The Assets of Leadership
Some leaders emerge because they have a lot of information and are able to use it appropriately like General Patton did in World War II. Others bubble to the surface of life because they are unusually creative like Leonardo de Vinci. A few become a leading musical group as the Beatles did for a generation back in the sixties and seventies.
Leaders emerge under all kinds of circumstances and some of them can be considered inspired leaders like Moses, for instance, who lead the Jews to safety and helped them realize the higher nature of their calling. Yet leaders need followers just as followers need leaders.
Leaders use their instinct, intuition and care or feeling support for people or a group, like a nation, that becomes tangible. The leader’s genuine love of the people runs full-circle. When a leader lives what they believe then the followers love their leader for inspiring them and leading them successfully through problems and hardships.
Most of us have walked beside leaders of various kinds.
Can you think of a few you’ve met and how they made you feel just by being with them or hearing them speak? In the presence of Mikhail Gorbachev, I felt larger than life, that even though he was from a different country and held a different ideology about politics and economics and about societies, somewhere there was a meeting of hearts. He had done things to shift the polarization between East and West and the world was, at least for a time, better off. In an indescribable way, I felt a part of the change he had wrought.
But what about the woman or man who heads the corporation you work for who may be your manager? Does she take a back seat to you and seem inconspicuous most of the time. Yet she is amazing because she is clearly in control all the time.
Perhaps your manager is the one in your work environment who is able to create an atmosphere that is wildly exciting from a mental perspective. She is a leader who encourages creativity, innovations and out of the box thinking.
There is greatness—unmistakable greatness–in people like this. They lead with the higher part of their being.
Have you taken the time to look at yourself in a quiet and introspective way and ask what you are going to plan to do to become the kind of leader you love to follow? What are you going to do to be that special leader? Will you start today?
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All rights reserved 2018 Rebecca Field