Obama. Front page news. June 18, 2009. “Obama Seeks Way to Acknowledge Protesters Without Alienating Ayatollah.” Brilliant leadership move! Why?

What powerful leaders do is create a larger context for interpreting situations and events for the sake of new possibilities to emerge. Context helps us manage a myriad of information by allowing us to determine what information is relevant in a given situation. Much of the news coming from Iran has been targeted on the message that America is meddling in the affairs of Iran. The underlying message to the Iranian people by their leaders has been “don’t blame this upheaval on us or the current Iranian government, blame the unrest on interference by the Americans.” So what did President Barack Obama do in a potent response? He created a much larger context by which to interpret the actions (or inaction’s) of the Obama administration.

The first sentence of the Washington Post article on the front page right at the top of the paper’s crease (for those of you who still like the feel of newsprint in your hands) reads,

“The political unrest in Iran presents the Obama administration with a dilemma: keep quiet to pursue a nuclear deal with Ayotallah Ali Khomeni, the country’s supreme leader, or heed calls to respond more supportively to the protesters there- and risk alienating the Shiite cleric.”

A rich and larger context was created here that allows us to infer many things at once—first, and most obvious, Obama draws our attention to what is relevant in an American response. He tells us he wants to respond to the events in Iran but he is thoughtful in his actions and wishes to make the right response. President Obama is doing here what so many of our leaders in organizations forget to do, he is revealing his thinking—a key leadership move by which a leader engages his audience to think with him.

Secondly, he is broadcasting a message that says to everyone, “look we care about what is going on with the people of Iran AND we also care about a bigger concern, the safety of the planet when it comes to the threat of nuclear weapons.” He is sending a direct message to the supreme leader of Iran letting him know, “we don’t intend to meddle in your internal affairs because something larger is at stake—world security.” Thus, Obama is shifting the context to something much larger and even more important to all of us. Our shared vision of a world at peace and free from the threat of nuclear weapons comes to the forefront while the concern for the Iranian people is also acknowledged.

Whether it be the environment, the economy, poverty, education, health care, or within your family, your work or your community, leadership is about making intentional moves to act for the sake of creating a better future for all. By signaling his intentions, Obama bought some time and deferred responsibility for what is going on in Iran back to the Iranian leaders. What we can learn from this one leadership move of President Obama is how to recognize and shift a context (Principle Number Five of Leadership Alchemy, see Leadership Excellence article April 2009.)

You don’t have to be the designated leader or the positional leader or even think of yourself as a leader to lead. Our breakdown in leadership is that there are too many people telling too many stories about what is wrong and what is not working instead of pointing to the possibilities for what might work. Leadership moves can be small insightful conversational contributions that help others see something they did not see before or they can be big innovations that change the way we all work and live. They are not patterned, habitual and “wing it” kinds of actions but intentional moves that create an opening for a multitude of other interpretations to show up and lead to positive intentional action.

So the next time you are faced with a decision that impacts others, take a good look at the context you are creating and shift up!

Kanu Kogood

Kanu Kogod, PhD, MCC
President and Founder
Bridges in Organizations, Inc.
Ph 301-299-0744

www.leadershipalchemy.com kanu@leadershipalchemy.com –

We welcome Kanu Kogod, a frequent contributor to Leadership Excellence as our guest blogger today.

A few weeks ago, we were host to our Leadership Excellence associate publishers from China, Ken and Winnie Han. Ken had been hitting the conference circuit and the hot tourist sites from Florida to Vegas before he was reunited with his wife, Winnie in Salt Lake City. It was their first trip to the Rocky Mountain West and out our office windows, the mountains seem just a few footsteps away. Even at the end of April, the snow capped peaks made a majestic statement to our visitors from across the world.

The Han’s have a very successful consulting firm in Shanghai China, called Visionary Consulting http://www.vcsh.com , where they are committed to bringing vision and growing leadership to their home country.

Growing leaders – effective leadership, does not recognize the boundaries of governments and politics. It doesn’t seem to matter where in the world we go, there is a natural desire that burns within people to grow and improve.

We had a wonderful exchange of ideas and cultures that will make the time between now and their next visit seem short. The Han’s are great people and we are proud to be a part of growing leadership, building people, and creating vision in China.

Leadership Excellence China had an informal launch in August of last year during the summer Olympics and is now ready to have a formal launch in August of this year. We are excited by the demand and look forward to new opportunities in China with Visionary Consulting as our partner.

Currently Leadership Excellence has several active foreign publishing partners;

Turkey, Korea, China, India and Nigeria to mention just a few. India now also publishes Sales & Service and Personal Excellence as well as Leadership Excellence.  Best wishes to Visionary Consulting in China - we wish them every success.

Authentic leadership has been a buzzword for several years and has recently come back into fashion with the near collapse of the American economic system plagued by scandal and companies scrambling to reposition, retain talent or find new talent!

Where are the leaders? Is the outcry from the observation deck. The leaders were there – they just weren’t “authentic” if you will. Many leaders were authentically bad perhaps.

David Peck in his book Beyond Effective Practices in Self-aware Leadership; he talks about authenticity. “ The actions of the most compelling leaders have a distinct authenticity of heart and mind that others can appreciate. It’s based on how consistently their decisions, communication, and responses to adversity reflect their most heartfelt principles. In their relationships and tasks, authentic leaders are apt to be unguardedly themselves, and not what they think others want or expect them to be. They keep a wary eye in the mirror for any temptation to massage the message, or to ignore their inner compass just to keep the wheels of progress turning. How authentic do you allow yourself to be with others? What holds you back from being transparent to others? What actions are you willing to take to be true to yourself in the presence of others? “

While these are great questions asked by Peck, you cannot be authentic to integrity and good character if you are self absorbed and lying to yourself about who you are or who you want to be. A leader who desires to be know for authenticity needs to be aware he/ she cannot have their “own” agenda, nor can they continue to blame others (or past events) for missed opportunities, mistakes, or even failures. With authenticity comes the responsibility to be 100% accountable for where you are in the every moment of the day…whether it is in conversation with other members of your team, writing a memo, planning a media campaign, or building an alliance. That is the ownership of leadership.

At Leadership Excellence, our publishing parent, Executive Excellence Publishing launched a book by David Gill last summer titled “ It’s About Excellence” Gill addresses these very issues of authenticity while building ethically healthy organizations. Order from Amazon today

Nancy Low

Children are at the prime of their learning capabilities. They will never again learn so much so fast. Because they are on such a high learning curve, the greatest waste, notwithstanding all the dumping that’s going on throughout the world, is the intelligence and inquisitiveness of children.

This is the greatest waste, the waste of the inquisitive child, the waste of the two, three, four, and five year olds-as innocent children are subjected to counterfeit systems, societies, cultures, institutions, and leaders. There’s always hell to pay when parents or surrogates mistreat children; and children pay most dearly.

Recognizing the realities, children are tremendously adaptable and flexible. They have training wheels and baby teeth; their bones are flexible and malleable. They come into life with adaptability and flexibility. But parents and other institutions exploit that, thinking they “won’t remember this” or “be harmed by this.”

One young father who was accused of beating his one-year-old daughter in a fit of rage excused himself by saying the child “fell out of her crib,” even thought the evidence clearly showed that to sustain such damage, she would have to fall two stories.

The question to ask ourselves, both in regard to our own childhoods and our roles as parents or guardians, is this: “What imprints am I making on children?” and “What can I do now to recover from any counterfeiting done?”

False starts and bad early habits are hard (and expensive) to correct later. All too often, the correction never comes. And so we see the start of counterfeit leadership and the demise of personal and professional enterprise.

Ken Shelton