The Adoration of St. Joan of Arc

Who you are as a person determines who you are as a leader.

This is an undeniable truth.

It’s not possible to be a visionary leader if you do not have the ability to connect to the vision that lies within you, cultivate it, and share it with others. You cannot be a magnanimous leader if your heart does not hold generosity. And you will not be seen as a leader of great character if your soul has lost touch with truth, integrity, humility, loyalty and faith, and has instead taken hold of arrogance, resentment, denial, blame, vanity, jealousy or feelings of victimization.

Thus, your ability to be a great leader not only lies within you, it must come directly from within you, finding its source in the fabric of your being.

To be a better, wiser, more effective leader you must start by looking within.

I feel so strongly about this truth that when the Lead Change Group, of which I am a member, decided to write a book together about character-based leadership, this is the topic on which I chose to write. As I stated in Chapter 5 of The Character-Based Leader: Instigating a Leadership Revolution One Person at a Time, “To be a leader of true character involves understanding who you are, within yourself, at your deepest and most personal level.”

I believe this is why so few of us ever become truly great leaders; so few of us are connected at our deepest level to our True Selves. Instead, our own truth is buried beneath layers of fear, feelings of unworthiness we pick up along our early journey, immersion in “lack” rather than abundance, and perhaps even a sense of victimization depending on life’s circumstances we have had to overcome.

If you are feeling deep down in your core that you are unworthy to lead, no matter how many leadership classes you go to you will find yourself unable to break through. If you are feeling a deep sense of victimization – of corporate circumstances, industry change, the economy, etc… then it will be almost impossible to motivate and inspire others. And if you have taken upon you a burden of lack, always perceiving the world as a “glass half empty,” finding and connecting with authentic purpose will be elusive.

Instigating a Leadership Revolution

In the book, I focused on three leaders who I believe were strongly connected to who they were at their deepest, most personal level. These are men who very easily due to circumstances could have viewed themselves as unworthy to lead, unsure of their purpose, and unlikely to inspire great change in the world. Yet all three of them were so connected to who they were, what they stood for, and the vision they wanted to bring to life. They overcame great obstacles in order to ignite great change in the world, obstacles that, quite frankly, would have toppled others. Two of them you are very familiar with and one of them will be an inspirational new example of persistence and authenticity.

As I state in my chapter, “Leading by transforming from within, and encouraging others to transform from within, is genuinely at the core of Character-Based Leadership.” It’s where you must start.

I hope you will join me and my 20 Lead Change co-authors, for whom I have an overwhelming amount of respect, as we instigate a leadership revolution, one person at a time! You may buy the book at www.CharacterBasedLeader.com!

Photo of The Adoration of St. Joan of Arc by Isara.

~

Are you an introvert looking to use your introversion to your advantage in business & leadership or an extrovert interested in leading introverts more effectively? I wrote this eBook for you…

The Introvert’s Guide to Success in Business and Leadership

“The Introvert’s Guide to Success in Business and Leadership” eBook is NOW Available! Amazon Best Seller, Amazon Hot New Release, and the inspiration behind my Harvard Business Review article! Featured on Huffington Post.

BUY Now on Amazon for Kindle or Buy it at B&N for Nook! Also available on iBooks! Click here to DOWNLOAD in PDF format. Thank you!

Being an introvert is truly an advantage in business and leadership if you know how to leverage it, and if you remain true to yourself.