Lately I am rediscovering the joy of writing. To be more precise, it is the joy (and sometimes the amazement) of rereading what you may have written during an earlier time, and finding it has actually become of age: I was too early with it before, or something.
Not exactly sure what it is about the summertime simmering of August influences, but what follows is part of what appeared on Managing with Aloha Coaching about this time last year. For a bit of context, this was just three months before we elected Barack Obama our 44th President of the United States.
Alaka‘i, Chiefs and Indians
I find myself thinking about leadership an awful lot lately. Yes, our upcoming state and federal elections have a lot to do with it. So does the less-than-healthy economy, so does the war in the Middle East, so does global warming and our energy crisis, so does the quality of education that I realize my children (and yours) are getting (or not getting) in their colleges as 21st century teachers struggle to reinvent their curriculum and their methods.
However these are just the biggies that we all hear about and grapple with daily. There are a myriad of smaller reasons too. They are ‘smaller’ in that they don’t make the headline news as frequently (if at all), but they are not small in their importance.
For instance, there is the need for ethics as the right thing to do versus the politically right strategic advantage.
There is the need for bravery with innovation, and the need for new advancements in science.
There is the need for societal coping with increased aging, with more support for new family structures as we all live longer and with increasingly varied interests.
There is the need for more individualism and less conformity, more youth-infused change, and more senior-respected knowledge brokering.
There are the needs which can be addressed by exponential growth in social entrepreneurship and non-profiteering.
There is the opportunity for healthy, collaborative competition, where those competing to unveil the next big idea are working on the greater good of our populace and our planet.
There is, there is, and there is not.
Opportunity for caring and courageous leadership is spreading like wildfire.
I find that I am thinking about leadership an awful lot because to be perfectly blunt, I miss it terribly.
Remarkable leadership would make me wildly jubilant (buzzwords are fascinating, aren’t they?) however I must say I’d do cartwheels and sing out loud for more basically sound leadership too. I crave new heroes for our modern, right-now world, heroes who inspire the rest of us to be better than we now are. I crave for heroes everywhere, and I want lots of them.
Television screenshots I had taken watching the news coverage on Inauguration Day.
Funny how some things seem not to have changed a full year later, huh.
Or are you satisfied with the progress we have made over the past twelve months? And by “we” I mean you and me and the collective us. Forget about President Obama, and lets internalize this.
I continued with,
We need generously large doses of self-leadership, and we need it everywhere and in everyone, for when we work together, we get pretty profound results. We are unstoppable.
I want unstoppable.
I want to be a new hero, and I want you to be one too. There is a lot of opportunity to go around, and I’ve never been one who subscribes to the belief that there can be too many Chiefs and not enough Indians, at least not when both Chiefs and Indians are working with great values, and leading with Ho‘ohana and ‘Imi ola-generated intention and passion.
Good leadership has very little (if anything) to do with titles, positions, or power; both Chiefs and Indians can have it. The only question is if they call upon it and use it.
So call yourself Chief, call yourself Indian- BE the leader you want to be.
Lead, Follow or Get out of the way
I also find I may have packed it all in too tightly before. I can write pretty prolifically and one article should have been stretched out to two or maybe even three (yeah, yeah, you are laughing at me through your computer screen right now thinking, “uh no joke Rosa” aren’t you.)
When Alaka‘i, Chiefs and Indians was first published, I got back the most refreshingly honest email from one of my readers. He wrote,
“I feel a bit cantankerous Rosa —if everyone leads who follows? I’m a great believer in self caring, self maintenance, self monitoring, self regulation, self satisfaction and a few other self stuffs but I have a problem with the concept of self leadership. I like the old mantra of ‘lead, follow or get out of the way’ as a visualization of how small groups of productive people function together. It may not fit into Kākou but it gets the job done.”
My initial answer may surprise you; I somewhat agree, and I’m not feeling cantankerous about it at all. I see self-leadership as a necessary prerequisite to those “small groups of productive people [who] function together.”
I think this August will be a good time to think about this, and talk story about this, again.
But before I launch into it with the zeal with which I am able to do my signature leadership soapbox launching I am hoping you will be as honest with me today as this gentleman was a year ago.
Is self-leadership a subject you are interested in, or is it really just me and my own hunger rumbling here?
If you were the one to respond to his email right now, how would you respond? What would you say?
How do you define self-leadership?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Well, I am certainly interested, Rosa, and the best leaders I know have been, too.
Here’s how I define self-leadership: if leading others is a moment when a person steps into awkward or uncomfortable space with others in order to create positive change, then leading self means taking a step into awkward or uncomfortable inner space , me with me space, in order to achieve the same result.
We have all experienced such times. Personally, they usually represent a moment of self-confrontation that tests my capacity to look squarely at myself with honesty and compassion, to see what is. Second, such moments typically require some form of change on my part. So first, looking, and then, changing.
I’ve always felt “lead, follow, or get out of the way” oversimplifies things a bit. It may be real world, but the real world is chock full of negative beliefs about people and this phrase can subtly reinforce those beliefs. In turn, such assumptions can lead to “us versus them” distinctions (e.g., we are “accountable,” they are “lazy” or inept) and this simulates leadership only by identifying a common enemy.
I like to remember Pogo, the comic-strip source, I believe, of the line “We have met the enemy and he is us.” This is why self-leadership is not a luxury, but a necessity. Without it, we are doomed to another self- word: self-deception.
I like your definition Dan, very much so, for the scenario you describe appeals to me, and it is indeed an occurrence we all recognize – as our awareness of it grows, we realize it happens many times each day.
In comparison, that parade of “self” words can either be too big to wrap our arms around (like self-esteem and self-awareness), or can miss the mark because they focus on the second part instead of the first (self-discipline, self-motivation, self-development). Funny how your “self-confrontation” seemed to be in a category all its own to me.
Understand too what you mean about the phrase, “lead, follow, or get out of the way.” It does reflect back on the speaker for me at first, for my immediate impulse is to throw it back and ask, “Which of those three choices would be the one you value most right now, in this instance?”
Yes, great question Rosa because it moves the conversation from premature closure to a neutral inquiry. If I answer with any of the three alternatives (lead, follow, or get out of the way), you could naturally follow up with such questions as, “Why is that choice of most value to you and what does it actually mean for you in this circumstance?” It’s a wonderful post, Rosa. Really got me thinking about this often heard but unexplained phrase — which it is easy to assume we understand.
I am chuckling a bit at the benefit of the doubt you so generously give me Dan, for I would probably not be that neutral in my inquiry!
The contrarian shifting of “often heard but unexplained phrase(s)” has become a bit of a game for me which started way back when I decided that “work” would cease to be thought of as a 4-letter word in any workplace I managed – so to be more accurate, I do delight in taking anything with a normally (or conventionally) negative connotation and getting it to be more positive – or at the very least, more useful.
This was another recent one (a favorite!): “What’s in it for me?” is a Self-Leadership Question
Dan, I so, so love having conversations with you! Thank you for stopping by today :-)
Yes, I like the conversation, too, Rosa. Loved the link to WIIFM. And I do like that emphasis on what is useful. Going back to Lead, Follow, or Get out of the Way (LFOGOOTW), the idea that I might say, “Well, actually it’s time for me to follow now,” or “This is the point where I need to get out of the way,” could, under the right circumstances, actually transform and honor these two very legitimate alternatives. It turns out that slowing down to examine such unexplained phrases (Touchy-Feely is one of my favorites) turns out to be not only useful but rather sly fun, as well.
Best to you!
Thank you for giving me that link Dan, for I missed reading that one, and as I just tweeted, I am “finding it one of those posts I need to bookmark, spend time with.” I can truly empathize with you and the response you give when you get a “touchy-feely” type inquiry about presentations.
I have another draft in process about following and the notion of “followership” to explore when we all might say, “Well, actually it’s time for me to follow now.” Digging into LFOGOOTW is turning out to reveal quite a bit of fullness!