Leadership is defined as influencing others. It is the ability to inspire people to want to follow you because they believe in you as a leader and they want to accomplish your vision. To become an inspiring leader takes work, it is a climb. It takes honing universal leadership skills, little by little advancing in the climb on each stretch of the mountain. In the Leadership as an Adventure Model^TM, we see the type of leader who can inspire vision, set direction, and really drive the organization at the top of the mountain. The inspiring leader is not on the top of the mountain because he or she is above everybody else in some way, but rather because they have proven that their best skill set is to be at the top of the mountain, looking out left and right, watching for risks like avalanches that may cause issues to the climbers below, and inspire those climbers in such a way that they will want to join the leader in the quest to reach the summit.

Overview
So how does one become an Inspiring leader? To become an Inspiring Leader, you must first recognize that you cannot do it alone. To become an inspiring leader who can truly drive the organization, first you must get yourself ready by learning to see relationships differently, then you must improve your vision in the area of knowing yourself and others as leaders, and finally prepare yourself to see beyond the mountain you are on and look toward the next summit which you and your organization must reach.

Learn to See

Learning to see is the foundation of the leadership as an adventure model. The model starts with a foundational piece focused on opening your eyes to relationships. In this foundational piece of the model, we take a journey where we begin the ascent to understand the reality of how people think and work. This phase is all about Relationships.

This phase begins with the core leadership enablers within understanding relationships – what makes them succeed and fail. Here we delve into the key leadership principles for understanding relationships, which include understanding the power of trust, choosing to care, communication, being authentic, considering relationships important, and various elements that drive successful relationships. Once we unlock these leadership enablers for Understanding Relationships, We then have the adventure of applying those skills, which focuses on Building Relationships. In the building relationships stage of the model, we use the knowledge gained from understanding relationships to get a baseline on ourselves in this area. This includes self-awareness, self-assessments, understanding how your team would rate you in the area of relationships, typical indicators of relationship breakdowns, and warning signs to proactively understand when there will be working- relationship issues.

This foundational part of the climb to become an inspiring leader harnesses the power of relationships. In short it’s about understanding that if you want to be a leader, you must understand followers. You must understand the basics of how relationships work, how to gauge where you are, identify gaps, and work on those gaps. Without this first step in the climb we can’t get to the next level of becoming an inspiring leader in which the focus shifts from focusing on learning to see to improving our vision.

Improve Your Vision

The second stage of the ascent to becoming an inspiring leader focuses on improving your vision by understanding yourself and others and empowering effective teams. Now that we know the basics of understanding and building relationships, we delve a little deeper to understand ourselves and others, including our strengths and blind spots and beliefs and values. By more deeply knowing yourself and others, you can be self-aware and grounded, and recognize that everyone is wired differently and brings different things to the table.

The leadership enablers within this phase of the model include strengths assessments, psychological type, temperament, and work style analysis to understand how you and others naturally operate as leaders. The adventure of this part of the climb focuses on how you apply the leadership enablers within knowing yourself and knowing others. It is focused on empowering effective teams, which includes sensing potential, enabling others, and putting together winning combinations of people. The adventure also prepares you for what you can do when you’re not dealt a winning combination. In summary, this phase of the climb to become an inspiring leader focuses on helping you improve your vision to see leaders more clearly. Once you understand the impact of knowing yourself and others and empowering effective teams, you will begin to see the connection and influence between the previous stage of the climb which was focused on understanding and building relationships.

See Beyond

The final phase of the ascent in becoming an inspiring leader is where you pull these pieces together to drive the organization. The previous two phases of the climb focused on learning to see in order to understand and build relationships, and improving our vision by truly understanding ourselves and others to empower effective teams. This final part of the ascent to become an inspiring leader focuses on pulling all of those pieces together to put the right people and teams around you who can effectively support you as you set direction and work the plan.

The leadership enablers in this stage of the climb focus on charting a course that will lead to success. You will learn principles of effective planning, risk-taking, seeing more than others and seeing farther, and seeing before others see. In summary, this phase focuses on seeing beyond the current climb, or what we call Summit Vision. Seeing beyond enables the Inspiring Leader to put their focus on reaching the next mountain summit, because they are confident in the people and teams they have put in place to achieve the current summit. The adventure of this part of the climb is known as working the plan. Here we focus on adapting feedback and coaching, as well as preparing for and working with the stages of teams, embracing change, mitigating risks, and resolving conflicts.

Summary

To reach the summit of becoming an inspiring leader, you must start with learning to see people and relationships differently, then improve your vision to harness the power of knowing yourself and others, and then you will be able to focus on seeing beyond the current climb and planning for the next one. Inspiring leaders know that by inspiring the people and teams working with them, they will be able to unite under one vision and drive the organization toward the next goal.

These three stages of the climb to become an inspiring leader are sequential. By understanding and building relationships, you will be more self-aware and more effective at understanding yourself and others and help to empower effective teams. By empowering effective teams you will be able to put those teams into action to help you with the plans to effectively drive your organization. Having these effective teams in place also allows you, as the leader, to spend your time focusing on inspiring, sharing vision, setting direction, and driving the organization instead of leading teams. This allows you to see beyond the current climb and focus on the next peak in the adventure.

The Leadership as an Adventure Model focuses on the climb to reach the summit of becoming an inspiring leader. It begins with an understanding of how people think and work, how they are wired and relate to each other, and how they can be unleashed within effective teams to help accomplish the desired results of the organization. All of this allows the inspiring leader to set the vision, work the plan, and see beyond the current climb.