Thoughts on ... Integrity

Numerous characteristics of leaders have been selected as central to the role of leadership. We choose to work with leaders who have embraced two, in particular; personal integrity and courage. As change agents we are, first of all, servants of our clients. Our impact can only be through them and we are only as good, in terms of results, as our clients. Since we are deeply committed to finding and engaging what we call “truth”, we seek out clients who are, in the final analysis, more interested in their personal integrity than they are in their commercial or reputational success. Often our clients find success in the terms that many would recognize but it derives not from their intentional manipulation or exploitation of others but from their restless pursuit of being real and authentic as leaders. Such seemingly naïve optimism comes not from a failure to recognize that commercial success is often fraught with moral challenge but from a choice that if we choose what is higher, loftier, more noble, then perhaps more of that will emerge.

Thoughts on ... Leadership

We have often observed and validated that “as go the leaders, so goes the change… or not”. We start from a conviction that leaders are not heroes but real ordinary people, often with extra-ordinary gifts, who must first live out in themselves the changes and growth that they seek for their organization. Certainly, how they engage their strengths is important, but of even greater significance is how they engage their weakness, their sense of inadequacy, their fraility. It is as leaders confront and engage their own disadvantages that they develop a capacity to elicit in others the courage, confidence and capacity to overcome their own barriers to greater performance. Inspiration matters, to be sure, but the ‘perspiration’ of personal growth in leaders is fundamental to their capacity to exert positive influence on their organizations. We challenge leaders to grow first, if they would lead others.