Sunday, September 13, 2009

5 Pillars of Leaders’ Thinking

The issue of leadership ‘best-of’s’ surrounds the world of business and organisational effectiveness—in all spheres. The list following is a basic structure provided by consultant, educator, coach, facilitator and author, David Deane-Spread. He’ll have a pocket book coming out later in the year attending to the following 5 Pillars of Leaders’ Thinking:

1. Desire

An innate call and passion for the industry they work in and the people they work with. It’s an effervescent, welling up of self-sustaining and inspirational drive that impels these leaders forward. Their thinking, informed from this desire of their hearts, is clear, pungent and focused.

2. Discernment

Passion must be well directed, of course. The discernment of wisdom underpins the thinking of the astute leader who leads not just for today but for tomorrow also. With one eye on the past and present and the other eye on the future they see with intuitiveness and sensitivity regarding the effect and impact of their leadership on the people and processes they lead. They see with inordinate vision, or if they can’t, they have those who can close by.

This discernment, melded with their passion, differentiates the effective leader from also-rans.

3. Execution

Timeliness and quality of execution is everything in leadership. Great leaders meditate over their plans searching for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in an effort for perfect execution—on time, on budget. They enlist the help of specialists and support that can augment their plans bringing further fruit that wasn’t even envisioned.

4. Evidence

Fact, and the use or non-use of it, is critical in all facets of life. Like a universal law of wisdom, truth beckons. Always. Plans and initiatives only fly in presence of truth. Leaders never act solely on hunches. They wait patiently for their hunches to be confirmed. They have trained themselves to think with the higher brain (the Neocortex[1]). This is more important to them than simply ‘being right.’

5. Improvement

Over all things, leaders put on the cloak of improvement. This is the thinking that awakens the leader frequently and drives them on. Most people will use the right language but few actually implement ‘improvement’ from the core of their thinking—the truly great leader does this and seemingly cannot help it.

DISCLAIMER: The eventual content of the planned pocket book will inevitably have separate and independent content. David Deane-Spread will own sole copyright to this material.

For more on David Deane-Spread see: http://www.daviddeane-spread.com/ Also at David’s site: the Global Alliance for Attitudinal Competence and Leadership Developmentwith Values: Unconditional Love and Respect for all Life and Property; Forgiveness; Sufficiency from the Abundance; Freedom; Responsibility; Happiness; Continual Learning; and, Sustainability.




[1] Wikipedia has “Neocortex” as the part of the brain that’s “involved in higher functions such as sensory perception, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, conscious thought and, in humans, language.”

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