Leadership Development

The Nine Tenets of Leadership™

1. Know yourself.
Most Leadership competency models demand "self management". We cannot however, manage ourselves until we know ourselves (or who are we managing?). Values-based leadership begins with self-knowledge and self-reflection to accept and understand ourselves so that we may grow and learn. The Enneagram is a tool that can enable us to appreciate our blind spots and incorrect assumptions so that we may engage more effectively with others. We must look at the whole person and acknowledge the complexity of the leader's life.

2. Build community.
Humility enables us to see the good in others and allows leaders to build relationships of trust and mutual interest with their followers and other stakeholders of the organization. They develop leadership skills in their followers and thrive on the challenges and paradoxes this engenders. We explore the leader-follower relationship in its cultural context to create vital, healthy organizations built on connection, commitment and diversity.

3. Communicate authentically.
Authenticity is a means for leaders to build powerful relationships through the exchange of information and ideas and the development of shared meaning. We focus on the leader as communicator and deploy a variety of communication vehicles that enhance understanding between leaders and followers. These processes build an authentic culture that acknowledges the intrinsic value of each person while supporting the organizational mission and vision.

4. Create vision.
Letting go of old ideas and opinions, open-minded leadership develops, shares, and moves the organization towards a truly powerful vision. Understanding and vision are accorded the highest value. Vision and values guide all action. When we connect with our understanding of what is meaningful, we can then bring underlying organizational values to the surface, articulating the messages that serve as organizational and personal benchmarks.

5. Realize mastery.
Developing and maintaining a learning culture is of crucial importance to long-term business success. Leaders must be able to utilize multiple intelligences to learn, make decisions, solve problems, and grow. Through their own development they will learn to help others develop these abilities and foster a culture of depth, authenticity, optimism, and generative learning to move the organization forward. Includes competency process models.

6. Embrace paradox.
It is easy to feel threatened by the uncertainty of our decisions and to be held captive by the structure, rules and planning required for organizational growth and stability. When the leader understands and accepts paradox, it is a short step to using paradox as an empowering organizational discipline. We focus on the competitive advantage enjoyed by a courageous organization that understands the simultaneous truths of clarity, ambiguity and polarities. This perspective provides the knowledge to capitalize on the synergy of different viewpoints, backgrounds, perceptions, skills, knowledge, and work styles.

7. Find balance.
Achieving and maintaining personal equanimity and professional balance is both a measure of success and a means to achieve one's goals. This simple balance enables leaders and followers to fully participate and thrive on - and through - change. We synthesize major learnings in the program in an individual leadership model and identify ways to make healthy individual and organizational choices in an increasingly demanding world.

8. Lead courageously.
Leaders must engage followers and bring them together as they implement new imperatives, actualize transitions, and target results. It is the synergy between leaders and followers that makes creative leaps and risks, high performance, and outstanding business results possible. We enlarge the model of leadership, practicing the skills of leading followers through different kinds of change, and understanding reactions to change, change triggers, "change back" messages, change readiness, and change effectiveness.

9. Think interdependence.
Science has proven that our universe is an interconnected whole, each part intricately and inextricably linked to all others. Leaders must appreciate the whole field of play, understand the past, accurately grasp the present, and anticipate the future. We complete the leadership model, focusing on unity, interdependence and agility in the organization in light of dynamic markets and volatile industries. We build capability through whole systems thinking, relationship-building and strategic planning.

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