BREAKTHROUGH LEADERSHIP......A Break With The Past

[Jo Silvey]

Almost every significant breakthrough is the result of a courageous break with traditional ways of thinking.

In scientific circles, dramatic transformations, revolutions of thought, great leaps of understanding, and sudden liberations from old limits are called "Paradign Shifts." These offer distinctively new ways of thinking about old problems.

The word PARADIGM is from the Greek word PARADIGMA:

A pattern or map for understanding and explaining certain aspects of reality. While a person may make small improvements by developing new skills, quantum leaps in performance and revolutionary advances in technology require new maps, new paradigms, new way of thinking about and seeing the world.

Throughout history leaders have used various models and "maps" to manage people. These range from the primitive "carrot-and-stick" paradigm, where rewards and punishments are used to generate productivity, to more sophisticated human relations and human resource models based on influence strategies and involvement techniques.

When we bring about a paradigm shift in management training by focusing not just on another map, but on a new compass; Stephen Covey......"Principle-Centered Leadership"

Using this paradigm, leaders can expect to transform their organizations and their people by communicating vision, clarifying purpose, making behavior congruent with belief, and aligning procedures with principles, roles, and goals.

People may then achieve a heightened sense of personal contribution through their commitment to the organization's mission.

Often we can't embrace a new paradigm until we let go of the old one. Likewise, until we drop unwarranted assumptions about people, we can't expect to bring about lasting improvements in our organizations: we can't magnify our human resources using manipulative management techniques.

We confuse efficiency with effectiveness, expediency with priority, imitation with innovation, cosmetics with character, or pretense with competence.

Ultimately the leadership style one adopts springs from one's core ideas and feelings about the nature of man.

Whatever a person has at the center of his life---work or pleasure, friend or enemy, family or possessions, spouse or self, principles or passions---will affect his perception.

And it is preception that groverns belief, attitudes, and behavors.

While managers must focus on the bottom line, leaders must look to the top line for clear vision and direction. Where there is no vision, says the proverb, people parish. That because they select goals and begin pursuing them---climbing the proverbial ladder of success--before they define mission and clarify values. Consequently, upon reaching the top rung, they often discover to their dismay that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

"See the oak tree in the acorn and understand the PROCESS of helping the acorn become a great oak."

"Become more than you are....Unless you change how you are you'll always have what you've got."

Bring your greatness one day at a time,
Jo Silvey