Rule #6 of a good leader: Wisdom

Every leader needs to develop good character and should regularly take time to stop and ask themselves some important questions.

1. Why do I do what I do?
2. What do I stand for?
3. What are my values?
4. Why do they matter?
5. What role do I play in helping others succeed?
6. What is my contribution to the betterment of mankind within my own commitment to my own evolution and self-realization?

One of my own icons of the ultimate example of leadership is King Solomon who wrote:

Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life” 

In spirituality the heart always refers to the seat of one’s consciousness and emotions. The importance of character development was also underlined by arguably America’s greatest leader when George Washington declared:

Purity of morals is the only sure foundation of public happiness in any country”

Every leader needs to give importance to having and following through on his/her vision.

Where there is no vision, the people perish” - King Solomon

When it comes to leadership there are no truer words. Effective leaders by definition are leading people in a direction. Knowing what direction to take is vital. Communicating the importance and value of that direction is what good leaders do by giving crucial importance into helping others make the vision their own.

Even when unclear as to the specifics leaders work to keep people focused on the hope and aspirations of where they are headed and for what they are striving. The most successful organizations are those whose people get behind the leader's vision voluntarily and support it with all they have.

Someone has to set that vision in motion and keep it alive; that's the job of a good leader. Everything you do in life should come from a place within you to lead an organization. Your family is an organization, your community is an organization, your city, state, country, company, and all around you is an organization seeking leadership.

Your ability to develop self-leadership is critical to not only your own success, but of the bigger picture, including the entire world.

Leaders invest in self-knowledge and in developing wisdom

Knowledge and wisdom empowers a leader to be a beacon of human dignity among all those he/she influences. While you might get lucky in the lottery or an unexpected inheritance windfall, the truth is that most people will not acquire meaningful or stable happiness without wisdom.

If you want to be a successful leader, you have to be knowledgeable and savvy, and invest in yourself by undertaking a system of wisdom development.

Some call this spirituality, others call it self-realization, the bottom line is that if you are not actively attached to a system that is focused on your higher self-realization, you are doing yourself and those around you an injustice.

There are many systems out there. As for me the systems that I have embarked in have evolved over decades, and I have been fortunate to have become a member of societies of forward thinkers who care about self-realization as the means to enabling a better tomorrow for our children.

Whatever system works for you take advantage of it fully, but be careful that it does not become dogmatic, when the system becomes dogmatic (meaning you feel compelled to do it out of fear), you’ve allowed irrationality to enter your mind, and such causes corrosion of your self-leadership development.

Leadership requires perseverance

The theme of perseverance in the giants of history runs deep. You can read in my book “The Real You - Living a chaos free life” about Joseph the Righteous who was sold into slavery by his own brothers. He was tempted to take short cuts to improve his life but not succumbing to them he finally got the opportunity to govern Egypt and essentially be the vehicle for the survival of mankind at the time. Moses endured years in the desert, rejection by Pharaoh, and then led the children of Israel – a frequently unruly lot – on a 40-year trek, before they could finally enter the Promised Land.

Consider the challenges and obstacles that confronted philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates and later the spiritual giants like R. Akiva, R. Shimon bar Yochai, and Jesus... all were murdered for standing by their character. They had a vision for people, for improving lives, for encouraging freedom and love; these characters have affected billions of lives for millenniums. These giants were self-leaders, but they became such by first being good followers of systems of wisdom.

Perseverance is a critical skill of leadership. If you are not able to keep leading toward your goals when confronted with challenges and adversity, you will not succeed as a leader, let alone be an immortalized leader whose impact on the world will last for generations to come.

The path towards becoming a self-leader is not easy because it requires taking complete and full responsibility for your life, and as such you may be confronted with aspects of yourself that block you from becoming such a leader. The gift to you is that as you learn the character flaws you have you can begin to reshape them and take control of them. Anything worth having is always met with great adversity.

Leadership requires an investment in self-realization

Mastering the skills of leadership requires that one begin with the qualities of a great leader, and those qualities of leadership can all be seen in the pages of various historical works from philosophers, to kings, and even spiritual figures which left us great classical insights about life.

A leader who exercises good moral character casts a vision, acquires knowledge, wisdom, and exemplifies perseverance; this will be a great leader indeed. These giants of the past stood true to their character, even in the face of death. They were willing to give all they had for the sake of leading people out of their mediocre lives.

A good leader's goal is to set the example and lead by example.

This requires that you first lead you. You must become someone lead by your core ideologies and core values (you can read more about core ideologies in my book “Unlocking Your Empire”. In essence you must become your own superhero and you must project who the superhero of the future you will be, today. Day in and day out be becoming that person.

Becoming a self-leader

As you read this you may be asking, what about if I am not in a position of leadership yet? The hardest person to lead is your own self, to hold steadfast to your goals, and to have the discipline to go against the desire to relax, or even procrastinate.

A leader is not defined by how many people work for him/her, a leader is defined by how many people his/her example influences."

In many cases the influence is not a direct one. For example if a friend comes to you with a problem he/she is facing and it happens to be something you are struggling with yourself, leadership in that case isn't shown within the words of advice you give your friend, but by your commitment to take on that challenge and overcome it yourself with the consciousness that in doing so, you will make it possible for your friend to do so too.

The true essence of leadership is taking on other's problems as your own. Overcoming your own challenges as a means to helping others do the same. An exceptional leader is tuned in to his/her surroundings as a way to identify his/her areas of self-improvement.

What does this mean?

For example if someone that works for you just does not make it to meetings on time, is it possible there are areas in your own life where you don't show up on time? Perhaps you are supposed to have dinner with your family at 8:00pm but you work an extra 30 minutes and show up at home 30 minutes late.

Most of us will use the excuse "I had to work another 30 minutes, the project needed me", but the family needed you too... so don't be surprised if employees show up 30 minutes late to work, or to an important meeting... because it is a reflection of you, and your lack of commitment to being on time in all aspects of your own life.

There is no such thing as separation of work life and family life, what you do in one affects the other and this is true in all aspects of life.

Most leaders who don't realize this end up hiring/firing many people and keep repeating the same patterns with the people they attract to the company. The truth is the problem is not with the employee, the problem is buried deep inside the leader, and the only way to fix it is to look within yourself, and fix yourself. When you do this magically people show up on time, and so on. Yes leaders can be that powerful if they learn how to harness that inner spirit that creates everything that resonates outside themselves.

Having a system of self-realization for yourself is more important that an MBA, or any other educational investment you can make."

If you look at the most exceptional leaders of all time, some of them never went to College, but all of them left behind inspiration, because they understood the greatest secret of leadership of all time: Wisdom development through a path of self-realization, or as some call it spirituality.

Serve for the greater good

Becoming a self-leader is about becoming inner self directed; beings of emanation of positive attributes that contribute to the betterment of humanity, therefore the most important person to lead first and foremost is your own self and this is accomplished every time the desire to take is transformed into the desire to give.

Leadership is about giving a lot more than being served by others, therefore to become an exceptional leader, one must become an exceptional servant. We are not talking about altruism here; we are talking about creating for others that which one wishes to experience him/herself.

When you care deeply about the people that voluntarily get behind your vision, be it your family, friends, employees, peers, and personally take them under your wing, you begin to act within yourself accordingly, and you transform within yourself the very thing that those you lead lack."

Any lack you identify outside of yourself is simply a reflection of something you need to become better at yourself. You must lead yourself out of chaos in order to remove chaos from other people’s lives.

Next time you are bothered by someone’s behavior or actions, know that the only reason it bothers you is because you possess that character flaw within yourself, otherwise you would not notice it in them.

To improve the world, to make the world a better place, you must lead the world out of chaos; the first person to lead is yourself out of your own chaos. That's where exceptional leadership starts. Within you, within me.