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The Practice of Leadership
Eight Leadership Practices
First Practice: Knowing Your Leadership Edge
Second Practice: Developing Your Comfort Level with Feedback
Third Practice: Caring for Self

We confuse influence with leadership. If leadership is about “doing the right thing,” then it really does not depend on a desire to push, coerce, or even persuade. It is about being true to a unique personal path, whether or not there are followers. The irony is that by following this path, followers often come.

A few days ago I watched a video about renowned diversity teacher, Jane Elliot, and her Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise. While there is no question that she intends to bring people to another mindset through her teaching work, it is also clear that even if she could not teach her truth in the way she does, she would find a million other ways to live it. Her “influence” comes not so much from her role or the exercise, which is about what is feels like to experience discrimination, but out of the amazingly strong, sensitive core of her being as a leader. It is not a put-on or calculated technique. It is simply a reflection of who she is – and who we are, too. When people confuse influence with leadership, they are confusing “the exercise” with the one guiding it.

Trying to layer something onto ourselves in order to become better influencers only moves us toward becoming better manipulators. And as we all know from the “spin” industry, we can certainly be manipulated. Appealing to core values, pleasing constituencies, persuading on the basis of polls may not necessarily be bad things in themselves. They are political means and realities. But let’s not confuse them with leading.

A leader’s influence comes from one primary source: motive. Without the correct motive, the “methods” can really become a problem. By motive I mean even more than “doing the right thing.” Ultimately, this is a slippery phrase at best. I’m sure any number of autocrats, political and corporate, thought they were doing the right thing. “Right” can be defined in too many ways. This is not a strong enough test. Nor are heralds such as “the good of the people,” “a better world,” or the “will of God,” any of which can lead to enormous violence and social control.

No, the motive is deeper still, in the nature of personal awareness itself and our understanding of suffering and its causes. Which is about our relationship to ourselves. First and foremost, this is the ground of leadership because it is the only place where a person actually and personally comes into contact with the truth about humanity. If we are genuinely open to ourselves, eventually we will discover how involved we are in creating the very problems we say we want to solve, how prone to delusion and projection we are, how self-ignorant, and therefore insensitive and unintelligent in certain ways; and how out of touch we are with our core. In my opinion this core is none other than a profound goodness, covered over by negative conditioning from this and perhaps many lifetimes. We are like seeds pushing up through the earth, seeds that must press through layer upon layer of insensitivity and self-ignorance in order to join the sunlight. In that sunlight we find ourselves truly alive.

I remember working with a man who owns a very successful systems change consulting business. He was struggling at that time to choose the lines of service his business should focus upon. And behind that question, he also held a more personal one as to what his own work as company leader should be. Where should his company make a difference; where should he? After some conversation in a bar overlooking a frozen lake (I’m sure you catch the metaphor), I suggested that perhaps we could work together on his own primary vision for his company and its most fundamental contributions. I will never forget his reply. “Who me?” he asked, almost stunned. “Visions are for other people, famous people. Who am I to have a vision?”

Well, we went on to do the work, of course, and he discovered a lot more about his directions, personal and commercial. But that first reaction – that came from the part of him covering the spark of leadership genius he’d been carrying around without taking much stock or giving credit. He did not yet know how truly to lead because he had yet to touch that goodness in himself in a profound way.

A person who has real experience of what is profoundly good, and following it sees how it comes through his or her own presence, that person leads. In my experience, this individual has the strength to press through the layers of his or her own unconsciousness, to learn, to accept feedback, to cross the hot stones of ambiguity and conflict, to be alone, and yes, to set a meaningful vision. And because of this personal work, which puts the person in touch with humanity, he or she develops great compassion. This makes leadership about breaking one’s own chains and in that process beginning to help others break their own — and without coming from a place of being “better than” or “wiser than.” A person who does not experience the goodness that comes through at the core of self, who has not uncovered the spark, may develop strength in other ways, but for that person influence, accomplishment, and self-proof may easily become much more important than leadership. And, surely, the vast majority of us are really not one or the other, neither fully in or out of touch with the spark, but live our lives as a combination of both, and exhibit both depending on the circumstance and the day….

A leader whose development reflects the awareness of profound good becomes known for many things. These naturally include:

Seeing more in others than they see in themselves. Those interested in influence alone tend to see less in others than they sense themselves to be. The leader naturally becomes a coach because of this capacity to recognize others’ gifts and wisdom and desire to release these into the world.

The willingness to take an ethical or philosophical stand and to be clear, even when another person or an entire room is against the leader’s actions or ideas. This is a matter of having and holding to expectations for self and others.

Openness and disclosure, including experiences that ostensibly create personal vulnerability, but which are actually statements of strength. This is about creating the finest dialogues possible, the ones where people feel wholly present and valued, the ones where everyone learns from each other.

Operating as a model for others, not intentionally, but simply by virtue of that person’s apparent self-trust and desire to live a congruent life. This is a matter of integrity in the sense of wholeness and consistency.

These qualities and many others are reflections of the person’s inner attitude, which if founded on profound goodness, spills into everything that is done. Seeing these “marks” of leadership, we are influenced. The leader’s spark of genius calls to our own. This is called inspiration, which is the finest form of influence. We see in the leader’s inner attitude a mirror for our own possibilities. The leader, simply by being present, wakes us up to who we really are, to this profound goodness flowing through us, too.

Learning to lead, then, is not a matter of imitating these qualities. They can’t be imitated. They are infinitely rich and infinitely variable. Learning to lead is finding the spark, and that happens, when you begin looking for it, almost every day.

Two stories, both about the transformation in groups that happens when the leader shows up in the moment.

Sometimes a person surprises him- or herself. I recall a very tense retreat I facilitated some years ago for a probation department. It was so tense we had to spend a few moments at the beginning discussing whether it was even practical to have this group of managers in the same room at the same time. But we did decide to proceed and the group launched into its key task: developing a purpose statement for the organization as a whole. There were widely divergent views of what such a statement should say and soon the room broke into a storm of arguments surrounding the word “punishment,” which had been included in previous purpose statements. Some vehemently believed that the word should be retained. Others felt it should be discarded in favor of “rehabilitation.” The arguments ranged from science to CYA (email me if you don’t know what this means), all principles and abstractions, and nothing much that was real.

One of the folks in the room, I’ll call him Brad, argued with such deep personal conviction in favor of rehabilitation that his voice and his presence absolutely stood out — as well as his dress. Among a group of peers most of whom had chosen to come in jeans and sweatshirts, Brad had shown up at the retreat in a three-piece suit and tie, with suspenders, no less. He was the finance guy, with degrees in both law and business, and yet the passion in his voice sounded like he’d been working on the street with probationers all his life.

In order to slow the conversation down a little, I asked Brad why he felt so deeply about this matter of choosing words. He was silent for a moment and then shared part of his personal story. Some years before, he said, he had gone through a very rough patch in his life. He was depressed, doubting, unsure of his directions, and although degreed, felt like he did not understand where he was going or what his gifts were at all. He had been using drugs and drinking way too much. One night in a fit of anguish he intentionally drove his car off a cliff. When he recovered, he was sent through the system, he said, and ended up going through the very probation department the group was discussing. “So, if this had been about ‘punishment,’” Brad continued softly, “I’d be dead today. I needed help, not more humiliation.”

Only Brad’s supervisor, who was in the room, knew this story. Now the tone of the conversation changed dramatically. Suddenly others, inspired by Brad’s willingness to break down the walls, told stories of their own about why they chose to work in the probation department. Some of them were equally powerful. This group of managers, discovering their commonalities as people, began to put their conflicts aside. They gave up on the argument in favor of a search for new words, eventually adopting this language as the purpose statement of their agency: “to restore the person, the victim, and the community.”

It was Brad who for just a moment, had led, really led by allowing his heart and his spark to be genuinely present in the room. In doing so he swung open a door for his team that seemed to have been shut for years.

The second story is different in some ways, lighter for sure. This one also a bit disguised, and true. I was working with about thirty high level managers in a big federal agency. After a day learning about collaboration, the group sat together with their manager informally talking over developments in Washington. They, too, were depressed. There had been a news release that day from a person close to the President that many felt had been on the edge of an outright lie. It was one more message about toeing the political line with a high-level threat around the budget for failure to do so. The group fell into a kind of “ain’t it awful” discourse – the kind they might have criticized their staffs for as a “gripe session.” After a few minutes of the negative talk, one of the members, Nan, spoke up. Instead of agreeing or disagreeing with the group, she simply said this: “We have an opportunity ahead for boldness.” Boldness! As she went on to explain what she meant, the energy tangibly shifted from “We’re screwed!” to “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” Ideas began to flow, possibilities began to emerge. A colleague and I watched from the outskirts of the group. It was like watching a wonderful engine start up after hopelessly sputtering. What had Nan done? She had simply reminded the group of their goodness, their capabilities, and their opportunities.

People who are concerned about their level of personal influence often can be observed to lack one or more of the four qualities I’ve listed above. They don’t see their stakeholders’ (e.g. peers or employees) gifts, only their failings; they have few real personal boundaries and are constantly negotiating in a slippery, political world; they don’t disclose anything of deep or meaningful personal importance – all that has been locked away and kept under seal; and because they do not readily express their natural courage and integrity, they are not seen to lead by example. They claim this is the result of their organizational culture, and sometimes for sure, it is. And they often want techniques to lead rather than going to the heart of the problem, which is about relationship to self. Many “leadership development” programs and “assessment instruments” fail because they confuse the external evidence and qualities of behavior expressed by leaders wtih the substance of the person. As the Zen saying goes, “Don’t confuse the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself.”

In the end, I would say, influence is about direct “contact,” a word I learned from a Seattle therapist and consultant, Barbara Bouchet. Contact, as I use the term, means being deeply and directly in touch with another person. As was Brad; as was Nan. This can only come from first being in touch with yourself. Instead of skating around in abstraction or deflection, you come right up against me. Your spirit, the power of your presence, your realities and truths come right up against mine and we are compelled to look at the connections — or lack of them. This is what moves us. When a leader uses his or her internal spark of divinity for this purpose, it is like an act of transmission. Call it a radio signal of some kind that crosses distances between people as wide as outer space and equally as dark. Or maybe it’s just a finger snap – the telling one that finally wakes us up to ourselves.