We all have different approaches to leadership. But for me, and what I want to emphasize in my own life, is that we need to lead through love and fulfillment. We want to reach out and we want to lead others, but often I have seen people confuse leadership with projecting their ideas onto their group. For me, leadership is about questioning what I need to do to allow my group to feel satisfied and fulfilled. The answer to that question, most commonly, is love.
I think that being a leader means showing my team love and respect. I think that’s truly what people want, and what will allow others to respond in the same way. It means allowing people to feel included, to feel valued, and to to help them recognise that their role truly is important.
For my organisation BUD (Businesses Under Development), I like to take a nonconventional approach to teaching leadership. For me, this means teaching people how to empower others and helping them to feel empowered. We want to encourage positive change in our communities and in the world, but that starts within our own groups. This is one reason I love Pebble Magazine. They take the approach that each pebble makes a ripple, and that’s such a powerful belief. If we encourage positivity in one another, that attitude translates to the way our organisations work and the ways in which our communities grow.
When I offer a leadership course, I don’t teach others how to lead through power. I teach people how to lead through love. For me, this means showing others how to understand what your team is feeling, how to respect them, how to make them feel valued and cared for. We don’t try and force productivity upon people, we teach people how to encourage productivity it to blossom. If this interests you, I am offering a workshop on how to successfully lead a community project on September 19th and I would love to see you there.
And I think, even beyond our own organisations and community groups, that love and respect is what’s missing in society. As changemakers, community leaders, business owners, or organisational leaders, we can begin changing society by changing the ways we treat others around us. To me, that’s true leadership.
We know that so many of you want to lead change, but don’t have the tools. I like nothing more than watching people transform themselves, their organisations, and the world. That’s what I want to dedicate my life to! And that’s why I want to give you a guide I put together on how to successfully build a community organisation. You can download that here, and if you know someone else in need of a tool kit such as this, please do pass it along. We want to see love spread as far and wide as possible, and this is a good place to start. Join me?
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