Tuesday 27 September 2011

Leadership from the Heart



Many people study books and read endless articles on Leadership, and yet I have seen that this type of study has only a very negligible impact on most of them.

Typical examples of this can be found within the academic area where faculty teachers can lecture only from a theoretical basis because most of them have never run a business or have never been a leader.

So we can return to the question of "Can leadership be taught"?

From  my experience I have learned the following about this question:

Intellectualising as to a way of leadership is little more than an idea. Intellectualising means that we are thinking about it and when we think about a subject then the contents of that thinking are based only on what we have read and what we have been taught. This way of thinking then is mainly what I call "subjective". It has been affected by the way we interpret the words that we have read and the spoken words of the lecturer. Within the context of what we have read or heard it means little-it all remains in our mind as a theory upon which we then add our own assumptions and expectations based on prior thinking. In other words within this context we have little opportunity to move from "subjective" to "objective".

It is the application of this new knowledge that is important and the application only comes from practice and when we practice something we are then developing ways of changing our behavior and thus move from "subjective" to "objective".

So I believe that leadership can come from the practice of our behavioral skills. An example of this is how we would react to a crisis. If we read or attend lectures about crisis management we would mostly forget the content within a short period of time but if we have the opportunity for the practice of the necessary behavioural skills that one should apply during a crisis then from this we can learn something.

From practice and particularly from failure is how we can move from a "subjective" to an "objective" viewpoint.

I believe that leadership either of oneself or of others comes from the emotional objective experience and that the impact of this has been with our Heart.

Essentially I have learned that true leadership therefore comes from the Heart which can be the centre of our emotional objective experiences. The Heart has little or nothing to do with our intellectual nature and our intellectual responses.

People will follow the person who acts from the Heart because they know that this person reflects honesty and integrity and speaks with truth and when this is combined with real experience, care and compassion then they not only exhibit the qualities of a true leader but others can feel their genuine interest and understanding.

So if you are leader and you have difficulties in being believable to others and you feel that people do not generally trust you or have confidence in you then you should look at your motivations. You should look into your Heart and see if you truly believe all that you say and all that you do. People intuitively understand your motivations and if those motivations  are not honest then you will lose them. There is an old saying which is "you can fool some of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time".

With the development of greater self awareness and true self understanding we can then honestly begin the process of leadership not from books and not from the lecture theatre but from the Heart.

No comments:

Post a Comment