LeaderShaping People and Transformational Change

This "abstract" from the white paper introduces an essential guide for building your transformational resilience, providing the needed coaching to your people, and driving performance management for business results as we start a new year. As we begin to make our year’s resolutions, it might be wise to include one for your valued and trusted associates who are responsible for keeping the pistons firing in the organizational engine that drives performance.

There seems to be, with some of us, an erroneous perspective about how we look and think about the topic of leadership. As times change, shouldn’t the way people who are chosen as leaders tend to influence change? The misconception is that leadership changes independent of the people chosen to lead it. It does experience transition, whether we like it or not, whether we recognize it or not and whether we actively participate within that transition or not. It does not change on its own. As the individual’s perspective in life and reality take on new challenges – transition in ideation, transformative thought, the technology changes that drive our perspective on getting things done, and the changing environments reflective through the constant design and development of our ideals, values, and beliefs – so does the way of leadership.

We are aware of these huge incessant issues such as the Iraq war and the sectarian struggles that are causing human life to be lost, the environment, education, employment, politics, economics and such like and we drown in a sea of information about them, as they migrate like locust in our lives, day-in and day-out. The erroneous perspective extends on this tide until these problems and challenges seem so disconnected from each other and so alien to our personal circumstances that we think we are disadvantaged and too unimportant to make any difference.

We become ambivalent and detached from them, desensitized in a way that we begin to believe that we are all unable to overcome the challenges and enormous gravity of the situation. Moreover, we think we have no responsibility for them. But it is just that: an erroneous perspective! We think that to change the organizations with which we work, we must change the organization that resides around us. Nothing else makes any difference. However, as the title of this text suggests, change comes from within, not without. It is powered by the minds of each of us. It is engineered by the words from your mouth and the actions of your behaviors. It is constructed by your hands, as we are all responsible for it and influenced by it, whether directly or indirectly. It is so very clear to me that to change our environments – business, personal, relationships, etc – we must begin by changing ourselves.

The challenges and problems that face us in life’s journey do not exist within the depths of our media; they lie within each of us. They are created by us and we must be prepared to accept the “truth” delivered by our own level of influence and the consequences of our actions – our behaviors and our means to deliver the expected performance within the environment that we are a part of. “Your actions carry a thought and shape a destiny!” Simply, there is a reciprocal relationship between environments and behaviors and to achieve a successful transformational change medium, people must remain on a continuum of being “LeaderShaped!” This leads me to an all too familiar statement within my executive team; many, most, and some: “Many have wanted it; most think they have it, and some will actually get it.” Despite our perceptions to the contrary, the three perspectives are either a result of our passive acceptance that we can do nothing about them or our active role in encouraging them, or we can acknowledge our current place and decide to make a change for the better.

So, we have a choice. You have a choice. Accept the reality that we have made for what it is and allow change to occur with you as a passive participant in it, or look at your life and begin wondering: It is what it is? Does it get any better? Is this the best my reality and the reality of the world can be? “LeaderShaping People and Transformational Change” is my way of answering these very pointed questions for my own existence. My answer is absolutely, and without any doubt, NO!

This text is the starting point for you to begin the path of change for you and the people influenced by you and within your environment of trust. To get a full copy of the white paper, "LeaderShaping People and Transformational Change," email us at Sales@BisonGroupUS.com.