“If I had influence over the minds of the people of Canada, any power over their intellect, I would leave them this legacy: ‘Whatever you do, adhere to the Union. We are a great country, and shall become one of the greatest in the universe if we preserve it; we shall sink into insignificance and adversity if we suffer it to be broken.’,” said the first Canadian Prime Minister in an 1861 address.
With these lines, John A. Macdonald marked federalism as the grounds for ascension and prosperity, but only as a function of unity, collective identity and individual purpose. Seldom though in today’s world are the masses inspired by the greater good, the brighter future, accomplished together. Rather, individual cognitive dissonance by adhering to identity and the individual pursuits, for selfish and material gain stands as the closely held trump card.
In our world of limitless connectivity through technology, humanity now enters its prime for economic, social and environmental proliferation. And so, herein lies the greatest opportunity for transformative leadership, to transcend Canadian public discourse to its fundamental root: self-fulfillment through freedom through unity and compassion. Comparatively, I recognize this as an opportunity for Canada to move from “good” to “great” in the name of the security, dignity and prosperity of its people.
In this post, I discuss my leadership development plan and its relevance relative to these opening remarks. In a reflective discussion on my strengths, as provided by others in testimonials and reflective, I express my disposition to dedicate my life to this, which I authentically believe as imperative in life. I will cover my current state of leadership, my vision board or future desired state and my leadership development roadmap to progress between the two.
First, I adopted three methods to assess my current state of leadership. This included a best reflected-self exercise, personality, values and strengths evaluations and a thorough reflection of the results. The best reflected-self exercise invited important connections in my life to provide testimonials of times when they saw me at my best. The stories compiled the history as it prescribes the current moment, which was touching, as it revealed others’ perception of me as animated, energetic selfless, community-orients, inspiring, curious and externally-focused.
I’ve compiled the most telling stories in this slider widget below.
Subsequent evaluations corroborated this notion, whereas my emotional intelligence quotient is 43 out of 50, lowest in self-awareness due to the notion that I am not patient with respect to delayed gratification. This is likely a natural product of desire to conclude and move on, to get things done and done right, a notion support by my MBTI results as a very clear “judger” and competing values framework assessment as high in “control”. Furthermore, the MBTI results also showed clear extroversion, slight sensing and moderate thinking. While my profile aligns well with the likes of Judge Judy and Donald Trump, two offsetting effects support the conclusion that my like personality is beneficial: a strong collaborator (CVF test) and
The assessments of terminal values were freedom, equality, peace and fulfillment, which are a clear reflection of my leadership vision. Further to this are the instrumental values, which are tenets that guide actions more tactically in pursuit of those terminal values. The assessment results showed highest scores accountability, integrity, transparency and empowerment, which too ring true. I was humbled by the results, because I often perceive myself in a race with time to make things happen, and frankly not being present in the moment enough – what I see to be a violation of cumulative self-fulfillment.
Secondly, I will discuss my leadership vision. As revealed in my introduction, I am interested in large-spanning nationwide triple-bottom-line optimization. In the most broadly-specific expression possible, I define my life purpose as to “Build a legacy of everlasting positive change in the world.” As to achieve this, I’ve embraced the constraint of time and adopted a system for categorizing and prioritizing time, which includes efforts covering academics or continued learning, community development, business and employment and finally, personal and wellbeing. From completing the MBA, to establishing networks among cornerstone charities, to launching businesses that drive sustainable and prosperity for Canadian entrepreneurs to building a family and practicing yoga, everything leads to that terminal purpose. I am not concerned with the title I will hold, but I am determined to engaged participation in the Canadian political power sphere within my fifties, because that the greatest stem to disseminate these values and vision.
Finally, is my leadership development plan, a culmination of leveraging strengths throughout life to continually improve my capacity to achieve the fundamental state of leadership and the leadership vision I’ve outlined in this post. Having completed the Landmark Forum and Advanced Course, my next steps to live this designed life require the following internally-direct tactics:
“Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress and working together is success,” said Henry Ford and nothing rings a greater truth. In the larger pursuit of happiness, freedom begins with respect, trust and collaboration. I choose to enroll Canadians to in enrolling other Canadians in our greater future of freedom together through authenticity, limitless opportunity, and perpetual betterment, much like John A. Macdonald asked.
]]>A great thinker of our time recently said, “The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency in the world.” Said effect on others is a function of truly powerful leadership, which I like to define as an individual’s authentic expression of their strengths and values to selfless ends. In this post, I discuss my journey of mastery in leadership, and how I’ve learned to best leverage my strengths and values to best leave the world better off because of my presence.
This journey has seen three key phases to date, respectively learning to lead myself, learning to lead others and finally, learning to be led.
Firstly, learning to lead myself. All forms of leadership begin with self-leadership. I remember clearly taking initiative from a very young age, especially in the way of technology and community projects. My intrinsic need to build a better future for our world has always been a clearly reflection of my intrinsic “Futuristic” and “Achiever” strengths, as well as my wildcard values as a facilitator, producer and broker.
An early example of this is from grade school, when I made a proposal for a sitemap and basic layout for the first-ever school website and was intentionally late for recess because I took it upon myself to pitch my idea to the principal, which was approved and so I built the first school website in Grade 5.
Later, I would find challenges that called for group dynamics and team leadership. While my earlier solo projects were community and people-focused, it was clear that leading others required a double-sided motivation. Leadership was no longer about getting the job done and feeling great about it, but rather getting the job done by motivating, inspiring and coaching very different groups of very different individuals, each with their own personal, professional and emotional situations. This phase called for dedication and tenacity, because it was the most complex and dynamic of challenges. In the end, after many groups, across organizations, programs, and initiatives, with much more failure than success, with reflection I gained a true grasp of my responsibility and analytical strengths.
My favourite example of this is from my tenure as the President of the Canadian Association of Business Students (CABS). Mandated by our Board to lead an executive team of eight people, spread out across the country, without honorariums or any form of tangible compensation, my job was to unite the team, integrate them in the overhead of the company, train them on governance and on our programs and prepare them to both oversee our 12 programs, 7 events and 250 volunteers, while growing our project base. Within the six months of reflection following the tenure, I made some of the most interesting and startling realizations, such as the importance of careful recruitment and selection to prepare teams for the best dynamic, as well as leading by example and framing positive culture by setting the tone early and maintaining consistency throughout.
Finally, I would find myself in a phase of learning how to follow. Taking a step back is an important role for leaders in circumstances that require it. This has been my greatest challenge today, because I must use discipline to allow things to take their natural course, while I support the process.
A first example of this was entering the job market in even above-entry-level jobs, where I found it incredibly difficult to go from “hero” to “zero” almost overnight. In fact, my tenure as a national student leader at the highest level of representation overlapped with my career employment. The difference in power, influence and ability to move things forward to following orders and strategies I did not understand or agree with, was like a day and night change. Leading up to the MBA, I encountered many circumstances where my strengths played both in my favour and less in my favour. Discipline would clearly need to be elaborated from self-discipline to learning to follow.
A second example is the return to academia at the Odette MBA. I was encouraged by my peers to take on a leadership role in our student government, known as the MBA Society. Having served in almost every capacity through my tenure with CABS and other similar student organizations, I was well positioned to achieve great things in MBA Society. However, as I recognize my need to work on that strength of discipline, I chose to decline the opportunity and to rather support everyone in a smaller, quieter and more passive way, which I am learning has greater impact. In this, I am learning to be led by peers, and coming to accept that they are leading me, without all the answers and that is okay, because that is a part of the greater process.
Leadership is clearly not a textbook skill, nor is it something entirely personal. Leadership is to rise-up by lifting others, by dedication to moving, touching and inspiring people to be engaged and share themselves with the world. Mastery of leadership is a slow and challenging process, with unlimited breakthroughs in our personal discovery of the human condition, through self-leadership, the leadership of others and as a leader in following.
]]>“Dream big, start small, fail fast and scale accordingly,” is the hype phrase of our time, broadly toted worldwide by the most influential business strategists and technology pioneers, as the “how to” in becoming the next “Google”. And while this mantra, seems rooted in “agile” computer science and business philosophy (Joseph Schumpeter, 1942), its true meaning is easily served as a framework for leveraging personality in leadership roles. In this post, I discuss my personality strengths are the bedrock for my leadership style, and how I intend to use my careful reflection of my personality to drive strong, impactful leadership in all areas of my life.
Through reflection, I established that my personality strengths and attributes aggregate under the four fundamental themes of the agile mantra: dream big, start small, fail fast and scale accordingly.
Firstly is the theme “dream big.” I remember from as early as childhood, I have consistently been an entrepreneur with a fiery passion to take on the any challenge in the world. As a child, innocently and naturally, I had a growth mindset and always went out of my way to help people, taking on roles of leading sport games during lunch hour in elementary school, helping found two local not-for-profit organizations, leading up to presiding over multiple student-serving committees in high school. The coupling of clear extroversion and an appetite to learn, I was always incredibly open to new experience and quite curious. This means dreams were made very large, and geared toward learning, exploring and doing in the pursuit of helping others.
Secondly, “start small” is referred to as “not boiling the ocean,” which is something that goes my slight preference as a sensing thinking, versus an intuitive thinker. I enjoy knowing all of the details, thanks to my curiosity, and building a strategic thesis with a hierarchy and in priority sequence before starting a project. However, being near the borderline between the two, I am able to leverage my strength of needing to understand concepts deeply, but then make a conscious effort to tackle the project from the top of the pyramid downward.
A great example of this was in role as a business owner, where we built our our master strategy, but executed and communicated in a small priority-by-priority way. This is key to transformational leadership, as it makes sharing ideas for effective, dividing up work a more fair, simple and democratic process, and for enrolling people in smaller parts to a larger vision, as they appear strategic, meaningful, achievable, realistic and time-based. This means starting small is a leadership strategy to maximize support, resource and engagement.
Thirdly, “fail fast” is a critical notion of my personality, as I prefer coming to conclusions quickly and moving on, and show a steady state of emotion. This is supported by my MBTI assessment results as clearly judging, and Five Factor Model results as showing low low in neuroticism. I could list a thousand examples of failures or difficult situations, where my bounceback and resilience occurred almost instantaneously, from receiving a poor grade in an assignment, to responding to a major fire or car accident, to packing up and leaving Toronto to do my MBA over a single weekend in response to the opportunity. To fail fast means to be resilient in the face of challenging circumstances, by leaping over the fire with faith, rather than walking through it like hope, which thinks wishfully that it will not be burned.
Finally, “scale accordingly,” is the glue of the agile mantra that ties big dreams to their attainable reality. Working with a very mechanical and process-oriented mind, my greatest personality strength, I think, is using logic in an agreeable way. This means taking in ideas through collaborative and thorough research, using agreeableness and then applying lessons to a greater logical repository in a hierarchy. I find it much easier to maintain integrity when things are organized, categorized and clear. Furthermore, this integrity is needed to keep face in leadership with stakeholders, teams, and to be effective in ensuring quality. The vast majority of people I’ve worked with have clearly identified the need to see some short term value relative to their contribution, as a means of ongoing motivation. When a vision is divided into manageable pieces, scaling accordingly becomes seemingly easier relative to successes and failures, which I believe enables teams to be more resilient and in my case, my leadership to be most effective.
Leadership is clearly not a textbook skill, nor is it something innate or even entirely personal. Nonetheless, the impact of our leadership depends on the leadership style we employ, which we can base on inherent personality strengths or through developing behaviours to support weaknesses. While both are important, it is imperative to remember that strengths are a natural development, and so the key to powerful and impactful leadership is leading through understood strengths. I challenge readers to reflect on their personality strengths and to consider how they align with the agile themes of dream big, start small, fail fast and scale accordingly.
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