Leadership
Hello and welcome to this week’s blog post on Leadership. Now leadership means many things to different people. And today we’re going to look at leadership specifically in reference to yourself, your mindset, your journey.
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If you follow my blog, you’ll recognise this from a post a few months ago and I’m coming back to today. We said that it all begins and ends with you. You are in control of your mind, your actions and your destiny. I asked you to make yourself a promise that you were going to take daily action towards achieving your goals and living the life you deserve.
I showed you the hero’s journey, a journey that you’re on whether you know it or not and will continue to be on over and over for the rest of your life.
As the saying with leadership goes, you should lead by example. Leading from the front and being in control and this of course is what I’ve been speaking about in all my blog posts. Mindset is about control. Taking ownership of one’s life. Taking ownership of your language. Leading by example with your language. Calmly facing and overcoming obstacles. Facing and overcoming fear. And generally taking the lead on your direction, path and purpose.
As the Stoics always say, rather than endlessly debating what it means to live a good life, to be a good person you should just take action and show people what it means by living and being that good person.
And that in a nutshell really is what leadership is.
Ok you say, so what does that mean? What is leadership? How do I become a better leader?
So for me it really boils down to these 4 concepts. You’ve got courage. You’ve got integrity. You’ve got alignment and you’ve got responsibility.
And I’m going to talk about these 4 facets in more detail in just a sec. Now if you’ve ever read Jocko Wilnick’s book on leadership called extreme ownership you’ll wonder why I’ve not listed ownership as one of the facets. And I believe that ownership of each of these concepts aligns well with the Navy Seals’ vision of it. If you take ownership of your own personal courage, integrity, alignment and responsibility then you’ll naturally be a good leader.
Again this boils down to what I started off this blog post with. It starts and ends with you and you need to take ownership of your own journey and everything that comes along the path. Own the obstacles. Own the fear. Own the beliefs. Own the language and own your goals.
So let’s talk a bit more about courage. In order to be a good leader and in order to take action towards your goals and your vision you will require a lot of courage.
You may or may not recognise the picture above. This is the cowardly lion from the book / film the Wizard of Oz. And the film actually has a lot of great messages that often just go straight over our head when we watch it but I’d recommend re-watching it and looking out for the lessons.
So with courage, what we often find is that we believe courage is the absence of fear. And we know from our session on fear that this just isn’t the case. Courage is acting in the face of fear.
And this is what the cowardly lion is always doing. He is ashamed of not being brave enough and therefore believes he’s a coward. What he fails to see is that he is constantly acting in spite of his fears, meaning he is unknowingly embodying the image of a brave lion.
And lions are a great analogy to use. They are the King of the Jungle. And being King means you rule over a whole kingdom. And for you and me that means we must rule over our own kingdom. Or our own queendom. If you’re running a business, that is your kingdom.
And we must act with courage. And you can train courage, just like you can train your body to run a marathon or squat 1000lbs. You just need to ensure you are training it one step at a time. If you were training to run a marathon you’d first run 5k, then 6, then 10, then 15 etc. If you are training to squat heavy you start with the bar, then add 10lbs every week. And it’s the same with your courage. Do something courageous every day. And add to it daily. We all face fear daily and if you start acting in spite of the fear it adds up and suddenly you’ll notice an identity shift and things that use to scare you no longer do.
Especially in terms of business it takes a lot of courage. You need to go out in the world and share your vision with them. And we often fear the feedback we’ll get or what other people will think and say. So go out and share your vision with the world. It takes courage and you’ll be a better person for it.
That leads us nicely onto alignment. And you’ve heard me speak about this before.
Being in alignment means living within your own set of values and beliefs as well as within your own boundaries.
When you share your vision, it comes with a set of values that you live by. You know what your values are since they come from phrases that go like this:
I believe or we believe in this.
So it could be. I believe that a strong mindset is the cornerstone towards living a life of purpose. I believe that behind every obstacles there is an opportunity. I believe that exercise and diet are important to living a healthy life.
And I covered in my post on, you do need to question your own beliefs. Are they your own? Did you create them or have you adopted them from somewhere else. Do they align to your own vision and goals? A good exercise to do is to write down all your values and check them for accuracy. Write down: I believe … I believe … and as a company it can be we believe …
Now go and check your last month’s behaviors. Are you living up to your own values? Are you in alignment? What does your bank account say? What does your bookshelf say? What do your social media posts say?
When you have a set of values and beliefs, then you also set boundaries. Your boundaries are behaviors that you avoid as they contradict your values and beliefs.
And when you cross those boundaries it usually shows up in that you get angry. You get angry at yourself and you get angry because your own boundary was crossed and it’s a great time to check in with yourself and understand why this happened.
Sometimes it’s someone else who crosses your boundary and you get angry. And in this instance it’s important to check yourself and see if you shared your boundaries with that person. And if you did not communicate your boundary with the other person than it’s not their fault, it’s yours. It’s your responsibility to ensure you communicate your boundaries with other people. Now if they continue to cross your boundary once it’s communicated then shame on them.
So it’s your responsibility to ensure that you share your vision and boundaries and ensure you are in alignment with them.
And that moves us nicely on to responsibility. And you’ll see a quote here from Werner Erhard who is one of the founding members of landmark education.
Let me share it with you:
“Responsibility begins with the willingness to take the stand that one is cause in the matter of one’s life. It is a declaration not an assertion, that is, it is a context from which one chooses to live. Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or guilt.
In responsibility, there is no evaluation of good or bad, right or wrong. There is simply what’s so, and the stand you choose to take on what’s so.
Being responsible starts with the willingness to deal with a situation from the view of life that you are the generator of what you do, what you have and what you are. That is not the truth. It is a place to stand.
No one can make you responsible, nor can you impose responsibility on another. It is a grace you give yourself — an empowering context that leaves you with a say in the matter of life.”
So have a think about what that means to you. Does that sounds empowering to you? It gives you freedom to take responsibility. And where you choose to be responsible, that’s where you’ll gain power. And where you choose to refuse responsibility you will lose power. And it’s OK to choose to not respond to something. It may not align with your vision and values. Note that you’ll just lack power in those areas.
And if you’re experiencing a lack of power in your life it is the unwillingness to take responsibility. To take ownership.
So look at where you are taking responsibility and where you are avoiding responsibility. And remember, responsibility is the just the ability to respond. A little play on words there as we’re big on language. You can just break the word down and reverse it.
Ok, so now let’s look at integrity.
And I know that the word integrity gets thrown around a lot and gets mixed up with ethics and morals. And if you look it up in the dictionary that has truth to it.
In terms of leadership I don’t find that to be very helpful to think about it in that way. I prefer to look at it as if we’re talking about structural integrity at all times.
So if someone states that they have values and moral and boundaries and the state them and say that is what they will follow and then they do not, then they are out of integrity. But it’s not an ethical or moral issue. It simply means that they did not keep their word.
So we are our word and when we are out of alignment with our word then we are out of integrity. So it’s when everything is working as intended. So if you’re out of integrity it means that something is not working.
So if you look at the pictures, one has integrity. It’s doing it’s meant to be doing. The other is out of integrity. There’s something wrong.
So when you’re out of integrity there’s something missing or there’s something not right. And it’s your job to find what is missing and fix it. And this is separate then from any moral or ethical behaviour.
This way you can be quick at getting back into integrity. Is it working as intended?
And it’s devoid of making you feel guilty or wrong about something. It’s simply out of integrity and you can identify the steps to get it back into integrity.
And you can’t go into this half heatedly.
Again it’s about 100% ownership. As you can see here, it’s a perfect picture of what it looks like to be both out of integrity and out of responsibility.
You need to be 100%. You’re either responsible or your not. And you’re either in integrity or you’re not.
And I know that for my life and my mindset, I want to be 100% responsible and I’m sure you feel the same.
And I just want to touch on alignment again.
This is the Agoge Project Mindset creed.
You’re in alignment when your body, you mind and your behavior all line up.
So your body is telling you what’s right. Listen to those emotions. Remember it’s just energy in motion.
And if you fight those emotions with the mind then there will be conflict. So tune into your body and have it be aligned with your inner dialogue. Have it line up with the stories you’re telling yourself and what you’re thinking.
And you want to line these up with you actions. I have a mantra that I practice what I teach. Show up with your behaviour. Lead by example.
And I leave you with this same quote from previous blog posts.
If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.
And go back to your vision and goals. Do they align?
and go out and be a leader by example.
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This article was written by Stuart Munnich. If you’d like to know more or receive notifications for future articles, please head over to the Agoge Project Website or subscribe to updates right here!
