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New heading : FOCUS AND EXECUTION: AN OUTLINE FOR THE REST OF THE BOOK

As the new extended diagram that follows shows, the 4 Roles also represent the upper road to “Inspire Others to Find Their Voice” and achieving organizational greatness, whereas the four chronic organizational problems represent the lower road to keeping others from finding their voice, which results in organizational straitjacketing and mediocrity.

The process of Inspiring Others to Find Their Voice could be summarized in two words: FOCUS and EXECUTION. Focus embodies the modeling and pathfinding roles; execution, the aligning and empowering roles. In the remainder of the book you will learn to make Inspiring Others to Find Their Voice a HABIT by developing the ATTITUDE, SKILL and KNOWLEDGE of the following principles.

FOCUS—Modeling and Pathfinding

1. The Voice of Influence. Being a model involves finding your own voice first (Part 1) and then choosing the ATTITUDE of initiative being what I call a trim-tab, or taking initiative to expand your influence in every opportunity around you (chapter 7).

2. The Voice of Trustworthiness. Modeling character and competence lays the foundation for trust in every relationship and organization. You cannot have trust without trustworthiness. KNOWLEDGE of this principle and of the principles underlying the pathfinding, aligning and empowering roles are the doorway to influence (chapter 8).

3. The Voice and Speed of Trust. Modeling also involves developing strong relationship SKILLS that Build Trust (chapter 9) and Blending Voices creating Third-Alternative Solutions to your challenges and differences with others (chapter 10).

4. One Voice. Pathfinding involves creating with others a common vision about your highest priorities and the values by which you will achieve your priorities.( chapter11)

EXECUTION—Aligning and Empowering

1. The Voice of Execution. Aligning goals and enabling systems for results (chapter 12).

2. The Empowering Voice. Releasing passion and talent, clearing the way before them and then getting out of the way (chapter 13). Empowerment is where the rubber meets the road in a team and is the culminating fruit of the 4 Roles of Leadership.

Chapter 14—The 8th Habit and The Sweet Spot will show how the approach outlined in this book fosters three dimensions of greatness—personal, leadership and organizational. You will learn how they combine and can be translated into 4 Disciplines of Execution that can enable your organization to achieve breakthrough performance in the Knowledge Worker Age.

Chapter 15—Using Our Voices Wisely to Serve Others, pulls it all together by showing how the 8th Habit (Finding Your Voice and Inspiring Others to Find Theirs) will lead us into the next age of mankind’s voice—the Age of Wisdom. Again, this final section is concluded with a section of Questions & Answers—the most commonly asked questions I’ve dealt with over the years that deal with the issues we cover in the book.

QUESTION & ANSWER

Q: How would you define leadership?

A: Again, leadership is communicating people’s worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves. Notice the words worth and potential. People must feel an intrinsic sense of worth—that is, that they have intrinsic value—totally apart from being compared to others, and that they are worthy of unconditional love, regardless of behavior or performance. Then when you communicate their potential and create opportunities to develop and use it, you are building on a solid foundation. To communicate people’s potential and to give them a sense of extrinsic worth is a flawed foundation, and their potential will never be optimized.

Q: There are so many leadership books out today—what in your material is truly unique that adds value?

A: What is unique about this leadership material that adds real value? I would say five things: First—the sequential development. I know of no book that focuses on the absolute necessity of personal development and integration before trust can be built at the relationship level and insists that both of these are necessary before you can build effective, sustainable organizations, including families. Second—it takes a whole-person approach. I know of no material out there that deals with all four intelligences, giving the highest emphasis to spiritual intelligence, or conscience, in guiding the other three. Third—it is based entirely upon principles that are timeless, universal and self-evident, as differentiated from values that all people and organizations have but which may not be based upon principles. As you know, values control our behavior, but principles control the consequences of our behavior. When you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other. Fourth—it teaches that leadership through the developmental principle-centered process can become a choice (moral authority) rather than only being a position (formal authority) and that the key to the new age of knowledge workers is to think in terms of release, not control; in terms of transformation, not just transaction. In other words, you manage things but you lead people. Fifth—the whole-person approach is “written large” for an organization, including a family, in terms of the 4 Roles of Leadership—modeling, pathfinding, aligning and empowering. This is an amazingly powerful explanatory paradigm which can be used to diagnose most any problem or challenge and to identify the high leverage steps in resolving them.

Q: Can leadership be taught?

A: No, but it can be learned. Again, the key is the exercise of the space between stimulus, that is the teaching, and response, that is the learning, and if people will exercise their freedom of choice to learn the knowledge, skills and character traits associated with leadership (vision, discipline, passion and conscience), they will learn to be leaders that others will happily choose to follow. In a very real sense they are both followers of principles. Ultimately a good leadership team is a complementary team where people’s strengths are made productive and their weaknesses made irrelevant by the strengths of others.