Exercise 13: Your Models for Leadership and Emotions
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Essay 1: What is Leadership?
• What is leadership?
• How have my views on leadership changed over the exercises so far?
• What leadership experiences have I had so far?
• Who are my leadership role models?
• What do I consider success or failure in leadership? Good or bad?At this point in my life, it’s hard not to hear Josh’s words come into my head when I’m asked to define leadership: helping people do what they already wanted to do but didn’t know how. This definition is succinct and accurate. And also, as I considered the question “what is leadership?” throughout the week, I found myself wondering: who would I call a leader in my life? Are there different levels of leadership? Am I a leader? Is it helpful to include in definitions of leadership some sense of how the leaders feel and act and how the groups/ people they lead feel and act?
I found myself considering different scales of leadership.
There are leaders of families, where leadership duties include: providing safety for the group/ ensuring the group’s basic human needs are met, providing direction for the group (i.e. what are we doing today?), and providing opportunities for the group members to step into their own independence/ leadership/ best selves. I’m a leader of my children, but it’s not like they can opt out. So it makes it easy to be a dictator.
There are leaders within communities. Some of these leaders are voted into public office, and some simply solve problems that they noticed nobody else was solving. Usually, nobody asked them to solve the problems –i.e. there wasn’t some authority delegating the task. I found myself thinking of my local social work mentor, Lisa Ladendorff, who founded Northeast Oregon Network (NEON), a nonprofit working toward improving the overall health and wellbeing of our community. She made something out of nothing and is a wiz at getting grants and growing staff. Furthermore, she accepts formal and informal mentorship roles, and is more than happy to share what she knows; she is not territorial about her expertise and stepped down as ED from NEON “as soon as I could,” she explains. (She’s still on staff as the training director and acts in a consulting capacity to the current ED.) Her colleagues tend to feel capable and appreciated under her leadership; we also tend to feel safe getting vulnerable. When working with her, I feel inspired to lean into my own “growth edge” (a phrase she taught me) and acknowledge those places traditionally known as weaknesses.
There are leaders of states and nations, though I have to admit that as I reflected on folks at this level, I could only think of people in public office. Through my work with our local emergency shelter (Right Track Resource Center), I find myself working with a consultant who knows a lot of big names in local, state, and federal government, as well as major players in the business and philanthropic worlds. He plays a role in effecting major change in the world and he built his own career and consulting firm out effecting such change. He does what he says he’s going to do and he helps all kinds of noble organizations do their work more effectively. I consider him a role model… but is he a leader? Or is just doing his job (and doing it well) distinguishable from leading? I haven’t quite figured this out yet, though I acknowledge there’s probably not one “right” answer.
Sometimes I think leaders are easiest to identify postmortem. That is to say, their impact is measurable by how many people show up to the funeral. In a documentary about The Notorious B.I.G., I remember seeing footage of jam-packed streets and balconies throughout Brooklyn of people mourning the loss. Was Biggie a leader? He was certainly something. He certainly touched lots of people he’d never actually met in profound an intimate ways. (If that sounds like I’m alluding to sexual assault, please get your mind out ‘tha gutter.) Is the Notorious B.I.G. a leadership role model to me? Perhaps. I would certainly consider it a life well-lived if thousands of people could say that I helped them get through tough times. And yet, ideally, I want even more than that. I want to give people the skills and connections to alleviate their tough times, not just get through them.
I also find myself thinking about effective leaders who caused tremendous harm in the world. Hitler could have spent his whole life ranting in beerhalls to small, disengaged audiences; the reason we know his name is because thousands of people eventually followed him. Which brings me to another element of my definition of leadership: someone who others want to follow. Lots of people wanted to follow Hitler at first; eventually (as happens with violent leadership), many eventually followed out of fear that not-following would lead to physical harm. So, there’s another element of “good” leadership: someone who others want to follow, absent of any threat of physical harm otherwise.
My own leadership experiences have been practiced—at least by my thinking—on a relatively small scale. I led the RTRC consultant through a round of the Spodek Method as part of our conversation about why I felt uncomfortable supporting his monthly flights across the state. I introduced a conversation that he would not have introduced; I solicited action that would not have otherwise been enacted. (For the record, though, this was action that I did not invent. It was action born of the consultant’s own experiences and emotions.) It’s not like I “got” him to do something he didn’t want to do, but I did make something out of nothing in a way that was a net positive for me, for him, and for the environment. Is that leadership? Seems so.
Previously, I would have named my role as the board chair at RTRC as leadership experience, and maybe it is? But that role feels like something that was already defined. So maybe leadership means creating something new?
The assignment as I understood it was to consider leadership models, so all week I developed the following analogy:
Leadership is like being the captain of a ship. Good captains (leaders) attract a crew who have the freedom to do other things but who choose to be there. Managerial captains (leaders) can only keep crew aboard if the crew has no other option or if there’s some threat to personal well-being if they leave. Good captains are willing to navigate uncharted waters; managerial captains only go where their patron tells them to go. Good captains incorporate their crew into key decision-making, and their crew feels ownership and buy-in to the whole mission; managerial captains like to feel separate and higher up than their crew and make decisions without their input.
My views on leadership are changing even as I write this essay, so I look forward to hearing everyone else’s ideas soon. As it is, I’ll stop here.
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Evelyn, for what it is worth, I think leadership is a lot more than Josh’s definition.
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Evelyn,
I really like your ship captain analogy! I also appreciated the point you made in your essay and in class, that a leader is someone who others want to follow. It makes me think of Eugene’s first essay back in the fall. He said something like “I don’t want to just be liked, I want people’s lives to be better for having me in them.”
Lisa sounds like a top-notch leader to me! As I read that paragraph I was thinking about our discussion in class yesterday. She did what was necessary and then stepped down to allow for someone (I’m assuming) more qualified (or whatever the word might be) to take leadership.
From my perspective, your leadership of the RTRC consultant was very much leadership! I don’t think that sentence was grammatically correct, but you get my point. You helped him do something he wanted to do, but didn’t know how (or maybe didn’t know yet)… beautiful!
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Essay 2: What are my motivations, emotions, and self-awareness?
• What is motivation?
• What are emotions?
• What is self-awareness?
• Why do they matter?
• How do they manifest in my life?Motivation? A spritzer on the brain that makes all sections more engaged and activated; a sense from within that says “I want to do that!” Or, if the thing you “want” to do is hard, motivation is the force (still from within) that overcomes the difficulty.
Emotions? Gosh. Also internal. Senses that help us know what a thing is and how it fits into our life; ultimately, they’re some combination of pleasant, unpleasant, stimulation or calm. Everything else is a construct. (I heard that on a podcast once with Krista Tippett; her guest was a neuroscientist.)
Self-awareness? That internal ability to not identify with our thoughts and emotions, but to be the witness of those thoughts and emotions. “I feel blue today,” is the feeling. Self awareness is the next voice. “Hmm, okay, feeling blue, got it. Now what do we want to do with that?”
Why do they matter?
Motivation matters because it’s the source of everything we do. At the end of the day, we always do what we want. (Though humans love playing this game of feeling like we are blameless/ helpless. Like “I had to go to work, obviously!” But you didn’t have to. You chose to because earning the money you earn from work gets you what you perceive to be important/ necessary. And that might be the case! You might be compelled to pay rent or mortgage, and the only way to do so is accept this job you don’t love. Okay, fine. Even so, you’re choosing to work at a job you hate because you prefer it to the alternative: homelessness. Or, if you’re independently wealthy and don’t need the paycheck but you still go to work, you definitely wanted to go to work.)
Emotions are important because they’re the root of motivation: x feels pleasant, so I’m motivated to do more x. Y feels unpleasant, so I’m motivated to do less y. Some difficult things are pleasant (e.g. training for a marathon; enforcing a no-individual-screens rule for the weekend with your kids) and some easy things are/ become unpleasant (e.g. eating doughnuts from the store that was going out of business; driving to work).
Self-awareness matters because without it we’d just have a bunch of tantrumming toddlers running the world. (Insert political jokes here.)
How do emotions, motivations and self-awareness manifest in my life? Hold on a sec, lemme write a 300-page book real quick.
TL;DR: since watching my friend Marshall die in 2016, I have been motivated to reduce worldwide unnecessary suffering as much as I am able; I am willing to experience whatever uncomfortable emotions might come from this journey (e.g. perceived incompetence, insecurity, feeling misunderstood, etc.) because I am self-aware enough to recognize that the underlying intention is pure. I know I’m in the “right” place (to get where I want to go) when my underlying emotions confirm it. In my leadership and sustainability work, for example, I feel both driven and at peace. I feel inspired and inspiring. And when I feel dejected (which happens sometimes), I know I am surrounded by authentic community who can catch me as I fall. Which means I never fall too far before I get back up and carry on the path. How’s THAT for motivation?
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Evelyn, Do we really always do what we want or is it more often a matter of doing what we’ve always done? Maybe that means the person has low self-awareness and they don’t know what they want?
I would suggest self awareness is the internal ability to identify with our thoughts and emotions? Low self awareness = low understanding why you are feeling blue?
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Exercise 13 What is Leadership, what are emotions
Essay 1: What is leadership?
1. How have my views of leadership changed over the course of the exercises so far?
I have a new depth of understanding about fundamental principles that I haven’t fully appreciated previously, am working to put into practice and am excited about how it will elevate my ability to influence and make a positive difference.
I now do think of leadership more as performance art than just scientific principles and looking back, recognize just how much my limiting beliefs have held me back. I now think of it in terms of life long practice and a form of my Ikigai (The Japanese reason for living)
I am much more appreciative of the emotional element of leadership, both how my emotional state affects others positively and negatively and how emotions are at the core of highly effective leadership.
2. What leadership experiences have I had so far?
Over the course of my life I’ve had many formal and influencer leadership experiences with youth groups, community Associations, industry and social clubs, trade associations and company people leadership.
I’ve created learning organizations and high performing teams, I’ve brought people through reorganizations and take overs, hired and fired people, created visions and inspired a few.
I’ve come to realize I’ve tended to discount much of my hard earned leadership experience and I need to leverage that much more.
3. Who are my leadership role models? In no particular order.
• Winston Churchill: Grit and determination
• Barak Obama: inspiring and uplifting communicator
• Jane Fonda: Fight to be heard for what is right
• Colin Powell: A smooth as glass leader such that you don’t know you are being led.
• My father: Drive, intuition and networker
• Christiana Figueres: Co-Founder, Global Optimism and Paris Agreement achievement
• Robert Swan: Explorer with a global mindset
• Martin Luther King Jr.: so many elements of the above
• Cassius Clay: Making something of himself against all odds
• George Washington: Father of so much innovation, vision and a country
• JFK: vision, inspiring speaker, artful politician
• Napolean Bonaparte: brilliant general who could see things differently than others and an example of blind spots that can do you in.
• Florian Graichen: GM Forests to Bio-based Products at Scion
• Tali Sharot: director of the Affective Brain Lab, changing beliefs neuroscience4. What do I consider to be success or failure in leadership? Good or bad
• Ability to look at the bigger picture and see things that others don’t
• Willingness to accept failure and learn from it
• Intuition and courage to take a leap of faith
• Communicator and relationship builder
• Emotional restraint
• Single mindedness, Blind spots
• Thinking is I about you and not people
• Failure to read the room and pickup on the viEssay 2: What are emotions?
1. What is motivation?
Motivation is an internal state where we want a change from what is in ourself or our environment to something different. It creates the drive and direction needed to take action to sustain ourself physically, mentally, psychologically. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for example.
Intrinsic motivation pertains to things you want to change based on your beliefs, emotions, values. Extrinsic motivation pertains to influences from your environment. There are other types of motivation.2. What are emotions?
Emotions are reactions that we experience in response to events or situations. The type of emotion a person experiences depends on the circumstance that triggers the emotion. For instance, a person experiences joy when they receive good news and fear when they are threatened.
Emotions have a strong influence on our daily lives. We make decisions based on whether we are happy, angry, sad, bored, or frustrated. We also choose activities and hobbies based on the emotions they incite. Understanding emotions can help us navigate life with greater ease and stability.3. What is self-awareness?
Your ability to notice your feelings, your physical sensations, your reactions, your habits, your behaviors, what you like, what you don’t like and why, and your thoughts, paying attention in your life, why you respond to certain things in certain ways, being honest with yourself about the difference between what you say and think you are doing and what you are really doing/behaving, being authentic (your true self).
4. How do they manifest in my life?
Emotions, motivation and self-awareness are my life, influencing how I think, feel and act. How well I notice and understand them determines the kind of live I have, how well I achieve my dreams and overcome my setbacks and limitations. They affect each other. For example if I have strong negative emotions about a fact of my life, that could generate a high level of motivation for me to make a change for the better. How self-aware I am about that emotion will determine how successful I am in resolving my issue.
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I’ve recently experienced a perspective that people who are stuck use the excuse that they need to get motivated to achieve the goal of interest. Do you really need motivation or is that an excuse?
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I think it can be an excuse.
I like the phrase, “mood follows action.” Even if motivated is not a mood, I think it applies. If we wait until we feel motivated without changing anything else, we’re doomed to wait a long time.
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Jim,
Thank you for the nudge to think about leadership within ikigai. I remember being captivated by that concept (as well as the word moai that describes lifelong friends that meet regularly and always support one another) when I first learned of it. I also appreciate learning about your past experience with leadership and some of your misgivings. Hearing you and Josh share what you wish you learned earlier is very helpful for me. Though I’m sure I’ll be making my own mistakes in order to learn. Similarly, I appreciate your honest perspective in class when you said “no one knows what the hell they’re doing” and your advice for me to trust that the discomfort I am feeling may very well be a sign that I’m moving on to the next step of leadership.
It’s interesting to see that you wrote “courage to take a leap of faith” as a quality of good leadership. Intuition would tell me that leaders make very measured decisions, but I suppose your point follows in line with your earlier statements.
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Essay #1: What is leadership?
[I want to preface this essay by saying I’m not sure I 100% agree with everything I wrote. This is one that, the more I wrote, the more introspective I got and started to second guess myself, or wanted to add more. I feel like given enough time you could fill a book with all that I write. Anyway, that said, call this a first draft. Enjoy!]
I can honestly say that prior to working with Josh on leadership, I had no idea what leadership actually meant. I think that this is probably similar to the case of most people: if you were to ask what a leader is, I think most people would answer that the leader is the person who’s the boss – they set the goals and make the rules, tell you what to do, and tell you what you’re doing wrong. My answer would have been no different.
But that has changed now.
Now, when asked what a leader is, my answer is similar, but is more nuanced. A leader may set goals, they may make the rules, they may also designate roles and help to solve problems, but what is most important is how they do it and why. A true leader is not deciding the direction of the group because that’s what they want and everyone must obey. A true leader is not controlling everyone just because they were hired into the authoritarian position. A true leader does not coerce or command. A true leader puts others before themself. A true leader listens and understands the other people in their group. A true leader does not assume they know everything already, and seeks perspectives and solutions from those they lead. A true leader guides a group towards a goal with all members of the group in mind. A true leader unites people.
A true leader utilizes empathy, listening, effective communication, and assertiveness in order to guide a group of people to a shared vision. A leader is adaptable, understanding, altruistic, courageous, composed, resilient, and has a drive to tackle problems head-on.
Unfortunately, true leaders are in short supply.
When I think of leaders throughout history, I think that many of those top leaders you already know come to mind: Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, or Mother Teresa. These are all leaders that strove to lead us to a better world. There were of course many leaders that did the opposite, but I think it’s incredible that some of the most famous historical leaders are famous because of the good that they did. Unfortunately, when I think of modern day leaders, or at least ones that most people consider to be top modern day leaders, people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates often make the list. While what they’ve accomplished may be impressive, whether they become top “leaders” by doing good deeds is debatable. I would argue they are more lauded for the unthinkable amounts of wealth they were able to amass, rather than the good deeds they have done.
Though nowhere near as famous as MLK, Gandhi, Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos, there are some modern people I very much respect for their views on leadership. One would be Simon Sinek, who I think has an incredible sense of empathy combined with an incredible intellect and strategy towards leadership. Another would be Greta Thunberg who, while I think has more to learn about leadership and some areas where her leadership abilities are lacking, she’s also had the courage to act under immense pressure, shown unabashed passion to her followers, and guided likely hundreds of thousands of people to her cause for good. For a final example, I’ll use Ramit Sethi, a personal finance coach who I listen to regularly – not only for his financial advice, but for his compassion, empathy, and genuine drive to want to fully understand the people he coaches before he tries to lead them towards appropriate financial goals that align with their values (not his!). There are many more, but these are the three that came to mind.
Sometimes it seems as though in order to be respected as a great leader these days, it can feel like a prerequisite that you need to reach the billionaire class. So what does success in leadership mean? I don’t think there is one specific definition of what successful leadership is. Even a quick internet search will turn up hundreds of articles and definitions of what successful leadership looks like. One way that I would define success in leadership is having guided a group to an achieved a shared vision with everyone feeling satisfied and that they contributed. Another way I would define successful leadership is to be leading a group where everyone is rowing in the same direction towards the same goal with a sense of duty to their shared cause. The one common thread is that in my mind, in successful leadership, the members of the group feel understood and motivated to keep going out of a sense of responsibility to the others in the group and to themselves.
On the contrary, what would failure in leadership look like? Again, there are many ways in which leadership can fail, and I doubt I’ll be able to illustrate all of the ways here. To me, any group that has sustained, unresolved conflict or tension shows a high possibility of failure of leadership. No group works perfectly together 100% of the time. If you are working with humans, there will be tension and conflict. The difference between success and failure is how it is handled by the leader and the group members. A successful leadership will guide members through conflict and the result will be members who have stronger relationships because of the conflict and a sense of resolution. Another way a leader can fail is to be unable to understand the members of the group and their vision, or a failure to tie it all together into a shared vision. This is one of the main reasons I think true effective leaders are few and far between: it is far easier to fail than it is to succeed in leadership.
Now that we’ve covered successful and failures in leadership, what is the strategy for effective leadership? What is an effective model for leadership? If I had to outline a model for leadership, I think it would be an iterative process like the following, incorporating adaptability through iteration and empathetic listening to engage members:
Define a vision for yourself (a “draft” vision) and present it to group members
Explore your group members goals, vision, and adapt the vision accordingly
Identify goals and clear steps towards achieving the vision
Establish clear roles and objectives for members
RepeatA vision is something that is fluid and evolves over time, and if your group is not reevaluating it’s vision and ensuring everyone is continually on the same page and that everyone is feeling heard and that they’re contributing, your group will begin to deteriorate.
Do I think this is the best model for leadership? Probably not, there are many who have far more experience in leadership than I do that will have much better models. But for where I am in my leadership journey, this model represents my current way I think about leadership. One of the reasons I’m taking this course in leadership is to improve on my leadership skills and the models I use to lead those I can. I hope that in future writings, I will be able to elaborate more on how my model has changed and grown.
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Eugene,
First, I want to say that your advice to “listen, don’t wait to talk” has been very helpful for me. Sort of like you described, it’s simple yet it gives me an anchor to repeat in my head while in conversation. I was using it and some other advice to stay focused during class on Sunday!
Also, though you identified many qualities of a true leader, I notice compassion continuing to pop up throughout your post. I think I agree that compassion is very valuable for good leadership, though often ignored or underrated. I found the rowing analogy useful and it made me think of Evelyn’s feedforward advice to me: don’t be the most clever person in the room, make others feel like they’re the most clever person in the room. I think feeling that you’re truly a key part of a team (even if you’re one of 9 others rowing the same exact way) is invaluable. An effective leader can make each one of those rowers feel like they’re the most important one, while also helping them see that the person next to them is the most important one. Am I making sense? It’s a weird contradiction, but I think it’s true.
I guess I haven’t thought much about resolving conflicts as a leader. I’ve focused on preventing them in the first place. In my essay I share some from an experience that I had where I failed to resolve conflict and I sort of just gave up. I learned a lot from it, but as it was happening, I didn’t really do my job as a leader. I think that’s where I need to grow the most. I have to be learn to be okay with some people (or maybe everyone) being a little unhappy for some time. And I have to face that, not run away.
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Essays
What Is Leadership?Leadership is guiding others toward the goals they already want to achieve but don’t yet know how to reach. At its heart, effective leadership is about modeling the mindset, habits, and emotional regulation you wish to share. By first mastering your own beliefs and emotions, you demonstrate a blueprint others can follow to develop more meaningful values and life patterns.
Leadership also involves helping people connect with their purpose. I believe our greatest purpose is to live in accordance with our dharma and cultivate the qualities of character. When we focus on improving these qualities, like generosity, discipline, and diligence, within ourselves, we naturally inspire others to do the same. Through this process, we all move closer to a peaceful and harmonious world.
What Is Motivation?
Motivation can be understood as the brain’s readiness to act, influenced by the expectation of success and the perceived effort required. It’s the inner call that compels us to move forward. However, awareness is crucial in maintaining healthy, purposeful motivation. Knowing why you are driven to act—as well as being conscious of your emotional landscape—provides what Buddhists call “right view,” a perspective that aligns with compassion and wisdom.
Without self-awareness, our emotions can guide us in directions that may feel rewarding in the moment but don’t necessarily serve our long-term growth or the well-being of others. By learning to lead yourself and your emotions with loving-kindness and compassion, you’ll find motivation that not only propels you forward but also supports the culture and community around you.
Once you understand the reasons behind your motivation, you can begin cultivating values and reinforcing actions that benefit both yourself and the greater good. This awareness transforms motivation from a fleeting impulse into a sustainable force that helps you—and the world—thrive.
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Essay #2: What are motivation, emotions, and self-awareness?
[Going to preface this one with the same as before: it feels like the more I write, the more I want to go back and revise, add, or remove things I already wrote. In order to fulfill the homework requirement, I’m forcing myself to stop here and just post this. So again, I can’t say I 100% agree with all of my own writing here. Please think of this as a first draft. Enjoy!]
If you want to lead people, you cannot do so without understanding what motivates people. What motivates people? You could argue a lot of different things, but to me, they all boil down to one basic element: emotion. And if you’re going to understand your own motivation and awareness, you’re going to need self-awareness. So let’s talk about all three.
Motivation is the feeling you get that makes you want to work toward a goal. It is arguably one of the most important feelings you can have. Without motivation to do anything…Well…It’s pretty hard to accomplish anything. Almost by definition, someone without motivation is clinically depressed. It fuels everything from social connections to skill development. You can have many motivations at the same time (and we all do! Are you hungry right now? Are you feeling like meeting a friend? Do you want to clean that mess up in your room? Do you want to learn to play that one song on guitar?), and you can even have two opposing motivations at the same time (ever wanted to eat that chocolate cake in the fridge but also want to lose weight for the wedding coming up?). In leadership, it’s key to learn how motivation works since you need to learn how to use motivation to inspire and drive people to work toward a vision. I would argue that every time you’ve ever felt motivated to do something it was driven entirely by emotion. I don’t think I’ve ever logically led myself to feel motivation…To me they feel more like they are created by our experiences and desires, rather than being consciously decided. If I think back on some of the strongest motivations I’ve ever had, they were all driven by something emotional: a desire to look good to others, a desire to make money, a desire to be accepted by peers, etc. Motivation is emotional.
If motivation is emotional, then what are emotions? For me personally, this is a realm I’ve been learning to explore more in depth over the past year, so I wouldn’t call myself an expert in emotions. This of course isn’t to say I never felt emotions before, but I actively tried to suppress many of my emotions for a long time, as I used to think that logic was “good” and emotion was just something that served to get in the way of “clear” thinking. More recently, I’ve come to realize the truth: the way I thought about decision making was completely backwards – I thought everything I do is logical but it turns out…nothing I do is logical, and everything is emotional. Everything I decide to do is based on emotion, and after my emotional brain makes its choice, my logical brain justifies it with logic. Emotion decided which university I wanted to go to, what I felt like eating, who I wanted to be friends with, and what kind of hobbies I wanted to do. So what are they? I think if I had to define them, I would call them chemical processes in our body that have evolved to encourage or discourage various behaviors. They encourage us to create social connections, make us feel bad when we don’t have them, or tell us to do something more, or to do it less!
I feel that motivation and emotions are closely related. But I think that most people go through life just accepting them for what they are and never thinking twice about them. But I find that raw motivation and emotions on their own, while just fine, have power that is left unlocked. To me, self-awareness is the key that is required to unlock the power of motivation and emotions. For example, if I want to learn how to play the guitar relying purely on motivation without knowing why, when, or how you feel motivated to play will almost guarantee that you don’t keep up with practice. Or if I’m learning to make perfect free-throws in basketball but I feel frustrated and angry every time I miss a shot, but never take a moment to try to understand why, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to keep going. Self-awareness (coupled with curiosity and mental flexibility) is the only way to check your motivation and emotions and get both aligned in the same direction towards a desired goal. Motivation and emotions are powerful tools that, when utilized and directed well (good luck trying to stop or control them), can be the difference between success and failure at any effort you make.
I consider myself a ceaseless student of life. I’m always trying to push myself to be better than I was yesterday, and I’m always trying to understand myself and how I relate to the world and people around me. Leadership represents the next step for me – a way to take the experiences I’ve had and try to utilize them to help others. It forces me to think beyond just examining myself; A ‘zooming-out’ to see a bigger picture of the world and people around me and thinking about how I relate to and affect them. I hope that by understanding motivation, emotions, and self-awareness better, I can learn to lead not only myself, but others around me more effectively.
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Eugene,
I don’t think I’ve ever been successful in motivating myself with conscious reasoning, either. I guess I can motivate myself a little, but, as you say, the emotions are really what drive it. I’ve fallen into the trap of trying to reason with myself time and time again. I know that x is bad for me and y is good for me, so just do y and don’t do x, I say to myself. Sometimes that works… or rather, maybe sometimes my emotions happen to be more aligned with that decision.
Something I’ve thinking about a lot recently is the impact of my surroundings on my emotions and motivations. Living with my parents means I’m exposed to much more doof, TV, and consumerism than I had just a couple of months ago. It’s totally throwing me for a loop. I know these things are impacting my motivations and emotions. The things we eat literally change chemicals in our brain! I’m hoping to continue growing my self-awareness and make choices that lead to the emotions that I want that then lead to more choices that lead to emotions I want, and so on.
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What is Leadership
I am not posting my essay because it is not finished. I have gone in so many different directions in what I am thinking and feeling about this that I have chosen not to post it yet.
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Beth, I can relate to your comment. Many more questions coming up as a result of this essay than things I’ve settled in my mind.
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Leadership Essay #2
I’ve tried posting twice to no avail. I’m thinking my post might be too long, so here is a link to my blog post. Sorry for the late post!
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Leadership Step by Step Exercise 13: Writing my models for leadership
1. What is Leadership?
a. What is leadership? Leadership is getting someone to do something in the interest of growth and improvement. It could be oneself or it could be others. It could be for an individual or for a collective goal. I find that leadership can also be choosing to do something that someone wants to do but has a hard time doing naturally. It’s a skill and a muscle that can be practiced, but sometimes can be counterintuitive to human nature. I.e. it can look like doing something for the betterment of a greater collective, but can be unintuitive as acting in one’s self-interests is a more common/natural behavior.b. How have my views on leadership changed over the exercises so far? With the exercises so far, my views on leadership have shifted much more to the individual rather than influence over others, simply from the order that we are going in. I used to find leading the self different from leading others, but I find that leading oneself can influence others in a less direct way. Perhaps it can be more effective long term.
c. What leadership experiences have I had so far? So far, I’ve done a lot of volunteering in summer camps across religious and educational organizations; whether that’s leading a group, or supporting the camps in the background. I’ve led a martial arts demonstration team growing up. Career-wise, I’ve managed technicians before and led organizations through making purchasing decisions for the factory. I’ve also influenced the effectiveness and efficiency of operations in the chip design world. In the personal finance world, I’ve led myself and peers to do things outside of our respective comfort zones. Within friendships, I’ve lent beliefs and poured into others, shared space, and held space for people to be themselves and share their thoughts.
d. Who are my leadership role models? My mom is one of my leadership models in terms of servant leadership. She often will serve others to her own detriment. I think I consider her a role model because while I aspire to be like her, I don’t think that I would ever get close to her ability. When I would go grocery shopping with my mom as a child, half of the town would know her. In her absence, people speak fondly of her. I would hope that I can be as approachable as my mom is and that I can inspire people to feel loved and cared for in the same way that others feel about her. Personally, my mom has also been a mad task master – never letting me get away with a sigh or a negative thought, she often holds me accountable to managing my emotions and beliefs better.
e. What do I consider success or failure in leadership? Good or bad? I evaluate leadership on the degree of authenticity of the relationships. Previously, I would evaluate leadership on external things, like size of organization and strength of people being influenced. Then I realized that people can follow a leader or be motivated by things that move them, but may not necessarily resonate. Things can be in a neutral sense, manipulated, to get people to do things, but if it’s forced, it’s not very sustainable. As of late, I’ve been feeling that true leadership raises the level of people (personally, professionally, degree of effectiveness) in a sustainable way that carries regardless of whether or not the leader is present.
2. What are Motivation, Emotions, and Self-Awareness?
a. What is motivation? Motivation is the reason why people do things. In my personal experience, ‘shoulds’ and feelings of obligation had been big motivators for me as I would fail to feel aligned with what I would do. I was very adept at unwilling and reluctant compliance. Currently, my motivations are more aligned with my core values and what resonates with me more. Health and wellness, connected relationships, and serving others in a practical way are some of my values. Over the last two years, independence, courage, competence, effectiveness, and fun have been core motivating values that I seek to align my actions with more and more.b. What are emotions? From a physics perspective, emotions are frequencies of energy. The higher the frequency, the more positive the emotion. The lower the frequency, the more negative the emotion. I consider emotions to be magnets of other events and circumstances of the same frequency. Emotions are how we experience the world – they add qualifiers and descriptors to how we experience things.
c. What is self awareness? Self-awareness is being able to understand and perceive oneself from as objective of a point of view as is possible, to be aware of one’s influences and biases. It’s also the ability and willingness to observe changes, differences, and/or stagnancies in oneself, to scrutinize oneself and a willingness to be honest with oneself about who we are.
d. Why do they matter? Motivations, emotions, and self-awareness matter because they comprise so much of our lives. Whether motivations are those that we want or those that we don’t want, can largely influence our emotions. Emotions are how we experience the world and the quality of our lives is largely influenced by the quality of the emotions we experience.
e. How do they manifest in my life? Motivation, emotions, and self-awareness manifest themselves in my life every single day, all the time. I’ve taken a much closer look at emotions after coming back from my first week-long meditation retreat. I see emotions both as a way I experience the world, and how I proactively create the life that I want by using my emotions as a signal to trigger the environment around me. I believe that one can feel their feelings and after letting them pass through or having had time to let them run its course, I’m a believer in one’s ability and agency to change the narrative proactively from how an event or story was originally experienced. I’ve always been self-reflective, something I attribute to the challenges I encountered as a child. As time goes on, I continue to reflect often and pursue self-awareness as a means of trying to overcome myself. In part, I’m influenced by my overthinking. And in part, I’m trying to pursue greater self-knowing so I can continue to better pursue the person I want to be.
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Olivia,
I really liked your comment in class about leaders being people who can see things in others before they see it themselves. It’s cool to think about some of the people in my life who have seen things in me and helped me bring them out. I hope I can be that for others, too.
It makes me happy to read how your motivators have changed over time and your commitment to knowing yourself better.
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