360 DEGREES OF POTENTIAL: WHAT LEADERSHIP CAN LEARN FROM MOVEMENT

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Last week, Richard Richards, Ariel’s VP of Learning Design, asked us in this very same blog to consider the point of Leadership Presence and challenged us to consider why we should bother caring about it.  The arguments put forth as to why we should care had to do with what Presence gives us in an organization:  creating followership, building trust, developing individual self-acceptance and enabling authenticity.  This week, I’d like to take it one step further. Let’s reconsider the definition of leadership all together—not defined by function, title, pay grade or hierarchy—but rather by degrees of potential.

A dance teacher once said to me, “If you think that the only possibility for relationship is the one where I am standing in front of you and we meet eye to eye, you are crazy.  When I am next to you, when I am behind you, when I have my back to you, when we have our backs to each other, we are still in relationship. There are 360 degrees of potential for relationship. Use them.”  The same is true for leadership.

What is leadership but innovation, communication, motivation, implementation—and measurement against these capabilities?  These days, the next great idea can come from anywhere: the mail room, board room, server room, a customer.  Authentic leaders accept, invite, and expect new ideas, communication and input, from all directions, all employees, and all levels.

Authentic leaders see that true leadership is shifting leadership.  It’s about giving up formality and allowing themselves to follow someone else if their idea is the best one for the company.  An authentic leader can step up when it’s their turn, drop back when it’s not, and ride the wave of the transition from leader to follower, leader to follower.  Their goal is not their own leadership and its application, but rather the organization’s leadership, its service to the market and its greater good.

Tags: Authenticity,Gabriella Salvatore,leadership articles,leadership viewpoints