What are the characteristics The Globally Conscious Leader® would want to cultivate in herself? What personal traits will she draw on in her exercise of leadership? What will people think of first when she pops into their minds?
And…as humankind tackles the unprecedented and almost overwhelming challenges of our times, we know that we simply won’t survive unless our leaders are equipped with certain essential qualities. You might call them “skills,” but these qualities run deeper than that. Like skills, they can be cultivated and gradually deepened in the emerging leader. But these qualities indwell in the very essence of the individual.
We know that study after study has shown that there’s no viable “profile” of a good leader. They may be tall or short, from an Ivy League school or a Community College, rich or poor… No profile.
And yet…there are certain characteristics we want to see in The Globally Conscious Leader®. These characteristics may be inborn or cultivated or both.
- Compassion. Includes empathy, respect for the individual, and being an uncommonly good listener.
- Insight. Includes accurate perception, both of the individual and the total situation. In turn, this requires being present in the now, not wandering off too much.
- Initiative. Based on what they’re perceiving and understanding, they initiate actions and solutions, set them into motion, and then stick with them to get results. So this also includes Accountability for their folks.
- Teamwork. Build alignment of goals among the team. Build a process that includes accountability and relatively painless ways of staying on the beam and accommodating changes and pivots as needed.
- Ethics. Behaviors that cause no harm, either to individuals, or the situation, or the planet.
- Unconstraint. Willing to break certain kinds of man-made rules if that’s what’s needed for the total right thing to happen. They think that way…what’s truly needed here, versus what the rules are telling me.
And it’s not just their internal personality traits; this also means that they set up mechanisms to make all this reality; it’s not just theoretical.
The articles over the next few weeks will dig into these six characteristics.
