Today I attended a leadership training event at school. For a seven hours, I sat in a room listening to someone tell me stories about his experiences as a leader. What an interesting day for me, some great points where brought up, internally and externally of course.

At first, I held a strong judgment about the speaker. I wasn’t getting any new information, nor any motivation to go out and LEAD! I couldn’t relate to any of his stories, his discoveries, his epiphanies. They were all things that I know, that I’ve known, being the Indigo that I am. Oh, how vain of me. To assume that I am better than others.

But then, he did say a few things that stood out to me, and not from a learning perspective, but from a “Hey, this guy might actually know what he’s talking about. He might actually have a clue.” point of view. How narcissistic of me. And I realized what I was doing. I was judging him, categorizing him, and putting him in a nice little box with a nice little label, tied with a nice little bow.

Oh, how I detest those that do the same to me. I loathe it. It infuriates me. How dare another judge me and tell me what I am. I immediately held my thoughts back, curbed myself, checked my judgment and opened up to learning from him. Indeed, I was learning from myself.

So after the script had flipped, we all went out to eat lunch, and I ended up learning so much more about him. Not the mask that he put on while speaking to an audience, but the real him. We talked religion/spirituality, life-style choices, and creation myths. Oh, how glorious. And look at how quick I was to dismiss him. Shame on me.

Leadership – what is it? A strong definition of what it is, that is what I should have walked away with, no? But I didn’t. I already know what a leader is. I am a leader. I didn’t learn how to lead any better, how to change myself into being a better leader, or how to dictate more efficiently. No, I learned to be aware of how I was acting and what I was thinking, and to curb that. And that makes a good leader. A good leader is not biased or subjective towards those around them. They are cool, calm, and collected. They remain objective, seek to understand those around them, and can move swiftly when the time is ripe because they have been spending time gathering appropriate information.

He did happen to ask a few questions, or say a few key points that stood out to me, and here they are:

If you could do anything, and you knew you wouldn’t fail, what would you do?

Three things make an organization/leader successful:
- Vision: the leader has to see where the organization can go
- Mission: the organization MUST have a strong clear mission that everyone can agree on and is apparent. It is what the organization is doing to move towards the vision
- Value: the leader of the organization MUST have the same values as the mission and those participants of the organization in order to lead. Otherwise, they won’t follow or respect made decisions and movements forward.
When these three items are in unison, it makes it much easier to slide through the inertia that keeps us from succeeding.

He also suggested reading: Good to Great by Jim Collins, it’s about some businesses and their ability to achieve past their fiscal goals each year. Personally, I vouch for the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. That one is killer. Like The Prince, except way relevant to today.