Why is that we feel compelled to take words that mean one thing and twist them to mean something completely different? In my youth, somehow the word “bad” came to mean “good.” Today, I hear kids using the word “sick” to mean “great” or “awesome.” This isn’t simply a practice reserved for the young. I recently came across a word that connotes something radically different from the definitions we find in the dictionary. The word is “visionary.”
This summer I wrote a piece entitled, The Four Most Important Questions. In that post, I asserted that leadership success depends upon our ability to understand and answer four questions: Who am I? What do I want? What attracts others to choose to follow me? How can I earn and retain the privilege to lead?
Before I get started, I want to clear the air. Yes, I know this first question seems to be extraordinarily self-absorbed. The fact is that leadership requires that we as leaders understand ourselves. Leadership requires self-awareness, not self-absorption. There is a huge difference.
Much of my leadership writing and guidance centers on the importance of awareness and choice. To become the leaders we have the potential to be, we need to be aware of the leadership opportunities we face, and we must choose to act on them. Easy, right? Obviously not, or we wouldn’t be investing so much time and money on books, seminars, coaching, consulting. . . .
In the fourth couplet of his poem ‘If-,’ Rudyard Kipling wrote: “Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;” Kipling is telling us that as leaders, we must be willing to put our cause or beliefs ahead of our personal gain. He is reminding us that true leadership requires a degree of selflessness. It requires us to put our cause and those we lead ahead of ourselves.