The Four Powers Of Leadership: Presence Intention Wisdom Compassion

People who are promoted because of the skills and competencies that have made them successful often experience a dramatic change in behavior when they assume a new higher-powered position. This book offers readers the ability to move into new positions of leadership with the tools needed to become inspiring leaders.

Leadership is about being someone, rather than doing things.
Whether we view ourselves as leaders or followers a part of all of us desires for some person to be a focus point, a divining rod or a guide who will help us find meaning and purpose in our lives. One of the basic emotional "truths" about leadership is that we want leaders who create purpose in their own lives and then can articulate this purpose in such a way that we are motivated to follow him or her in order to find that same purpose for ourselves. This capability of inspiring and motivating people to follow articulated purpose seems to be a unique characteristic of leadership.

In my view, leading is not primarly about doing something, but rather about being something. The development of leadership is about becoming conscious of both the power within oneself and the power inherent within the position one holds. In a fundamental sense, the challenge of being a leader is about integrating personal power with one's positional power. Developing leadership requires understanding and integrating into one's life, day after day, the fundamental "powers" that leaders must learn to access, cultivate and balance in their personal and professional lives.

The gap between personal and positional power is the fertile ground in which a person can cultivate the powers of Presence, Intention, Wisdom and Compassion. These four "powers" are the fundamental archetypes, or "original patterns", that become the container for leadership development. These powers, using different language, have been around for thousands of years. The fact that these powers are buried deep in our unconscious give us evidence that discovering how to access them can open our leaderhsip up to follow a natural development process.

INTENTION is the power of the Warrior Archetype. Most leaders build their career on this power. Intention is intensely task focused, demands self-disciplined, and creates the commitment to be willing to sacrifice oneself for the service of the organization or for a larger cause.

WISDOM is the action of the Magican archetype. When someone says, "that's like magic. How did you do that?" we are experiencing Wisdom in action. Wisdom apppears magical because it is a combination of skill and knowledge about something that, through much experience, has moved from practice to art. To master the art of something means a person has gained a certain level of control and has the ability to use art to transform situations.

COMPASSION is the power of the Artist archetype. Compassion is literally having the passion to suffer with people. Empathy and creativity are the means by which the Artist leader confronts difficult and challenging situations. The core of the Artist's passion is the tendency toward strong feelings and emotions - excitement, ardor, intensity, zeal, devotion and affection - as well as love for people and things. The Artist's compassion warms the leader, and draws followers to him or her.

PRESENCE is the archetype of the Soveriegn, or the king and queen characterisitics in leadership. The power of Presence in a leader provides context - an energetic, compelling force - from which a follower can create an emotional bonding or personal relationship to a project, company or country. The power of presence in a leader embodies qualities of personal and organizational ambition, and provides vision that give meaning to an immediate activity. It encourages diversity, risk taking and provides mentorship to others. Utlimatly it provides order and stewardship to the enterprize and affirms, recognizes and "blesses" people.

Each of these four powers have both the positive and the negative or shadow aspects. Understanding how these negative characteristics emerge is important for leadership developement as well as for followers who are under leaders.

THE PROMISE OF THIS BOOK is to provide you with some insight and an opportunity for self-reflection, and to increase your motivation so that you continue the culitvation process that each of us must undertake in order to fulfill the next natural step in our development. I hope that one or two ideas, a story here and there, or some of the models or techniques will help you further your next step and give you more enthusiasm to trust your own inate leadership powers.