Transcript for:
Leadership Concepts and Self-Development

hi my name is dr kurt kaufelt and i'm very pleased for the opportunity to talk with you for a little bit about your leadership journey leadership is something that i have a great passion for um it's been something i've been interested in for a long time in my 35 years of working at universities around the world i've been privileged to teach leadership to run leadership programs to study and write about leadership and it's it's it's really is a topic that fascinates me because of all the potential that is there as good leadership is expressed and delivered by people like yourselves when we talk about leadership i think at the beginning it's important to just define and describe what it is we're talking about and and definitions like this for something that we're so familiar with are often complex and not easy to come up with people have been researching and studying leadership for hundreds of years and yet different models have different descriptions of what it means to be a leader you ask people if they know what a leader is and they'll be able to say and describe what a leader is but as you get into the details you'll see that there are many different understandings of what leadership is all about it's something that's common it's something that we see we see it when kids are playing soccer in a playground and sides are being organized and rules are being put in place and and things are being set up by the children themselves and there's a level of leadership that's happening even at that level and yet we use the same word to describe what our politicians and government are doing when we talk about their leadership so it exists at different levels it's expressed in different ways all over the world and so let's let's try and unpack a working description of working definition of leadership for purposes of this introduction our lives have been shaped by leaders and we will shape others through our leadership so what are we talking about a broad description of leadership is the word influence the influence is that that quality that essence that makes something happen and so people have described leadership as influence leadership is what it takes to make something happen and that's a helpful description but there's a lot more to it than just influence because there's good influence there's bad influence and how do you influence and where does influence come from and so it's but it's a place to start one of the ways of thinking about leadership is is to be very clear what we're not talking about when we talk about leadership we're not talking about getting a title or having a position many of you will think well i'm not going to be a leader i'm not going to be a ceo i'm not going to be in charge i'm not going to have that title but leadership is not dependent on title if leadership is that ability to make something happen you and i know that there's lots of things that get done by people who don't necessarily have title they just have a way of getting people to follow them and do something good together so leadership's not a title or a position leadership is not being the best at something leadership is not just a high level of competence i i love football i follow liverpool with great passion we've had a great year the captain of the liverpool team is not the best player just because you're good at something doesn't mean that you should be the leader leaders are people who who understand how to get the best out of everybody how to work together to achieve a common goal or a common objective and and sometimes just being good at something doesn't come along with those other leadership qualities that influence and make something happen leadership is not forcing it's not controlling it's not it's not having all the power it takes to have your own way leadership is a trust relationship people choose to follow leaders are leaders because people have chosen to follow them it's not about forcing and controlling and finally leadership is not management management is is the ability to keep everything in order have all the systems working and make sure that nothing bad happens and that's an important role for a leader to be able to conduct and do but leadership is about making change happen and sometimes that means disrupting the way things are and finding a better way to do things so those are some things that leadership is not so let's go with a working definition of leadership that's something like this leadership is the stewardship of your gifts and talents so that you can work together with others to accomplish a shared goal or objective and usually that goal or objective has to do with making things better making change happen or transformation working together using your talents and gifts so that you can mobilize people and resources to make change happen is how i think leadership is best understood but it's it's not just that technical ability it's a value-based orientation that we need to have when we talk about leadership there are people in your lives who have had great influence you have had teachers and you have had teachers and i don't know if you catch what i'm trying to communicate but i think intuitively you will there are leaders and there are leaders there are people who have a role and a position of influence over you and there are people who in that role bring out the best in you change grow you give you capacity to be successful in the future this value-based this qualitative aspect of leadership something important for us to consider because we understand that the best leadership is a leadership that serves leaders are people with an unshakable desire to serve and and and it comes from what seems to be a paradox it comes from first of all people having authentic humility people who are humble and care for others more than they care for their own self-interest but those people also have a great sense of what can be done they have a magnanimous orientation that that things can be better that things can be great that things can change and it's this combination this this unique combination of authentic humility and the sense that together we're created for something great to happen that is at the heart of a leadership that serves if i was to describe leadership to you one of the things i'd like you to understand is that there are three elements there's there's the leader themselves and and then there's the purpose that they are choosing to exercise their leadership to accomplish so you've got leader purpose and at the top of the triangle the group so a good description of leadership is goes like this a leader is committed to a purpose and they influence a group to accomplish that purpose and produce more leaders a leader committed to a purpose influences a group to accomplish that purpose and produce more leaders now when you draw that on a piece of paper it's a triangle with a bunch of lines and the most significant aspect of that model is the center what's in the middle what's at the heart of your leadership that's the essence of your leadership and so if you put the word me at the center of that description of leadership you have what our human nature defaults to when it comes to leadership you have self-serving leadership you have an understanding of leadership that says i am the most important the purpose that i'm interested in is the most significant you are my group you are here to help me accomplish what i want to accomplish and sort of a me centered orientation to leadership is is our human nature we are by nature self-interested we are by nature people who seek to have our own way and so when you have that kind of a leadership that self-centered leadership that's the opposite of an orientation to leadership that serves you see if there's something big enough at the center of your leadership that can displace your self-interest when i was the president of a university i had self-interest there are things i wanted to see happen but the vision and mission of the university was bigger than my self-interest the aspirations of my students and my faculty and staff and where they wanted to go with their academic careers and what kind of an educational institute they wanted to be a part of that was bigger than my self-interest and if i could serve something bigger than my self-interest we got a lot better results we got a lot further along to where we would like to be we saw positive change and transformation happen [Music] for me as as a christian beyond the university's interest it's there's there's my desire to please and serve god and if that is at the center of my leadership that my leadership is characterized by something much bigger than my self-interest so when we talk about the leadership that serves we're not talking about making yourself small and weak and humble authentic humility is different than pretend humility what we're talking about is is there something big enough in your leadership is there something that you think is more important than your own self-interest that is going to motivate you that is going to encourage the people around you to collaborate and cooperate and work to the highest level possible to get something incredible done together that's the leadership that serves where the role that you have as a leader is to use your gifts and talents so that something amazing can be done something bigger than your own selfish interest and so in that model being a certain leader is an empowering thing it's something that that you use to bring about positive holistic change and this is the kind of leadership that jesus talked about when he talked about leadership he said you know typical leadership is controlling and directing and harassing but if you were to follow me that's not the kind of leadership you should be expressing instead you should serve i think of great historical leaders i think of people like nelson mandela who had every right in the world after his long and unfair imprisonment to come out and say all right it's my time i've got this new nation under my control and i'm going to make sure that my name is raised up that my ambitions are fulfilled and yet as you study his leadership what you see is he had a vision for the kind of country he wanted to create under his leadership more than a vision for his own self-heroic name reputation ambitions and and because of that posture of serving the nation he is highly regarded as the greatest leader in africa now when i describe that kind of attitude i think many of you can recall somebody in your life who had that effect on you somebody in your life who was interested in you and wanted you to reach your full potential more than wanted you to be part of their reaching their own potential for me i think of people like my father my father was a great man i never for once doubted his interest in doing everything he could to support me to encourage me to facilitate my development so that i could achieve and accomplish things even bigger than he could dream for himself this is a leadership that serves and this is the kind of leadership that the course you are going to be taking this is the philosophy this is this is the the truth of the leadership that we want you to capture because we want you to know that you are gifted and talented and you're competent and you have abilities but all of that is in your hands so that you can do the best at helping others achieve something great together whether that's starting a new company or addressing some of the social challenges that we face bringing about more justice bringing about more fairness being successful all of that is for the benefit of others and so as we begin this leadership journey the material that you're looking at has been developed by a company that puts this philosophy into its everyday practice you would think that business in north america is competitive and combative and you know you have to fight to be the strongest but chick-fil-a is the number one food service business in the nation what that means is they are outperforming everybody else and their food is good but what they're known for is their service what they're known for is the way that it feels when you go in and you experience their service they have from the very bottom to the very top of the company applied and developed a leadership that serves attitude and that's the success of their business model so in in their in their training that they provide that that we are using and borrowing and incorporating into the course that you're going to be taking they build on this philosophy that leadership that serves is the best form of leadership and that a leader is somebody with an unshakable desire to serve and to help others bring about transformation so they will talk about leading others and the skills you need to lead others they will talk about leading team they will talk about leading organizations but at the center of the foundation of all of that is their concept of leading self and that's where this leadership journey starts before you lead others before you lead teams before you lead organizations you need to understand the first responsibility you have is to lead yourself to provide the influence you need and the attitudes that you need to be successful when you study leadership at some point in time somebody's going to draw an iceberg and they're going to say what's the message here they draw a line of water and there's the tip of the iceberg at the top and most of the ice is underneath well the lesson is quite straightforward most of what makes a successful leader is the stuff that others don't see it's the character of the individual it's their integrity it's the work they've done to develop their own self-leadership that nobody sees but but then as they lead others and they lead teams and they lead organizations that foundation of character provides them a solid base to be effective as they lead others henry cloud said that character is not just that quality that stops you from doing things that are not good things that are bad we say that a person a good character is a good person but the character doesn't just prevent you from doing things that are bad character amplifies magnifies it it helps you to be more effective than ever at your skills talents and gifts a person with good character is not only somebody who stays away from doing bad things but that good character brings about success in everything that they do and it's at the heart of the leadership so at the beginning of this journey we're going to be talking about five attitudes of the heart five character qualities that that enrich your life and give you the gravitas give you the capacity that you need to be successful at leading others teams and organizations so let me just go over the five attitudes that you're going to be studying in the weeks ahead first of all leaders are people who think about others first i i think we've already covered some of that that if you are self-interested then you don't have the heart of a leader but if you are others interested then you do have the heart of the leader so this thinking about others first is that first attitude that you'll discover and it comes and expressed in three different ways how do you add value to help others be successful how do you as a leader go in and look at your staff and say right how can i help these people be successful what does alfred need what does jane need in order to be successful how can i provide the service they need i'll give them the vision i'll help them understand our strategy i'll help them figure out where we're going but once i've done that vision work with them my role is now to come alongside and boost them and help them be successful another way of thinking about others first is is to be thankful to appreciate others to say thank you to others this is something we don't do enough love we tend to think of ourselves so much we forget to say thank you to those people who are around us but if you can develop a thankful and a gracious attitude that helps you to think of others first and then this service becomes something that is done very naturally and very unconditionally you don't do it for reward you don't do it because you'll get noticed if you do it because it's the right thing to do so the first attitude think about others first secondly be positive have you noticed that the world around us is getting increasingly negative it's very hard to find people who are positive people who are optimistic people that are hoping for the best we need people to be positive people leaders are people who are optimistic they believe that things can be better thirdly in your leadership you will need to respond with courage you need to excuse me you need to understand that there's a responsibility that leaders have to do the right thing at the right time and sometimes that that takes an amount or a degree of courage now in that you're going to have to come to terms with your own fears you're going to have to be prepared to embrace risk to try new things but mostly what you'll have to do as an expression of your responding with courage is to take initiative to do something to get something done fourthly leaders accept responsibility when things go well our natural inclination is to look in the mirror and say wow didn't i do a great job good leaders leaders that serve when things go wrong that's when they look in the mirror that's when they say what did i miss what could i have done better i'm the leader this is my responsibility i take ownership and yet when things go well they don't go back to the mirror they go to the window and they look and they see all of those people that have been instrumental in helping us realize the success we've realized together accept responsibility be intentional admit your mistakes this helps build credibility and build trust give praise to people you're the leader take responsibility and finally the fifth attitude is to be a learner to have a hunger for wisdom develop a plan for how you're going to develop and grow your leadership how are you going to find people who will be instrumental and and become mentors in your life find those people have conversations with people who can help you grow into your understanding of what it means to be effective and learn every day be a learner these five qualities thinking about others first expecting the best responding with courage accepting responsibility these are heart attitudes these are character qualities and as you go into your career and your life raising families and influencing communities and being successful in business and influencing in all kinds of different sectors it's it's this part that ultimately defines the success that you're going to have i wish you all the best as you study and come to understand what it means to be a leader and what it means to be a leader that serves god bless you have a wonderful time learning about leadership