“The ecological freak is not questioning his share of the pie so much as he is questioning how we’re getting our flour. The problem isn’t technological; the problem is a matter of values.”
One of the biggest outcomes (desired or undesired) of the COVID-19 pandemic has been to expose the fragility of our institutions and the failure of leadership.
One of the biggest questions it has raised for me is whether or not the American public is even wiling to expose itself to a blinding glimpse of the obvious—we need new leadership and stronger institutions.
I will leave institutional repair to the experts in that field. In this post, I will address the leadership values required for transformation.
I have been coaching leaders for over 40 years and have written several books on the subject, including: Leadership Lexicon, Leadership Myths and Realities, Ethical Leadership, Creating Organizational Soul and Spiritual Leadership.
One question I always ask the leaders I coach is, “What is the leadership brand you want to establish in your organization, i.e. how would you like people to describe you?” I help them answer that question by sharing the results of a 360 assessment in which I ask all interviewees what they see as this person’s towering strengths and opportunities for development.
Leaders are then able to see the differences between how they would like to be perceived and how they are really perceived by their colleagues, direct reports, and senior leaders.
Based on thousands of interviews over the course of my career, I have been able to create a list of leadership values which a leader could aspire to embody.
While all of these values are important, leaders need to focus on a short list that not only reflects their personal desires but also represents what is required in the moment to deal the with the crisis at hand and/or the possibilities for the future.
In this post, I will summarize those values from A to Z. You may want to add to the list as you read it. Each value is defined by the attitude and skills required to establish your desired brand and to meet organizational and marketplace requirements. You may want to change the definitions.
When you finish reading through the list, I would encourage you to pick a few values that represent your ideal leadership self.
A
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Authenticity: The willingness to be transparent and vulnerable. The ability to project genuineness.
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Achievement: The willingness to work toward a goal. The ability to drive desired results.
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Agility: The willingness to adapt to changing conditions and standards. The ability to generate new responses to changes.
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Adventure: The willingness to try new ideas. The ability to create excitement and passion.
Title: Unlikely Balance | Author: Alan Levine | Source: Own Work | License: CC BY
B
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Balance: The willingness to see multiple sides of an issue. The ability to communicate a fair perspective.
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Boldness: The willingness to think big. The ability to propose audacious solutions.
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Beauty: The willingness to go deep in relationships, literature, Nature, and the Arts. The ability to create aesthetically pleasing spaces and places.
C
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Courage: The willingness to fight. The ability to stand down, speak up and seek out.
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Compassion: The willingness to be decent and to care deeply about others’ lives and points of view. The ability to provide empathy and support.
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Curiosity: The willingness to probe deeply. The ability to dive beneath the shallow and superficial.
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Compensation: The willingness to pay a living wage to all staff. The ability to generate sufficient revenues to pay living wages.
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Clarity: The willingness to be specific. The ability to develop detailed plans.
D
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Duty: The willingness to accept responsibilities. The ability to honor your part of a contract.
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Disruption: The willingness to rock the boat. The ability to shock the system.
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Discipline: The willingness to adhere to a plan. The ability to persevere with the resolve required to carry out a plan.
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Development: The willingness to grow yourself and empower others. The ability to build individual and organizational capabilities.
Title: Centuries of Lighting evolution | Author: Tudor Barker | Source: Own Work | License: CC BY-NC-SA
E
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Evolution: The willingness to be agile. The ability to adapt.
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Efficiency: The willingness to reduce unnecessary The ability to produce greater outputs.
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Effectiveness: The willingness to improve continuously. The ability to maximize results.
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Equanimity: The willingness to stay calm in a crisis. The ability to see clearly in a crisis.
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Excellence: The willingness to set high standards. The ability to meet them.
F
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Freshness: The willingness to let go of old habits and views. The ability see every moment as a new opportunity.
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Fairness: The willingness to attribute variance to multiple sources. The ability to accurately discriminate real sources of gain and loss.
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Family: The willingness to make the world your family. The ability to generate a sense of being closely related.
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Flexibility: The willingness to allow for different working arrangements. The ability to match individual capabilities with organizational requirements independent of where and when the work gets done
- Freedom: The willingness to welcome innovation and initiative. The ability to act effortlessly on your own values because they are so clear.
G
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Generosity: The willingness to give your time, talent, and money to others. The ability to serve a larger purpose.
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Growth: The willingness to improve. The ability to increase your level of functioning over time.
H
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Harmony: The willingness to bring all parts together. The ability to create beautiful music from multiple instruments. The ability to get everyone to row in the same direction, i.e. align the culture with the strategy.
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Helping: The willingness to assist. The ability to have an impact and make a difference.
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Humor: The willingness to take yourself lightly. The ability to laugh at yourself and have fun.
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Humility: The willingness to own your role in mistakes and share credit for success. The ability to identify your strengths as well as your weaknesses and to create the space for others to join you.
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Health: The willingness to pursue high level wellness. The ability improve and promote physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual levels of functioning.
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Honesty: The willingness to admit mistakes or failures, tell the hard truth, and admit what you don’t know. The ability to share what you do, what you think, and how you feel.
I
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Inquiry: The willingness to peek beneath the surface. The ability to ask thoughtful questions.
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Intelligence: The willingness to learn and to hold conflicting or contradictory points of view in your mind. The ability to reason and to represent information multidimensionally.
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Interdependence: The willingness to help others succeed. The ability to help people achieve their dreams and aspirations.
Credit: Clint Adair -
Integrity: The willingness to say what you do and do what you say, i.e. to tell the truth. The ability to say what you say and do what you do.
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Innovation: The willingness to adapt and think differently The ability to think creatively.
J
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Justice: The willingness to share resources. The ability to reduce inequalities and injustices.
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Judgment: The willingness to look at all sides. The ability to synthesize and make accurate discriminations.
K
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Knowledge: The willingness to look for patterns and themes. The ability to contextualize information.
L
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Laughter: The willingness to lighten our being. The ability to enjoy life and experience joy.
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Loving Kindness: The willingness to embrace. The ability to relate to others wholeheartedly.
M
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The willingness to pause. The ability to notice.
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Money Management: The willingness to construct a budget. The ability to fund individual and organizational goals.
N
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Norms: The willingness to make conscious choices on how we want to live and work. The ability to define desired and required daily practices
O
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Openness: The willingness to let new ideas and energy in. The ability to feel boundless. The willingness to solicit feedback and self-disclose. The ability to shift and elevate your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
P
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Peace: The willingness to accept whatever life brings you and forgive those who wrong you. The ability to show gratitude for what you have.
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Positivity: The willingness to look at the bright side of things. The ability to see possibilities against the backdrop of reality and create inspiring visions.
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Presence: The willingness to be available and accessible. The ability to command the room.
Q
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Questioning: The willingness to invite constructive criticism and explore alternatives. The ability to probe for deeper understanding and generate better solutions.
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Quiet: The willingness to take a break or vacation or rest in solitude. The ability to find a space for deep reflection
Credit: Hiroshi Tsubono
R
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Recognition: The willingness to credit contributions of others. The ability to personalize rewards to interests and levels of functioning..
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Responsiveness: The willingness to attempt understanding. The ability to demonstrate accurately how people are feeling and why.
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Renewal: The willingness to welcome new buds of insight. The ability to nurture a seed to a flower.
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Respect: The willingness to value differences. The ability to leverage differences
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Resilience: The willingness to bend, be altered and take time for recovery. The ability to adapt continuously and restore strength quickly.
S
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Service: The willingness to be unselfish. The ability to delight the people we care for.
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Substance: The willingness to go beyond the superficial. The ability to make evidence-based and science-based decisions.
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Safety: The willingness to invest in protective and preventive solutions. The ability to engage in present-moment thinking.
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Stamina: The willingness to persist and persevere. The ability to endure stress for prolonged periods of time.
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Security: The willingness to prepare for potential disasters. The ability stay safe.
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Stability: The willingness to consider risks. The ability to weather any storm.
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Speed: The willingness to accelerate the pace of change. The ability to make the hard decisions required to move ahead faster.
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Simplicity: The willingness to de-mystify. The ability to translate complex problems into comprehensible components, functions, and processes.
T
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Talent Management: The willingness to invest in human capital. The ability to attract, assess, develop, deploy, reward and retain key people.
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Trustworthiness: The willingness to put the team and organization first. The ability to form deep personal connections.
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Teaming: The willingness to inform, involve and invest all stakeholders. The ability to influence people and inspire collaboration.
U
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Unconditional Love: The willingness to embrace whole-heartedly. The ability to communicate how much another person is valued for who they are independent of how they may act on occasion.
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Unity: The willingness to collaborate. The ability to bring people together.
V
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Vitality: The willingness to seek multiple sources of energy. The ability to blossom and glow.
W
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Welcoming: The willingness to be inclusive. The ability to make everyone feel heard and valued.
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Wisdom: The willingness to seek the truth. The ability to develop the Inner Sage.
X
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X-Ray vision: The willingness to dig deep for facts. The ability to analyze and synthesize information
Y
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Yearning: The willingness to expand your image of what’s possible. The ability to envision a more just and loving world.
Z
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Zeitgeist: The willingness to think holistically. The ability to create a new spirit and culture that reflects the needs of a particular period of time.
I just finished reading Erik Larsen’s latest book, The Splendid and the Vile which tells the story of the leadership role Churchill played in World War II. Churchill may not have exemplified all 75 of the values above, but he sure knocked it out of the park on values like Authenticity, Boldness, Courage, Duty, Effectiveness, Stamina, Service, and Positivity.
Perhaps we should all ask, “If someone were to write a biography about my life, what values would I want them to highlight?”
Are there a handful of values that uniquely define our “brand” or who we want to be? Are there a crucial few values on which we might need some work over the next five years?
A recent NYT article reviewed and celebrated the 50 years of work Denis Hayes has devoted to protecting our environment and working to combat climate change. Denis founded Earth Day and has made heroic efforts over his entire career to preserve the planet. He embodies the values of Achievement, Discipline, Inquiry, Justice, Mindfulness, Renewal, Resilience, and Service among many others. For the complete story, go here.
While I’m at it, let me give a shout out to a couple of unsung heroes. Glen Chown, President of Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy and Royce Ragland, President of Green Elk Rapids, have devoted their lives to keeping Northern Michigan clean, green, and pristine. They are living examples of almost all of the values above.
While we can’t all be heroes like Churchill and Hayes, or even Ragland and Chown, we can be clear about what’s most important to us in leaders and as leaders and what actions we can take to bring those values alive in our personal life and in our organizational life.
If we are all more conscious about writing our obituary while we are still alive, then together we can create a new normal at the other end of this pandemic that is a better reflection of who we are as individuals, organizations and as a world community.
We can all be leaders in any moment on any day all the way from A to Z.
May it be so.
You’ve outdone yourself lad! Thank you!