ZenMaster's blog

Up from the Hub archives. Originally published 2007

"The great leader is he*
of whom the people say
'We did it ourselves'. "

*(or she, of course)
- Lao Tse, The Tao Te Ching

What you see is not always what you think you see, my dears. This is particularly the case when we seek to identify cause for a particular effect.

"Others inspire us,
information feeds us,
practice improves our performance,
but we need quiet time to figure things out,
to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers."
— Ester Buchholz

And time spent in The Leadership hub reading, reviving and reflecting, is part of that quiet time. But, don't forget to contribute, too. You need to test those 'original answers' with other people to reality check them. That's what The Hub is for, too.

THE QUALITIES OF GREAT LEADERSHIP

The philosopher and author Tom Morris holds up as a model the Aristotlean virtues of leadership. He lists them as:

• Courage
• Temperance
• Liberality
• Magnificence
• Pride
• Good temper
• Friendliness
• Truthfulness
• Wittiness
• Justice

How many corporate leaders could you tick off all those qualities against?

How many apply to you?

"Making the simple complicated is commonplace;
making the complicated simply,
awesomely simple,that's creativity."
- Legendary jazz musician Charles Mingus

The highest performing leaders and organizations are simple in their processes and language. Because simple is clever.