Imagine someone audacious enough to say that "trust and love and humility are hardcore business principles."
All around us, in the boardrooms and business offices of any number of formerly credible companies, many of the players have literally shredded the concept of honesty - the building block of trust; the only love is the love of compensation packages and power; and humility is a foreign concept long ago discarded for megalomania and self-righteousness and celebrity status.
Imagine someone audacious enough to suggest that people who work in business can change the world for the better.
Doing whatever it takes to meet or exceed analysts' short-term earnings projections to raise the value of the stock and increase shareholder value, now that is a readily observable hardcore business principle. Or at a more micro level, as one boss said to me early on in my career, "Your job is to help me make my bonus."
Imagine someone audacious enough to suggest that we need to reclaim our right and power to set an example of what's right in business and everywhere else, and to challenge the examples that are not.
In the past few years in business and in government, we have been confronted daily with evidence of an American culture in which fear drives behavior to conform rather than confront, in which intimidation greets those who would choose to live by personal codes of ethics.
And so it is a radical leap to suggest that trust and love and humility, and a desire to change the world, and the right to stand up for personal values have anything other than a wishful place in business.
Enter Steve, one of the duo of main characters in Steve Farber's The Radical Leap; A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership.
Steve, a 40-something leadership management consultant tutored under the wing and influence of some of the leading thinkers and writers in the field of leadership, is disillusioned by the lack of meaningful change among his clients. Despite his best efforts to preach and teach the art and the practice of exemplary leadership - mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspiration - he finds himself surrendering to a world in which the title leader has been cheapened by so many merely posing as leaders, by so many who simultaneously empower employees and warn them "don't screw up and check with me before you do anything."
The curious irony is that a casual polling of 20-somethings along the boardwalk in his San Diego beach neighborhood reveals that this generation - and by extension our next generation of leaders - look for and aspire to the very qualities in a leader that Steve has been preaching.
Enter Edg, the second of the main characters. Edg, a scruffy 60-something on a skateboard, first overhears our leadership management consultant as he is conducting his informal poll along the boardwalk. He wants to participate in the poll too, and offers his definition of leadership. And so begins the audacious lesson for Steve and for all of us, the lucky observers, as we watch the story played in 7 scenes over 7 days - each scene ripe with its own wisdom.
We watch Steve rekindle and reawaken his love for his work, his clients and his desire to shape the world for the better. We watch Edg coach Steve as he comes to the rescue of a corporate damsel in distress who is about to throw in the towel on her job as COO. We watch Steve help our damsel get reconnected with the love of who she is and what she stands for - love that energizes her to have the audacity to prove it to herself and her boss through her actions. And we learn the secrets and the source of Edg's own tutelage in leadership.
Edg, somehow, speaks from a place of experience and meaning and wisdom about the hardcore business principles of extreme leadership. "Leadership is intensely personal and requires us to live the ideas we espouse - in irrefutable ways - every day of our lives, up to and beyond the point of fear." "We are our own worst con artist, if we use safety and security in the same sentence as leadership." "When necessary, the Extreme Leaders will risk his or her own safety and security in order to grow the business and - just as important - develop as a human being." Edg challenges Steve and all of us, to "take our power back and become each one of us Extreme Leaders in our own right. We have to set an example of what's right in business and everywhere else. We have to be audacious enough to follow the examples we respect and challenge the ones we don't." And that is the foundation of the Radical Leap that Edg challenges us all to take.
The 60-somethings seem to know this. The 20-somethings seem to want this. It is the many of us in the middle, who are cynical or conflicted or searching for more meaning, who could benefit from Edg's challenge. Edg's audacity will remind us and inspire us to love what we fundamentally stand for. It will help us inspire those whom we hope to lead, and it will energize us to have the audacity us to take action to shape the world for the better.
Buy The Radical Leap; A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership; Observe and absorb its lessons; refer often to the Daily Handbook for Extreme Leaders which is offered at the end as a guide for putting extreme leadership into practice; buy lots of copies, give them to your colleagues and employees; set aside some time to talk about the principles and how you might put them into practice so that you can each, in your own way, change the world for the better.
And let us hope that this first week in A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership is followed by many more that will inspire us all to take the risks - the Radical Leap - to develop as human beings and leaders.
