The inner leader journey is the path we all must take in the 21st century.
— Dee Hock, founder, and CEO emeritus, Visa
Hi, and welcome, I’m Bill Fox.
There’s no shortage of advice on being an effective leader today. Social media and the business press are filled with a constant stream of articles and new books on how to be a better leader.
Today’s prevailing wisdom is that leadership is all about focusing on others — inspiring, serving, and making better people of others. However, given the apparent lack of leadership in the world today, maybe it’s time for new questions and new thinking.
The late Dee Hock, founder and CEO emeritus of Visa, clearly believed it was time for new thinking on leadership and offers a contrarian view.
We were all born leaders; that is until we were sent to school and taught to be managed and to manage.
In today’s complex world, the first and most important responsibility of a leader is to lead oneself by focusing on our “own integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, temperament, words, and acts.”
Traditional Industrial-Age thinking and practices on leadership are no longer adequate in an increasingly complex and chaotic world. We need to learn how to live and work with each other in new ways.
We are all leaders
Earlier this year, I submitted final edits to Cutter for my article, The 21st-Century Team Member Is a Leader of One: Themselves. It was published in Cutter’s Amplify journal.
After finishing the article, I discovered an essay by Dee Hock on Leadership in Today’s World. In his article, Hock shares what he learned about leadership in a middle-of-the-night encounter with a one-horned mother cow.
You might say it’s an example of the challenges we are all facing today. It’s a fascinating story, so I hope you will take a few minutes to read it.
In my writing and experience, and likewise in Hock’s article, we both believe everyone is a leader. “We were all born leaders; that is until we were sent to school and taught to be managed and to manage.”
The Cutter article makes a case for why it’s time for everyone to rise to the times and express their inherent leadership and why it’s becoming a necessity in today’s chaotic and fast-changing world.
I also share in the article how we can awaken this capacity in everyone, which resulted in the creation of LeaderONE.
The article is now available online at Cutter or read the PDF
I invite you to join me on this inner leader journey and beyond!
— Bill