Walter Bellin - Climb a Different Ladder: Self-Awareness, Mindfulness and Successful Leadership

The book you are about to read has been percolating in my mind for a long timeindeed parts of it I have been thinking about, in my personal life and in my work, for at least 30 years.

There is currently a huge literature on leadership, mostly concerned with what good leaders do, or should do. This approach tends to focus on two factors: firstly, the kinds of leadership practices undertaken by good leaders; and secondly, the essential skill sets that good leaders have, or should have, in order to undertake those leadership practices effectively. Clearly this is prescriptive: learn to emulate and master the practices and skills of good leaders, and you too can develop into a good leader. I have read many high quality and useful books that have used this approach.

However, this book does not fit within the framework of that model. Rather, it focuses on developing the human qualities that create great leadership. I want my readers to gain insight into their true potential, to expand their awareness of who they could become as a personand from this to become better leaders.

Thus, my aims are primarily about personal development and secondly about leadership development. In working with thousands of leaders over the years, I have found that the primary path to leadership development is through personal development. Yes, certain practices and skill sets are important, even critical for good leadership, but the bigger issue is always: what will you use these leadership skills and practices for?

The key issue for new or experienced leaders is: what kinds of outcomes do you seek through using your leadership practices and skills? What are the leaders intentions and motivationsare they narrow, self-serving or even destructive? Or are they broad, inclusive, holistic and positive? People who have mastered many leadership practices and skills can be very good at achieving either type of outcome. For example, Ghandi and Hitler both had many effective leadership practices and skillsbut radically different motivations and outcomes! It is the individual leaders qualities as a person that determines their motives and outcomes. Effective leadership practices and skills are just the means to an end and do not determine the nature of the leaders motives or the outcomes they seek.

We grow up and live our lives surrounded by a social culture which shapes the way we perceive the world. Through our families, education, peer groups and authority figures, religion and worklife we come to believe that there are certain outcomes in life that are desirable; we may also come to value certain outcomes or achievements more than others. Some of these may be very personal and some may be financial, social or professional, for example, great wealth, social, political or economic power or status, success in a particular profession, membership of an elite group, the list goes on. And, of course, the highest achievement is to be recognised as a leader in any of these categories.

Our culture assumes that the pathway to these achievements is like a metaphorical ladder. We must mount this ladder and climb it rung by rungor if we are very lucky or ambitious, maybe several rungs at a time.

The critically important implied (but often subliminal) promise that motivates us to mount and climb that ladder is: when we do reach the top rung we will be satisfied, happy and fulfilled. However this tacit assumption is simply false and involves a profound confusion of cause and effect.

Firstly, many people who have reached the top rung and are recognised as leaders in their area of achievement are not satisfied nor happy. Secondly, for those who have reached the top rung and are fulfilled, the cause of their fulfilment is often not the achievement, but something else entirely.

People who are both successful leaders and have experienced that deep and long-term fulfilment, have climbed a different kind of ladder within themselves; a ladder that is quite distinct from the external one leading to their success. This is the ladder of consciousness. Achieving deep and long-term fulfilment is a natural result of an internal journey of personal development and awareness.

The core facilitator of all personal development and lasting fulfilment is raising our level of awareness or consciousness. This awareness includes self-awareness, which provides us with an accurate perception of ourselves, our natural strengths, current limitations, our motives, the way we think, and our emotional habits or patterns. It includes awareness of other people, their strengths and current limitations, their true motives, their ways of thinking, their emotional states and responses (this awareness is part of what is now called emotional intelligence). It includes awareness of those factors that determine the dynamics of human relationshipseverything from one on one relationships to group relationship dynamics. And in a more general sense, it includes awareness of human nature and the human potential and awareness of how we and others see or perceive our world, or reality itself.