Bruce J. Avolio - The High Impact Leader

THE HIGH
IMPACT LEADER

Moments Matter in Accelerating
Authentic Leadership Development

Bruce J. Avolio
Fred Luthans

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DOI: 10.1036/0071444130

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To our wives, children, other family members,
friends, teachers, colleagues, and students
that have provided us with the very best
Moments That Mattered to our life developement.

Thank you.

.

ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS that we wrote this book was to shift the attention on leadership development from what typically occurs in planned interventions to all possible moments that could positively impact upon your leadership development. These moments that matter can be planned or unplanned, but our intent for the book is to facilitate and accelerate your authentic leadership development, or what we simply refer to as ALD.

Another reason we wrote The High Impact Leader is that there are a lot of leadership development efforts out there that in our view fall short of being genuine or authentic. Indeed, we are dismayed at how few leadership development programs actually can substantiate that even one leader has been developed as a consequence of most of these programs. This is surprising, given the billions invested each year on the premise that attending a leadership development program will actually enhance ones leadership potential and capability.

As we discuss in this book, lifes program is perhaps the most authentic contributor to advancing ones leadership development. Our goal is to try and accelerate your lifes program, by augmenting it with authentic leadership development practices. However, its important to note that we are not trying to replace lifes program as a main source for driving your leadership developmentnor could we. Indeed, we have tried to convey, in every chapter, how to work with lifes program to advance your authentic leadership development. We put particular emphasis on extracting from both negative and positive moments in order to determine how you view yourself.

We have attempted to create a practical framework to accelerate your authentic leadership development, or what we call ALD. We provide a methodology, a broad range of exercises, and a rationale for engaging you in increasing your self-awareness and accelerating your authentic leadership potential.

We have specifically focused on moments that matter in ones life, which often seem inconsequential but can profoundly shape ones destiny in terms of effective leadership practices. We propose you take the time to understand the nature of such moments and how they impact your personal model of leadership.

We encourage you throughout the book to consider that each and every moment can matter to your ALD. In addition to your own ALD, such moments can also accelerate the development of others, if reflected upon and incorporated into how you go about influencing them to achieve their full potential.

We begin in the introduction and first chapter by discussing how leaders have to bring the future to the present, especially with respect to their own ALD. We use popular concepts in the field of cognitive psychology, concepts arguing that everyone has a working model of the self. This is labeled their actual self. To move to the future, one must consider the possible self, or what one can become. Generally, moments in life trigger what is possible. In the ALD process, leaders move from what they view as being possible in their development to what they actually do. In other words, in ALD, the possible becomes the actual; that is, the future becomes the present.

Another main point we highlight early in the book is that we focus too much attention and energy on negative moments. We tend to lose the potential to develop that comes from often overlooked positive moments. Not to get overly academic, but we would argue that everyone has an implicit theory of what they believe constitutes their leadership. In order to develop that theory, one must be willing to analyze and challenge it. Positive moments often trigger those challenges and result in ALD. We also know that negative moments do the same.