Eric Kaufmann - The Four Virtues of a Leader: Navigating the Heros Journey Through Risk to Results

To Shayna, Tara, and Maya

The triple gem that makes my path noble

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I cant do justice to the scores of people I want to acknowledge. I owe a great debt to my family and loved ones. I feel tremendous gratitude for my mentors, teachers, guides, allies, friends, and helpers. Even my foes contributed to my learning and development. The insights and guidance I share in this book reflect my life and learning; they illustrate real-world application of leadership. While this book has been brewing for a couple of decades, it needed to mature, as did I, before it could see the light of day.

My father and mother, Eli and Norma, are my earliest and most enduring role models. They exemplify both individually and as a couple what it means to be leaders on a heros journey. Their courage and commitment, their generosity and kindness, are remarkable to behold and inspiring to emulate. Their example and conduct have shaped me, and Im proud to be their physical and spiritual descendant.

While the greatest teacher is life as it is, I have learned directly from several remarkable teachers. Their styles are as different as their personalities, and each has polished a different facet of my mind and heart. I was lucky to cross paths with Ingrid Coffin while I was a freshman in college, as she introduced me to a life of discovery and practice that shapes who I am and gives language and context to this book. Morris McCauley, the intrepid explorer of consciousness, brought magic and mystery to my life. Had I not met him and learned from him, my life would have been far less multidimensional and adventurous. Catherine Wambach provided the wisdom, patience, and space for some of my most profound transformations. Her generosity of spirit and time is a gift that I endeavor to pass along through my work and family. Ezra Bayda and Elizabeth Hamilton continuously offer invaluable wisdom in their teaching; their presence, practice, and lived compassion seep below the defenses of my mind and invoke awakening and evolution.

My friend Mikel Bruce has matched my curiosity and intensity for decades. It has been a joy and a privilege to share adventures with him, to be supported by his friendship, and to admire his heroic journey. Sharon OBrien offered a beacon of kindness in a most precarious wilderness of my quest. Her ability to be present and accepting was a gift and a service.

I owe a great debt of appreciation to Sarah McArthur for her editing. Without her guidance and leadership, I would not have completed this writing project. When she first suggested that I abandon a dozen years of my material and start over, I thought she was crazy. Turned out she was the sane one between us.

My clients have been an inspiration. I am privileged to do my work of guiding, advising, coaching, and speaking. As clichd as it sounds, I have learned more from all my clients than I have brought to any single engagement. While endeavoring to accelerate their growth, results, decisions, and behaviors, they have also shaped me. My CEO roundtable group, in particular, fortifies my passionate conviction about leadership as a heros journey.

Lastly, I bow before my wife and daughters. There are no other people on earth I know as well who see me as fully as they do. We have our differences and disagreements, but the love and appreciation we share washes those clean every day. Tara, our firstborn, manifests compassion and has swelled my heart not just by our relationship but by her presence. Tara is deep and funny, competitive and caring; being herself, she makes a difference.

Maya, our beautiful youngest daughter, inspires me to strive to be a great dad and, consequently, an evolved man. Maya is a balance of fire and water, of intensity and depth, of expression and feeling. My heart is bigger because shes in my world.

Shayna means beautiful. My wife is a beautiful woman inside and out, and I love and respect her. Shayna is a powerful leader who touches peoples lives and improves them; shes also a force of nature driven by service and guided by compassion. I feel inspired and encouraged by her courage, love, and commitment to her spiritual evolution. Thanks for being with me.

INTRODUCTION

I have no intention of adding to the convoluted mythology of leaders as special creatures. Many of the common notions of being heroic, as it relates to the work of leading, end up limiting the ability of leaders to be effective. When I ask leaders to name a hero, Superman often comes up. Well, Superman is the antithesis of our discussion in this book. Superman has superhuman powers. He is a perfect being and knows no fear. By contrast, every leader Ive met possesses no superhuman powers, is flawed and complex, and is caught in anxiety and fear at new turns (even the exciting ones). Over the past two decades, I have coached and consulted hundreds of leaders in for-profit, nonprofit, and government realms. Ive worked with privately held and publicly traded company leaders, community and social leaders, and spiritual and religious leaders. None of them was exempt from flaws and anxiety. It is precisely because of our flawed and anxious nature that we can be heroic. A hero is someone who seeks a great prize (something difficult and rewarding), leaves the comfort zone, makes sacrifices, and, ultimately, gives back to the community. If you regularly strive for enormous reward, often find yourself in discomfort or danger, and aim to serve the greater good, then you are poised for the heros journey.

We expect leaders to achieve results, through and with other people. To lead is to drive toward outcomes that would not happen if the group were left to its own; leaders create outcomes that dont happen organically. And because they are tasked with achieving results, we hold leaders accountable. They are the final stop for praise or blame regarding the results of their team. When you are on your heros journey, you willingly place yourself at risk and in discomfort in order to advance your vision, tend to your followers, and achieve results.

Leaders get to employ a variety of tools and approaches to ensure that they achieve results. Their work falls into three broad actions: inspire a culture of aligned and collaborative teams, institute effective systems and structures that support execution and decision making, and articulate a strategy that brings the vision and mission to life. Decisions influence everything leaders do. Decisions contain a rational element, but they also result from a leaders presence, attitude, and character. In this book I describe four virtues leaders must embody in order to inhabit a heroic character: focus, courage, grit, and faith.

Understanding the Heros Journey

This book, like the heros journey, is for seekers. Your job is not just to do but to think; Ive written this book to be thought-provoking. The journey youre embarking on with me is one of leadership philosophy and psychology, not just prescriptive formulas. Ive long been inspired by Joseph Campbell, the scholar and explorer of consciousness who brought the heros journey into popular awareness. He characterized the journey by three elements: (1) leaving the familiar in order to seek a valuable prize, (2) encountering challenges and risks that demand personal sacrifices, and (3) sharing the hard-earned prize with fellow men and women.

I wrote Four Virtues of a Leader for people who have a passion for their own journey of growth, passage, and change. This journey requires and begins at the separation from the comfortable, known world. It is an initiation into a new level of awareness, skill, and responsibility that culminates when you bring your hard-earned prize back home. Along the journey, you change and return a hero a different person, a different leader. While the heros journey is defined by ambition, risk, sacrifice, and service, it requires the completion of the successive stages of separation, initiation, and return for the leader to become a hero. To turn back at any stage is to reject the need to grow, to mature, and to evolve.