Ethics
Success is more of a creation than a perfect way of chances. While arguably lives are about rules and not luck, it still baffles boundaries to imagine that success is all about just following rules. The underlying philosophy is that finding your true north is a related fable of George W that is ideally true in many aspects of life other than the dimensions of leadership that George examined.
A true north is more of creating a fundamentally right culture in people’s behavior that is the core and consistent with the demands of any goal. These fundamental must not only be effective, but also executed with finesse for an epic performance. The fundamental culture is about the ability to support decisions that are consistent with the values and principles we consider appropriate in our lives. It may be repeated for the sake of the history that many applied psychologists looked beyond the component of hard skills in a person’s success and even it is opined, hard skills alone with soft skills and values might often not yield much.
A lot of occurrences in life create a matrix of situations that make one to wonders if they totally conspire to either aid one’s leadership into ambitions or one meets immense difficulty and loses out completely on his or her agenda. Reports are awash with the systems fraught with dishonest endeavors and pursuits that are driven by selfishness and unethical consideration of the others (Bill, Peter, & David, 2007). For example, we have seen leaders who want to work their way to the top regardless of the circumstances. Because they are always at the right place, possibly at the right time, they often mistake occurrences in favor of their ambitions as achievements. Often, in spite of being at the top, many people have privately or even publicly smutted with regrets about the unfair treatment of situations they are in which they appeared to want so much earlier.
Socio-cultural backgrounds have also had a profound influence into the way people talk, dress or behave with an overall impact of the achievement. One’s age, or experiences of happier moments or sad moments are influential in future endeavors. Picking one’s direction is still a matter of conjecture. While it might be true that people view ideas occurrences and bias, it may be also true that deciding one’s compass may not be authentic and requires constant evaluation of one’s belief systems for internal redirectionning and authentic moves toward one’s purpose.
Purposes differ from life situations to the others and vary with levels of motivation. Maslow has stated that, for any individual, the motivation of the next level needs steps in following the previous level satisfaction of a need.
When I worked for top notch corporate and rising to the top when I was 30, I thought that was the ultimate one would do at that age. I started my career at 22 as a young corporate executive and move to county business management in barely 10 years. Then it appeared like the cultures we worked in had only one maxim of work, work, and work. We had corporate systems that encouraged growth by considering the continued improvement and as a result, working hours were necessary for the discharge of duty. It became a dawn to dusk affair that often resulting myself being the business in itself. I had spared little time for anything else and much worse my family, which then consisted of a one year old son. Indeed the boy was born soon after I started the run around. Hypnotized by the seemingly lucrative run for the money and prestige I quickly, joined the business school for a further degree and soon was on my path to promotions, which also included numerous job swaps, that in just a decade had catapulted me to the top positions.
Stress levels went up as the whole system of work conspired to create both home and workplace pressure. It became worse when at work it appeared like an endless demand of annual growths, odd-hour-meetings, including Sundays greatly affecting my spirituality as I was a Sunday adherent. Saturdays were planning sessions to around 1 o’clock effectively sealing the week and leaving no chance for everything else.
Over time this has changed. Slowly I have undergone a complete personal transformation by foremost re-checking my bearing and trying to identify with my true north. I have had to re-discover the true purpose of my life, looked into personal leadership consequences of my behavior. I quit my job as head country operations two years back in a tactical retreat to enable me to re-focus.
My lessons are drawn from the inspirations of my late father who gave me a short fable. In his wise words he reminded me of the occurrences at my time of birth. He would say that at the time of my birth, I looked flamboyant and real sweet kid. Upon my delivery everybody around celebrated my birth with ululations, song and dance. It was party and merry making that went on endlessly (Baltzan, 2011). But ironically, he added, as this went on, and amidst the pleasure of the crowds, often as a baby I was crying. My father went on to flip the story on its head and remind me to re-think my legacy, when I die. His thoughts are that it matters what one leaves behind. According to my father, when I die, my people should cry while I am silent as I celebrate in death.
This story has had a big impact in my way of looking at things and in the manner that I respond situations. I have thought that when a patient takes medicines from a Doctor and reports responded then it is good news. If, however, the patient reports reacted then it denotes a sad situation altogether. My route irrespective of situations, has become to real-time attempts to respond to situations rather than react to them, even if, at times it appears as a temporary loss.
My leadership is in the overall belief that right ambition breeds right results if right processes are followed. Personal leadership in the manner I manage my life is paramount to me before I think of influencing the world. I am tempted to believe that the world has few good leaders who propel phenomenal changes across the globe (Bill, Peter, & David, 2007). This happens irrespective of the many majorities who are not very interest in ethical leadership practices (Bill, Peter, & David, 2007). While the majority might be in this latter category, the few ethical leaders rule the majority in terms of behavior influence, new innovations, knowledge and products. The word is full of examples of a few ethical leaders, who earn a decent living, keep healthy families. It is therefore, no loss to be a responsible and authentic leader.
My stress levels are down to near zero as I respond to situations through deep meditations and inner breath that draws deep power that helps me to keep a lot of confidence even in the face of real temptation to react otherwise. I also constantly psyche my belief system to positively respond to situations by constantly auto-suggesting to my subconscious to always keep me alert, confident and positive. My major motivations are my values (George, Mclean, & Craig, 2008). I regard integrity, trust and relationship as core to my next life as I am not immediately sure of where my future will end. These core values score equally to me as I live with people in my family, my church or even the lagers society including work. I counsel a lot on any negativity that may attempt to cross my mind, often suppress poor words that may unknowingly go along in jeopardizing relationships with people.
My networks are ever expanding as I take honest interest in people. It is either I am dealing with one or not, and I like to deal with people not entirely, on my own terms but truly on mutual agreement almost always keeping my part of the bargain. I belong to professional institutes of management where I attend monthly professional development meetings addressed by business gurus of blue-chip companies to re-engineer my knowledge, confidence and ambition.
My leadership purpose remains overarching to empower the world around me. I have especially developed new interest in the science of personal change and transformation for the purposes of a better world (Baltzan, 2011). I am regularly invited to companies, schools and colleges for a fee to help in inspiration and productivity talks. My life now starts basically at 5am with an exercises plan and a goal carding for the day. I keep a journal wherever I go to note occurrences including people, their addresses and our discussions.
I find that this is me, with no internal conflicts, tensions or stresses. My purpose is to leave the world happy that I did an accepted part and left ethical influence behind me.
References
Bill, G., Peter, S., & David, G. (2007). Your Authentic Leadership. New York: Amazon.
George, B., Mclean, A., & Craig, N. (2008). Finding Your True north: A Personal guide. NewYork: Amazon.
