The ten leadership competencies form the heart of this book; each is described in a separate chapter, beginning with Insight. Here are brief descriptions of each competency.
Winning Intellectual Commitment
Insight —seeing what is, in a new way. Insight is a perception about a complex set of circumstances that is deeper and clearer than whatever perception prevails at the time. It often comes suddenly. For leaders, insight is most often about the needs or aspirations of a group of people.
Vision —an ideal image of identity and the future. A vision proclaims a leader’s commitment to work toward an ideal. It serves followers as a touchstone, and as a picture of where they are all going together. It also challenges them to consider who they are and who they wish to become. A vision is a leader’s answer to the question, ‘‘What could be?’’
Storytelling —presenting the story in an unforgettable way. A leader’s story contains his vision, the rationale for the vision, and ideas about what to do in order to achieve it. The presentation of the entire story must be compelling and inspiring. The leader is part of the story and must ‘‘walk the talk’’ and ‘‘be the story.’’ There is a consistency about leaders—who they are, what they do, and what they say. The story and the person support one another.
Mobilizing —transforming energy into committed action. A well-told story creates human energy. Leaders have three roles to play in transforming that energy into action: enrolling people, educating them, and helping them narrow the broad challenges described in the story into actions that they can and will perform. These three roles are enacted during an extended dialogue between the leader and followers that includes everything that happens between them.
Winning Emotional Commitment
Self-Awareness —attentiveness to one’s self. Emotions, motivations, hot buttons, strengths and weaknesses, style, values, the penchants that derive from the family of origin, and from life experience—all influence any attempt at leadership. Since the very self of the leader is his most potent (and perhaps only) instrument, it is wise to know that self well.
Emotional Engagement —the ability to create a flow of productive feeling between the leader and her followers, and among the followers themselves. Emotional engagement depends heavily upon a leader’s skill at empathy—sensing and prizing the feelings of others. A person knows a leader is empathetic when he feels heard and affirmed—not necessarily agreed with, but understood and accepted.
Fostering Hope —creating the feeling that something desirable is possible or likely to happen. A leader’s ability to foster hope depends upon his optimism; the tendency to believe that right will prevail, that good will triumph over evil, that hope is a fitting response to difficult challenges. The ability to instill hope through optimism is an essential leadership task.
Winning Spiritual Commitment
Rendering Significance —drawing the connections from the leader’s insight, vision, and story to a higher meaning and purpose. By rendering significance to their insights, visions, and stories leaders help people come to full human maturity through the diverse forms of their individual lives.
Enacting Beliefs —translating beliefs and principles into leadership activities, not as a religious statement, but as an endeavor of good leadership that wins high commitment.
Centering —the discipline of bringing in rather than leaving out. In a leader’s contacts with followers, mind, emotion, and spirit are invited in when they show up. Centering is the competency through which a leader brings all of the other competencies together as a seamless whole.