Читать книгу Becoming an Invitational Leader - William W Purkey - Страница 24

“ You can learn to lead, but don’t confuse leadership with position and place. Don’t confuse leadership with skills and systems or with tools and techniques. They are not what earn you the respect and commitment of your constituents. What earns you their respect in the end is whether you are you. And whether what you are embodies what they want to become. So just who are you, anyway?”

—James M. Kouzes, “Finding your Leadership Voice,” Leader to Leader

Invitational leaders summon others to higher levels of functioning and present them with the opportunity to participate in the construction of something of mutual benefit. This “something” ultimately reveals itself in the noble effort to create a better world and to eliminate gross inequalities. This in turn will help to hold society together and sustain human decency. Invitational Leadership presents a fresh paradigm that sees leadership as a force for positive social change. It acknowledges our integrity, our potential, our interdependence, and our responsibility to do good.

In his book, The Leadership Engine, Noel Tichy sets forward practices successful leaders perform to communicate their values. These include clear and specific values consistently articulated and reflected upon, the embodiment of these values in the leader’s own actions, and the continuous encouragement of associates to apply these values to their behavior. Further support for the importance of values is provided by Louise Stoll and Dean Fink, who, in their study of leadership in education, reported that successful leaders function on a clear set of values which guide the decisions they make.

There are four, fundamental values that give invitational leaders direction and purpose. Together, these four values form a basic set of guiding beliefs that are echoed throughout this book. They are respect, trust, optimism, and intentionality.

 Respect is measured by how we treat ourselves and others.

 Trust encourages collaborative risk-taking and creative problem solving.

 Optimism is evidenced by positive and realistic expectations.

 Intentionality gives direction and purpose to our decisions and makes action possible.