Hi! Welcome back.
I’ve been studying the topic of leadership lately and have been reviewing what some people think about the subject. Last time I gave you Deepak Chopra’s acronym for leadership. In reviewing the details of what each letter in leadership means from Chopra’s perspective I thought I would take each letter and his accompanying thoughts one at a time so that both you and I can read and contemplate there meaning to us.
Today let’s look at the first letter in leader L, and read what Deepak Chopra wrote in his book The Soul of Leadership. L = Look and listen.
Great leaders have a vision, and the ability to manifest it. Defining your own visions begins with looking and listening. You look and listen to the situation around you, but you also look and listen inside. This involves four steps:
· Impartial observation—look and listen with your senses.
· Analysis—Look and listen with your mind.
· Feeling—look and listen with your heart.
· Incubation—Look and listen with your soul.
If you want to be a successful visionary, here is where the journey begins, with two critical questions:
1. What is my vision?
2. How can I make it happen
As a leader, your vision exists to be shared with enthusiasm and inspiration. The word enthusiasm comes from the Greek root en-thos or “in God”, reminding you that you must look in your soul. Inspiration comes from the same Latin root as “to breathe and spirit”. When you inspire others, you bring everyone into the spirit of your vision—you motivate them to breathe together in the same atmosphere.
Listening is vitally important when it comes to understanding the situation you are in, and what need is crying out to be fulfilled. In almost every estimate of what makes a leader, the same quality is mentioned: she’s a good listener. What makes for a good listener?
1. Not interrupting.
2. Showing that you empathize: not criticizing, arguing, or patronizing.
3. Establishing a physical sense of closeness without invading personal space.
4. Observing body language and letting yours show you are not distracted but attentive.
5. Offering your own self-disclosures, but not too many or too soon.
6. Understanding the context of the other person’s life.
7. Listening from all four levels: body, mind, heart and soul.
I think this is a good place to begin don’t you when asking yourself what is leadership and what constitutes good leadership? How can anyone be a leader without having some idea about what is going on? And how can someone know what is going on without looking and listening to their environment? I don’t wish to make this blogspot a political forum but perhaps we can look at those individuals who either hold the office of the President of the United States or wish to occupy it. From a leadership perspective as Chopra has defined it here do you think any of these individuals has a grasp of what’s going on in the country? Do you think any of them are attuned to what the nation is feeling and experiencing since the real estate collapse of 2008? Have any of the candidates or for that matter the President himself articulated their vision for the country and a set forth a plan to make it happen?
In my opinion, I don’t think so and that makes me leery about the future of the country at least in the short term. I don’t see any of these qualities in either the President or his challengers am I wrong? Can you list some examples where you think any of the people running for the Presidency of the United States are looking and listening to our nation’s problems and setting out a plan to combat them? I’d love to see your comments on the presidential candidates leadership skills as they relate to the first letter of Chopra’s acronym of leadership—L, Look and Listen. Thanks again for reading and until next time all my best! Jer.
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