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3. What Is Important to Me: What people, things, philosophies, values, beliefs, and/or experiences are most important to me?
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4. What I Value in Others: What are the behaviors, attributes, and/or characteristics I value most highly in others?
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5. My “Hot Buttons”: What things might people do – or fail to do – that drive me crazy, upset me, or keep me from being my best?
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6. My Personal Leadership Philosophy: What are the principles for which I want to be known?
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Once you have spent time working on your personal leadership profile and begin crafting your personal leadership philosophy, put it down for a while. Then come back to it every few days to review, rethink, and refine it. After you have had a chance to get comfortable with it and begin to believe it sounds like you, take the next step. Share your personal leadership philosophy with someone. Tell him or her what you want to be known for. Check for reactions. Ask the person for feedback and suggestions. Have the person ask questions about what you are trying to say and why these particular things are important to you. Tweak your personal leadership philosophy based on the input. Then share your profile again, with the same person or with someone else. After that, share it with your team and others with whom you work. Try it.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
After practice and refinement, you will find your personal leadership philosophy becomes more natural to you and a useful tool to articulate who you are as a leader and a person. Then, when you are working with others to develop them as leaders, be a teacher and a coach. Help others better describe who they are as leaders by showing them how to create and communicate their own personal leadership philosophies. What a great way to serve others while taking a leadership role in so doing!
Whenever I work with leaders on their personal leadership philosophies, the discussion almost invariably turns to me at some point. They ask me about my personal leadership philosophy. Often, they don’t have to ask. After all, if I am going to convince them about the benefits of having and sharing a personal leadership philosophy, I should be practicing what I preach and sharing it with them, right?
So here it goes, with one important caveat. I share my personal leadership philosophy with you here as an example, to help you think through what yours might look and sound like. I do not share it to suggest that your personal leadership philosophy should be the same as mine, nor that the principles upon which it is based are appropriate for you. If there is something in here that works for you, feel free to steal shamelessly. If not, create your own. There are only two important things I want you to remember about your personal leadership philosophy. First, have one. Second, tell people who are important to you what it is.
The 4 Cs
I have used one version or another of my personal leadership philosophy for more than twenty years. I call it “The 4 Cs,” shown in Figure 1.1. It’s about Credibility, Collaboration, Courage, and Competence.
Figure 1.1 The Four Cs
Credibility involves doing what you say you will do and keeping confidential information confidential. I can’t tell you how many smart and experienced HR people I have seen implode because they couldn’t deliver on their commitments, and/or because they failed to keep their mouths shut about important and confidential things. Once people figure out that they can’t trust you to deliver and that they can’t rely on you to keep confidential things to yourself, you are done as an HR leader. Period.
There is always a fine line between being truthful and transparent, and keeping confidences. The best way I know to strike the right balance in this dichotomy is to accept that the truth has a time and place. The truth is always important, it is paramount. But, it doesn’t always have to be shared in this precise moment in this particular setting, in front of these particular