly, either just too lazy or we just don’t care.
Building Trust and Being Trustworthy takes an in-depth look at the “this is what it looks like in practice” aspect of each of the components we need to develop and have to build trust and be trustworthy. The second chapter discusses the component of honesty in building trust and being trustworthy.
Excerpt from”Chapter 10: The Setting A Higher Standard Component of Trust and Trustworthiness”
“I’ve thought deeply about this component for quite some time as I’ve, over the course of the last few years, observed in almost every area of life – families, politics, education, religion, military, business, society, and in many individual lives, not only the absence of a higher standard of performance and conduct, but increasingly, no-standard of performance and conduct.
It seems that the “anything goes” philosophy has become the norm in the world.
It has, because of the most recent US presidential election, a very thought-provoking article entitled “General Failure,” in the November 2012 issue of The Atlantic – which was written well before the revelation of General David Patraeus’s adultery with his biographer and the possible adultery of General John R. Allen with Jill Kelly – and finally the resignation of General Patraeus from being CIA director, come back full-force into my line of vision.
This kind of behavior (all the parties know each other and are closely linked to each other) among the powerful in Washington, DC, based on what I’ve read and heard about it, is not only commonplace, but is seen as acceptable.
The initial reactions from people in leadership positions – Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), for example, who implied that General Patraeus should not have resigned because he committed adultery – made it evident that not only are people in leadership positions not setting a higher standard for performance and conduct, but there is, in fact, no standard.
It seems to me that before we talk about setting higher standards in terms of performance and conduct, we need to talk about adultery and why it falls into the higher standard category on a personal and leadership level.
Marriage vows are taken based on the trust of two people in each other. By their very nature, they create a trust relationship.
By entering a marriage covenant, both parties are setting, demanding, and promising to adhere to a higher standard of conduct. When either party to those vows, which are made traditionally before God and people, breaks them, that person breaks the trust relationship.
Frankly, if a spouse shows untrustworthiness and destroys the trust in his or her closest personal relationship in life, then he or she is untrustworthy and destroys trust in every part of his or her life.”
The majority of articles and blogs about leadership talk about a single aspect – as if it exists and operates in a vacuum – of leadership. It is the public face of leadership: businesses, religious organizations, political organizations, social organizations, schools, and non-profit organizations.
Except for this blog and these books, I have not found any other resource on leadership that discusses it in terms of the whole of spectrum of our lives: it’s who we are, what we are, how we are everywhere in life.
That’s what makes this blog and these books unique. Most people don’t think a blog or books about leadership apply to them: to their lives, to who they are, what they are, and how they are.
They are wrong.
Because they’ve bought into the mainstream idea of what leadership is in a public sense, and since they’re not in one of those positions, then any discussion of leadership doesn’t apply to them.
(And most of the mainstream ideas of leadership are actually “management” instead of “leadership,” which fails time and time again because there are very few people strong enough and courageous enough to get outside of the MBA-fueled tiny, uninnovative, rigid, and constrictive box that confines them to failure).
The reality is that quintessential leadership applies to everyone who lives and breathes. No matter where we are in life or what we are doing, we all lead at least one team, if not several.
Everything we do, we say, and we are is setting an example for the others in our lives, and that, my friends, is leadership. How we do that determines whether we are quintessential leaders or unquintessential leaders.
It is that simple. And that hard.
A close friend and fellow blogger, remarking on “The Quintessential Leader Perspective: Expressing and Showing Genuine and Authentic Appreciation,” said “A tall order! It’s difficult to be thankful towards those who are difficult, yet it is the only right answer.”
Becoming a quintessential leader is the road not taken. It is the hard way, the difficult way, the way that demands that we look at leadership in terms of every and all aspects of our lives, not just a single part.
It requires rigorous self-examination without excuses, justifications, or blaming others. It requires constant, continuous, and momentous change from the inside out.
It requires a complete metamorphosis and transformation at the very foundational core of who and what we are, our intents, our attitudes, our motives, how we think, what we think, how we speak, what we speak, how we act, what we choose to do or not do, and how we set that example for others.
It requires fearless commitment and unwavering fortitude.
There is no room for the pretenders, the wannabes, the half-hearted, the sometimes-maybe, for the lackadaisical, and for the here-but-not-there.
We are either all in or all out.
One of the tests – of veracity, of genuineness, of authenticity – for whether we are quintessential leaders or not is how we consistently handle the good, the bad, and the ugly in life.
All of life.
From our most private internal lives to our most public external lives.
It is important to remember that this is the ideal, the goal that quintessential leaders strive for and to. None of us will execute this perfectly all the time, but there must be aggregate and continual evidence in our lives that this is who and what we are committed to – no matter how many failures, setbacks, and falls along the way we make and encounter -becoming.
Quintessential leadership is hardest to see when life is good. Humanity, in general, tends to be at its best when everything’s going well and life presents no challenges, no upsets, no hairpin turns in the road. We all, at least on the surface, can seem to be charitable, thoughtful, caring, concerned, kind, generous, gentle, merciful, and magnanimous.
It is in the good times, though, that the inner character of quintessential leaders separates them from everyone else.
One component of that character is humility.
Quintessential leaders never elevate themselves above others, nor do they constantly talk about how much they’ve accomplished, achieved, acquired (and, by extension, how much wealth they have by enumerating the amount of money those acquisitions cost), and how awesome and great they are.
Instead, quintessential leaders continue to live life modestly and quietly. They realize that the good times are part of the cycle of life and will not last.
Quintessential leaders also understand that the good times are a gift they did not earn, do not deserve, and are not entitled to, so in an attitude of service and thankfulness for them, quintessential leaders use the blessings of good times to help and assist others, often anonymously, and always silently and without any fanfare.
Another three-pronged component of the quintessential leader’s character that you’ll see in the good times in life is understanding and sensitivity combined with empathy.
Quintessential leaders are always cognizant that although they may be experiencing good times in their lives at that moment, many of the people with whom their lives intersect – and for whom they are examples and, therefore, leaders – may not be.
Quintessential leaders are excellent and accurate observers of life by nature. Because they listen more than they speak and watch more than they engage, they miss virtually nothing about what people say (or don’t say), do (or don’t do), and are (or are not), although they seldom, if ever, say anything about it.
They learn to understand and to relate to others in a tangible and meaningful way that includes the rare quality of being able to empathize by putting themselves into the situations that others are experiencing.
As a result, quintessential leaders are acutely sensitive to the circumstances of other people and how their behavior, words, and actions could affect them, not because they are inherently wrong, but because of what other people may be experiencing (for example, if someone is going through a relationship loss, quintessential leaders would not be talking on and on in bubbly, bouyant, and bouncy conversations with this person about all the great things in their wonderful and fantastic relationships).
Anything other than this kind of understanding, empathy, and sensitivity – deep awareness of others and genuinely and authentically relating to them – would be out of character for quintessential leaders during the good times of life.
Why?
Because quintessential leaders always have the big picture in the front of their minds. Good times come and go. Anything that’s happened to someone else could or may happen to us. How would we want to be treated when we are walking in those shoes?
It is always an others-perspective, not a me-perspective, that defines who, what, and how quintessential leaders are. In the good times in life. And in the bad and ugly times.
It is in the bad times and the ugly times in life that quintessential leaders become more apparent, because the bad times and the ugly times in life are the times that try our souls, our hearts, our minds and our character to their outermost limits.
The bad times and the ugly times present ample opportunities to be unquintessential leaders, to set and be bad examples for the people with whom our lives intersect.
The bad times and the ugly times in life can give rise to unfair criticisms, harsh and inaccurate evaluations and condemnations, rejections, resentments, mockery, stinging and hurtful putdowns (usually guised as “jokes” or followed by smiley faces), spitefulness, jealousies, pettiness, and defensiveness – all of which are not intrinsic character traits of quintessential leaders.
The reality is that we all have to deal with these kinds of attitudes, motives, words, and actions during the bad times and the ugly times in life, whether we are quintessential leaders or not.
They are hard-wired into our human nature and it is in the worst of times that we either fight and subdue them or we embrace and use them.
Unquintessential leaders embrace and use them.
Quintessential leaders fight and subdue them.
In other words, quintessential leaders exercise self-control (and, at times, this is the most exhausting work in the world, because it literally takes every ounce of energy and effort we have) and choose what is right instead of what seems easy, justified, and, at least temporarily, very self-satisfying.
These are very often epic behind-the-scenes battles that end in victories or capitulations, character developments or character destructions, good or bad choices, and wise or unwise decisions.
The outcome of what goes on in the private and inner workings of our hearts, souls, and minds is only apparent in what we do (or don’t do) and say (or don’t say) out in the open.
And it’s in the outward manifestation, in bad times and ugly times, that we can truly distinguish between quintessential leaders and unquintessential leaders.
Again, in bad times and ugly times in life, we all experience failure in being quintessential leaders.
There is not a human being who has ever lived, who lives, or who will live – except for the Son of God – who has, does, or will get it right 100% of the time. It’s impossible in our current configuration.
However, the hallmark difference between quintessential leaders and unquintessential leaders is that quintessential leaders are actively living – consciously and deliberately thinking, practicing, being in every part of their lives all the time – with the goal always directly in front of them.
It is a way of life – an integrated part of who, what, and how they consciencely (that’s not a misspelling – because the state of our consciences is directly related to quintessential leadership) and consciously are and are becoming.
In other words, quintessential leaders are well aware when they fail. Nobody else needs to point their failures out to them. The consciences of quintessential leaders are so finely-tuned and sensitive to what they should and want to be – the ideal – that their consciences are immediately stricken when they fall short in any way.
Quintessential leaders are devastated when they fail because they know that not only have they missed the mark of quintessential leadership, but they have failed the people whose lives intersect with theirs by setting a wrong and bad example.
Quintessential leaders, again, stand out in this area from unquintessential leaders.
Quintessential leaders first admit they failed, to themselves and to their teams. They then apologize and ask for forgiveness.
Quintessential leaders will next immediately undertake an exhaustive post-mortem on what happened and why it happened. In the process, quintessential leaders identify tangible and definitive steps to correct the failure, from the inside out, and actively start taking those steps.
Quintessential leaders often do one more thing: they use their failures and the process of identifying the causes and the corrective actions as teachable moments for their teams.
Unquintessential leaders can’t do this because they don’t even recognize a failure (and if someone pointed it out to them, they’d deny it and get defensive and start attacking the poor, unfortunate soul who dared to say anything), so their bad examples are all their teams get.
And their teams perpetuate those bad examples to their teams, and so it goes until we find ourselves in the world in its present tense surrounded by an overwhelming majority of unquintessential leaders.
But we are not them. Or are we?
The Quintessential Leader 