Progressive leaders see beyond themselves
Marcus Goncalves
Businesses need more progressive leadership. But how do today's leaders become progressive? More than ever, the business world is in dire need of progressive leaders to help develop cultures that encourage openness and authenticity among its people, while developing consistent communication forums that provide feedback and support inside and outside the organization.
It starts with knowing yourself and using that as a starting point.
Progressive leaders work from the inside out. When they're faced with business challenges, they look at their own capacities and assess where they need to change, and develop their own inner qualities. They view problems as opportunities to expand their own inner development to further their own purposes and the purposes of others in and beyond their organizations.
Progressive leaders, such as Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, consider the welfare of their workers and their customers first. While Chambers is a self-proclaimed “command-and-control person,” able to have 67,000 employees turn right or left, he also knows that style is passé, choosing instead to foster a progressive leadership style, with more collaboration and teamwork. He realizes that caring for his team members' well-being enables them to develop a sense of purpose and meaning that surpasses the quarterly earnings reports.
Progressive leaders such as Chambers have nothing to prove. They're only interested in creating an environment where their people and customers can access and develop their own dreams and inner potential.
Emanating a sense of confidence and strength that arises from being settled with themselves, progressive leaders have poise. They convert into collaborators, teachers, leaders, friends and mentors. They become examples of warm heartedness amid a cold business world, operating from a stance of wisdom, developed from accessing their own, and others', struggles in business and life. They're well rounded, curious about how problems become problems and how people can overcome them from transforming themselves.
Progressive leaders seek out mentors to act as thinking partners assisting them and their organizations on their path by conducting visioning and planning processes, auditing and appraising culture and resources, assessing non-winning mindsets that contribute to losing strategies, managing change, training in "how thinking works," and in becoming their own coach. It is only through genuine communication that leaders can articulate the nuances of the future and invite others to participate in achieving their goals.
Progressive leaders are able to look outside their immediate workplace challenges and encompass a greater view where the benefits are broadened far beyond the leader or company. By acquiring progressive leadership one creates more than profits, bringing forth change and immeasurable returns, as Chambers has.
To become a progressive leader you must push yourself to be creative in your thinking and introspective within your organization, striving to see how your passions in your work can create greater value for the world. Profits and growth are about performance, and performance is about people, and successful people care about a good greater than themselves.
Marcus Goncalves, associate professor of management at Nichols College in Dudley, is chair of the school's International Business Program.
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