The Leadership Instinct: Leading Yourself Out Of Social Mediocrity

The Leadership Instinct

Leading Yourself Out Of Social Mediocrity

James E. Smith, Ph. D.

ISBN 978-1-64468-712-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64468-713-0 (Digital)

Copyright © 2020 James E. Smith, Ph. D.

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

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Contents

Forewordvii

Acknowledgmentsix

Introduction1

1.1 Education and Training1

1.2 The Message2

The Leadership Program5

2.1 Human Beings5

2.2 The Coded Response7

2.3 Society’s Perceived Needs8

2.4 The Leadership Impulse10

2.5 The Latent Leadership Trait11

2.6 Stimulating Leadership Attributes13

The Intended You15

3.1 A Sample Development Program15

3.2 What Path Are You Taking?17

3.3 What Will You Look Like?18

Foundation of the Leadership Process21

4.1 Focus on the Prize21

4.2 The Proactive and Reactive Leadership Mind-Set22

4.3 Active Reader Outcomes23

The Process Behind This Book25

5.1 Foundation for This Experience25

5.2 Follow the Steps Outlined in This Working Text26

Leadership and Survival29

6.1 Creating Your Future through Intention29

6.2 Exercises to Create a Baseline for The Intended You30

6.3 What Constitutes a List of Leadership Traits?31

Exercise A: Identifying Leadership Traits31

Notes32

6.4 What Constitutes a List of Survival Traits?34

Exercise B: Identifying survival traits34

Notes36

Analysis: Your thoughts37

Notes39

6.5 The Significance of Leadership and Survival Traits39

Your Personal Description41

7.1 What Is a Vision?41

7.2 What Will You Look Like in Five Years?42

Exercise C: What is your personal vision of yourself?42

Notes43

The Essential Elements of a Rewarding Life47

8.1 The Correct Decision47

8.2 Moving Past the Baseline Intended You49

Exercise D: What are your essential elements for a rewarding life?51

Notes52

8.4 Focus on the Most Important55

Exercise E: The most important essential elements to you55

Analysis: what have you learned at this point?57

Notes57

Understanding the Goal Development Process59

9.1 Understanding the Rational for Goals59

9.2 Creating Goals60

9.3 The Goal Development Process61

9.4 Drilling Down on the Essential Elements63

9.5 Developing Basic Criteria63

Exercise F: Drilling down—Basic Criteria65

Notes68

9.6 Developing Fundamental Requirements69

Exercise G: Drilling down—Fundamental Requirements69

Notes73

Constraints—Rules and Guidelines75

10.1 Identifying Constraints75

10.2 Goal Setting Example76

10.3 Constraints Example76

10.4 Defining Constraints77

10.4 Getting into the Details78

Exercise H: Drilling down—Constraints78

Notes80

Analysis: What did you learn?82

Notes82

Exercise I: Turning essential elements into goals84

Notes88

Analysis: What did you learn?89

The Genesis of the Five-Year Plan91

11.1 How the Leadership Development Plan Was Created91

11.2 What Does It Mean to Be Average?93

11.3 Your New Five-Year Plan94

Exercise J: Your new essential elements, five years from now94

Analysis: What have you learned?97

Notes97

The Nature of Goal Setting99

12.1 Intending Future Goals99

12.2 Developing Goals100

Exercise K: Turning essential elements into goals100

Notes: Creating Goals101

Notes: Developing Goals106

The Visionary Plan107

13.1 Creating a Visionary Plan107

13.2 The Image You Are Planning109

Exercise L: The latest five-year personal description109

Notes109

Exercise M: The plan to achieve your goals113

Analysis: The plan, what have you learned?116

Notes:116

Exercise N: Visualizing your plan117

Lifelong Learning123

14.1 Stepping into Tomorrow123

Exercise O: Creating The Intended You124

Notes124

The Intended You—Your Choice127

15.1 It Is Your Choice127

15.2 The Path128

15.3 What Gains Did You Realize?130

Notes131

Epilogue133

Foreword

The search for and development of sound leadership should be a mandate, not left to chance or choice.

This working text provides and enhances the discovery of the essential attributes for a leadership-based, self-directed, and rewarding lifestyle. It is through the enablement of your leadership potential that allows you to take control over, and responsibility for, the future life that you deserve and desire. This text will provide insightful guidelines to achieve the following:

Establish the definition and significance of leadership as a personal trait.

Create an understanding of leadership as a human survival characteristic.

Discover the essential elements you personally require for a rewarding life.

Understand the criteria, requirements, and constraints for those essential elements.

Create goals and a visionary plan that will establish a strategy for your personal success.

Determine the efforts and outcomes needed to reach your personal goals.

Develop a leadership-driven timeline needed to achieve your goals.

Enjoy your desired best self through responsible leadership enablement.

Become the leader you were designed to become, The Intended You.

The Leadership Instinct is the outcome of nearly two decades of leadership development efforts by its author. It is the direct result of extensive years of classroom, laboratory, and advanced research and development mentoring activities. This experience, through the development of budding leaders, has led to the creation of this insightful leadership development working text. Inspired by decades of leadership development opportunities across various types of professions, disciplines, and personalities, The Leadership Instinct offers a unique strategy to inspire and promote leadership development and personal goal-directed growth in any individual seeking to become the best self they intend to become.

This working text is focused on the essence, function, and required elements of leadership development that spring from the very core of our genetic makeup. This is in contrast and often counter-indicated within the numerous educational programs devoted to the development of management skill sets. The largest fallacy perpetrated in many improvement programs is the assumption that leadership and management are interchangeable concepts, which they are not.

This program also avoids the dangers associated with the philosophical discussions inevitably associated with leadership, management, and the myriad of programs that are self-help-based programs. Leadership and management are uniquely different where leadership is an instinctual survival trait ingrained in our genetic makeup. Management is by its nature a trained process to be learned, where consistency and routine are the primary attributes. Meeting business goals are the managers’ strong suit. Leaders see the bigger picture and often ignore the near-term goals, requiring the forging of a uniquely different and often uncomfortable path to improvements.

While a competent management team is essential for a well-developed operation, it alone is often not enough for long-term success. What we recognize in some cases, and unfortunately often too late in many others, is the need for a prerequisite measure of leadership in combination with said competent management core. Even though we currently provide significant resources for the development of effective managers, the same cannot be said for the development of similar competencies within our leadership core. As far as this working text is concerned, the reasons or definitions are not relevant. Everyone has a leadership instinct, and when you put the right practices in place, you will enable and refine these traits to enhance your best self.

Currently our society has an obvious shortage in these necessary big picture leadership capabilities. The evidence, for example, can be found in the decades-long shrinking of our nation’s manufacturing capacities, a decrease in the taught fundamentals in the school system, and, more importantly, the slowing of the introduction of game-changing technologies and processes into our social fabric.

The truly successful organizations have recognized the need for leadership, where many have attempted to provide their own leadership development programs. Any attempt to help stimulate in us the often-undeveloped leadership trait has the potential to have a positive impact on the future of us individually and society as a whole. It is hoped that this personal and individualized leadership program will help you develop your innate leadership capabilities.

With this leadership development program’s focus on your specific needs and desires, this program should help to stimulate your focus and attention, thus helping you achieve your future The Intended You. From this vantage point you will then become an obvious candidate for those organizations looking for leadership talent. More importantly, as a leader you may choose to look to a new direction in your life, one that you may not have even considered at this point.

This working text was developed to fill some of the gaps in our current leadership development needs. It individualizes the leadership process and can make it effective in anyone’s personal and professional development. The uniqueness in this leadership program is its ability to provide value to almost any age group and across all disciplines. It also doesn’t require the processing and acquisition of large quantities of knowledge.

In fact, you have almost everything you need to be a successful personal leader starting today. You just need to create the visionary image of your future self, and then to stay on the best path forward to leadership success. If these words resonate with your current needs, please read on to a better more productive future self, using The Leadership Instinct working text.

Acknowledgments

Credit for the contents in this book is due in part to the interactions with thousands of students and hundreds of colleagues I have had the fortune to have worked with over the past several decades. They have been a constant source of creative energy and, more often than not, absolute amazement. They have also been the impetus behind my drive to provide what they have taught me as the leadership development process outlined in this book.

The rest of the credit goes to my family and personal friends who have suffered through the long work hours and my inattention that has dominated my professional career. The most important individual in my life has been my wife, Sheri, who should be sainted for the trials I have put her through. She has managed to make a life for us and our children while still pursuing her own personal creative pleasures.

Finally, there are numerous individuals who have personally made contributions and have added value to my life and, through extension, this book. While they are too many to list here, the one that needs special acknowledgment is John Ruth, the individual who refused to let this book not go to press and also the person who provided the majority of the edits to allow this book to become at least somewhat readable. I also want to acknowledge David E. Bryte a new-found, late-life friend. He is credited with providing me with a place to be and a repurposing of my creative energies.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

1

Introduction

Management may drive the wheels of progress, but leadership chooses the direction, where innovation populates the future landscape.

1.1 Education and Training

A society or any social order is defined in the dictionary as a group of individuals living together in some form of ordered community. For a society to flourish, it must grow and adapt to changes. These changes can be in the individuals of the society, how support is provided, the physical environment it interacts with, or the other communities