Leadership from my perspective

Know Thyself

In the last couple of posts, I have discussed the lessons I have learned over the years regarding leadership and how leadership influences consequences. The next discussion is on developing your leadership style.

You must start with knowing yourself. Big surprise, right? Not really. This goes all the way back to Sun Tzu and The Art of War, and probably further. But to be honest, how many take the time to do this? How many leaders really know what this means or what this requires? Or worse yet, even care.

To know oneself, there are several categories of exploration you must attend to. I will discuss a few that I believe to be important but in no way represent all that can be assessed.

The first category I like to look at with leaders is values, biases, and beliefs. These are factors that drive behavior. They can also be identified and examined to evaluate the impact on your decision making and behavior.

Values alignment is important. You can fake it for a while however what you value will eventually dictate your behavior. Just as the idea that watch your thoughts as they become your words, watch your words as they become your habits, watch your habits as they become your character, values will dictate your behavior.

For example, people that value money may do unethical or illegal acts to obtain money as money is the single most important value in their life. Those that value time with their families might struggle in a job that requires a great deal of time away from their family. You must have a firm understanding of what you value and how you are going to align those values with the organization in which you work.

To address biases, use critical thinking and the Socratic Method of Questioning. I use this process to identify biases I may have on any topic: Check, Evaluate, Identify, and Challenge. Check the source. Is it credible. Are there biases in the reporting source? Evaluate the evidence presented. Is the evidence objective? Identify perspectives. Mine and theirs. From what perspective am I approaching this topic. Remember, you can only see one have of a ball at a time so make sure you turn the ball. Lastly, challenge assumptions, yours, theirs, the organizations. You should be comfortable answering questions, in fact, you should welcome them. And your organization should be the same way. If they do not value your voice, you are pretty much there for the pay. If you want to make a difference, go elsewhere.

Next is assessments. Strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, emotional intelligence, and personality to name a few.

What are your strengths and weaknesses and how do you know they are? You can do self-assessments however this provides a picture of what you think about you. For example, I have taken emotional intelligence assessments and scored high on the results. When my wife takes the same assessment but evaluating me, let’s just say the results look like they are for two different people. When I was in the military we had to fix the position of the ship. To do this we would have intersection lines of position to indicate our exact position. If the lines were close, it was an estimated position. This is the same idea with assessments. Your self-assessment is simply a line of position, and you could be anywhere along that line in real life. So, get input from others.

Blind spots and personality. Blind spots are areas in your leadership portfolio you did not know were there. When I had command in the military one thing that I saw people get fired for is things they did not know about happening in their command that, according to the boss, they should have known about. This constitutes a blind spot and can be very problematic in an organization. My advice for uncovering blind spots is to develop open and trusting relationships and lines of communication, empower your teams to address unacceptable behavior when it happens, and get out and engage with your people. Nothing says you care line not being there.

Knowing your personality and the personality of those around you will greatly improve your ability to connect, communicate, motivate, and engage with others. There are many different personality assessment tools out there however you also want to learn how to identify the personality of others. You can do this through observed behavioral assessments because behaviors tend to identify personality preferences. I would recommend simply understanding the four dichotomies of the Myers Briggs personality type indicator. These represent four opposite preferences such as;

Introvert – Extrovert

Sensing – Intuition

Thinking – Feeling

Judging – Perceiving

These represent significant differences in how people approach life. For example, a Thinking type relies on logic and objectivity while a Feeling type relies on emotion and value so trying to make personnel decisions for your team or your organization can cause significant conflict between these two types, and this is just one example.

Well, I hope this discussion provide some points to ponder and helps you in developing as a leader. Be sure to leave any positive comments that add to this discussion.

July 16, 2025

business, leadership, mental-health, personal-development, personal-growth
Leadership and Consequences

We had an interesting discussion on a social media site today regarding leadership and consequences inspired by my last blog post.

Consequences are the result of some behavior or action. They can be positive, or they can have some negative connotations to them. Leaders establish consequences through expectations. Establishing clear, consistent, and achievable expectations is a leadership function.

This is something I always taught my children while they were growing up. Decisions have consequences. They can be good, or they can be rather uncomfortable. It is in your decision-making process that sets you on the path towards this outcome. Not every good decision will have a good outcome, nor will every bad decision have a bad outcome. However, you must take accountability for the decision and the consequences of that decision.

Now, to be clear, we are not talking about transactional leadership here. The process of establishing expectations and therefore consequences is a function of any leadership model.

Taking ownership of the consequences of your actions, good or bad, is where accountability enters the equation. Being accountable for your actions is fundamental to consequences. Without accountability, would there be a consequence?

May 30, 2025
Leadership Lessons Over the Years

In leadership, it’s not about you, it’s never been about you, it will never be about you. There, got that out of the way. Meaning, if it wasn’t for those that follow you, you would simply be a person on a walk. They are why your leadership matters.

Be approachable and show it. Take time to listen and listen with the intent of understanding their concerns. If it is important to them, make it important to you.

Be open to ideas from everyone. You never know where the next great idea will come from and if you do not seek input from others, you might never know.

Lead with moral courage. This is where I always turn to Clausewitz. The courage to accept responsibility and the courage to face moral danger. This can come at you in several ways but when it is time to stand, you must have the courage to do so. If you don’t, who are your people to count on.

Be a lifelong learner, and I don’t mean just reading books. Great, you can read. Put yourself in challenging leadership roles that are different from past experiences. You keep doing the same thing and you will remain the same leader. Just remember, everything is changing around you.

Understand the kind of leader you are and the kind of leader you are not. When leaders tell me they are this or that, I ask them ‘if I asked your followers what they would say’. It is difficult to get honest feedback when you are the leader however you must find those that will provide this for you, then you must listen to it.

There is no best leadership style. There is, however, a best leadership style for a given situation. You must know when that is and what style figures into the equation of person + situation = leadership style. This goes back to understanding the kind of leader you are and are not. Work on the ‘are not’ aspects of your leadership and you will become better prepared to lead in many different situations and lead more diverse teams.

Don’t dwell on a past issue. Say what you have to say on the matter, realign expectations, and move on. Focus on the positive. The goal of the leader is to build them up not tear them down.

Don’t submit to a toxic culture and don’t be the cause of a toxic culture. If you make it about you, the workplace will likely become toxic. If one must go to grow the many, get rid of the toxic person. They are not worth the culture of the organization.

Let them be great. Celebrate their victories.

Let them make mistakes in their learning process. Then spend time with them learning from it. It is about developing their decision-making process and thinking more critically about how they make decisions.

Meet them where they are and bring them where they need to be. Yes, you will have some work to do with some of them, however, someone spent time with you so now it’s your turn to pay it back.

Always take the moral high road and never make it personal. This can be difficult when emotions get involved. Work on developing your emotional intelligence.

Adversity does not build character, it reveals it. Self-reflection after adversity builds character. Don’t find this out about yourself or your team in moments of crisis.

Leadership is about influence. Understand the power of influence and use it for the greater good.

Leadership is an art and a science. As Clausewitz states, science is about knowledge and art is about creative ability. The knowledge part is understanding how humans interact and behave as well as the fundamentals of leadership theory. The art of leadership is knowing the answer to the person + situation = leadership style. Every person is going to be different, and no two situations will be the same. Don’t get stuck in the rut of using one leadership style because it works for you. Remember, it’s not about you.

I hope this provides some points to ponder as you develop as a leader.

May 23, 2025

Know Thyself

Leadership and Consequences

Leadership Lessons Over the Years