A centered individual requires the effective alignment of four constituent elements: personality, behavior, vision, and growth. Part one is how you influence yourself: personality and behavior. Your personality is the first constituent element and needs alignment with its four constituent components: your temperament, character, habits, and attitude, which become congruent with practice over time. The second constituent element is your behavior and needs alignment of its four constituent components: your assumptions, beliefs, values, and perceptions, which become congruent with practice over time.
Part two is how you influence others [which only works based on part one]. Your vision is the third constituent element and needs alignment with its four constituent components: your principles, passion, purpose, and mission, which become congruent with practice over time. The fourth constituent element is your growth and needs alignment of its four constituent components: your planning, discipline, accurate choices, and self-esteem, which becomes congruent with practice over time.
The alignment of each constituent element produces a specific manifestation. An aligned personality manifests an awareness of what is going on around you and what is happening to you based on your functioning. Aligned behavior manifests a connection to people and opportunities based on your functioning. An aligned vision manifests empowerment, and aligned growth manifests effective performance, all based on your functioning. The alignment of each constituent element allows for the congruence of each constituent component. Congruency is the harmonization of your functions to enable one’s authenticity to emerge and is demonstrated in the individual’s full functioning. Centered leadership manifests from the alignment of the inner and outer self, allowing the emergence of one’s authenticity as the significant source of influence that empowers you and others to be fully functional.
A manifestation is when the unseen becomes seen; it is realized (i.e., the actuality has become your reality). The Centered Leader has realized increased awareness, connection, empowerment, and performance. For example, awareness is manifested when your personality components are aligned and congruent (i.e., your temperament, character, habits, and attitude). Connection is manifested when your behavior components are aligned and congruent (i.e., your assumptions, beliefs, values, and perceptions). Empowerment is manifested when your vision components are aligned and congruent (i.e., your principles, passion, purpose, and mission). Performance is manifested when your growth components are aligned and congruent (i.e., your planning, discipline, choices, and self-esteem). Because manifestations are observable, they are evidence of behavioral shaping, which means you can learn to be a Centered Leader. Moving from authority to authenticity is a crucial dynamic in your ability to influence yourself and others. Let’s look at the dynamic of authority versus influence.
AUTHORITY VS. INFLUENCE
Authority
Authority is usually signified by the title or position of the leader in an organization. That authority is given to an individual to accomplish something, but with the condition of bearing responsibility and being accountable for achieving a result. Higher levels of authority are given to people to achieve more complex things. Often, authority is taken or assumed, and an agenda is forced on people to accomplish a thing; this is not good. Titles are made up and not necessarily significant, but authority is substantial because people listen to authority; this is also not necessarily good. Authority is linked to responsibility and, hence, accountability. If a leader does not maintain the link of responsibility and accountability, integrity is broken, and that leader is no longer trustworthy. It’s debatable if that leader is legitimate. Unfortunately, authority often becomes dictatorial because the individual lacks character. A dictator is a politically based leader who seeks absolute power via policy and compliance. A dictator seeks the ultimate ego gratification and operates in absolute corruption and control. The Centered Leader operates from a premise of authenticity.
Centeredness provides you with four manifestations: awareness, connection, empowerment, and performance, by which you experience authenticity. Self-influence is the most potent source that flows from the authenticity of you, the individual, from your center. Influence starts developing with an individual’s knowledge, abilities, attitude, skills, and experience (i.e., KAASE) but also expands from the underpinnings of one’s personality traits (i.e., temperament, character, habits, and attitude) and behavior (i.e., assumptions, beliefs, values, and perceptions). Influence is the maturation of your mental, social, physical, spiritual, and emotional intelligence (Rogers, 1961; Salovey & Mayer, 1990). Your development as a human being requires you to understand the process of influence. You change over time and adjust to connect to others and opportunities. Learning the process of influence provides you with tools to advance your personal leadership development, your work, your vision, and your performance for what you want to accomplish. To be an effective leader, one must develop self-leadership. Self-leadership provides a comprehensive self-influence perspective (Manz, 1983, 1986, 1991; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Du Plessis, 2019) and includes
- self-determination theory
- intrinsic motivation
- social development
- well-being
- self-control
- social-cognitive theory
- self-determination
Centeredness offers a profound awakening from an illusory self-identified image to your individuality’s genuine authenticity. Centered leadership seeks to align one’s central self, a connection with one’s authentic self, and how you encounter actuality and process it into your reality. At the core of your life experiences is a battle within yourself between your calculating self and your natural self. Within that battle, you experience cognitive dissonance and conflation. Life happens, and as it happens, you often don’t have time to reflect and consider how life impacts you and how you could best behave. You make mistakes (i.e., motivated toward power, position, intelligence, and beauty [beauty includes pleasure, popularity, possessions, and prestige]), and those mistakes add up. You adapt to conditions, situations, circumstances, relationships, and pressures that affect how you think, feel, and act. In your effort to adapt, you pick up behaviors that are not aligned with your strengths but with your weaknesses. Your feelings often shape your perceptions, and your behaviors are premised on your weaknesses. A performance gap emerges, and when you need to perform, you fail- it’s frustrating. You get out of alignment with your natural strengths when your calculating self is in control. The calculating self is described by Zander and Zander (2000) as that part of us that makes selfish demands because it is concerned for its survival in a world of scarce thinking. It’s that part of you that keeps trying to do what it wants, not what comes naturally. An old saying says, “You can do anything you want to,” but that’s not true. You can do what you’re hard-wired to do. The calculating self endeavors to be something it is not and takes shortcuts to get the rewards and benefits it wants. The calculating self believes the horrible motto, “Fake it till you make it.” Nothing authentic is ever based on something fake.
Du Plessis, M. (2019). Positive self-leadership: A framework for professional leadership development. In L. E. Van Zyl & S. Rothman, Sr. (Eds.), Theoretical approaches to multi-cultural positive psychological interventions (p. 450). Springer International Publishing.
Manz, C. C. (1983). Improving performance through self-leadership. National Productivity Review, 2(3), 288–297.
Manz, C. C. (1986). Self-leadership: Toward an expanded theory of self-influence processes in organizations. The Academy of Management Review, 11(3), 589.
Manz, C. C., & Sims, H. P. (1991). Super Leadership: Beyond the myth of heroic leadership. Organizational Dynamics, 19(4), 18–35.
Rogers, C. (1961). On Becoming a Person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Mariner Books.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. The American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78.
Salovey, P. & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9, 185-211.
Zander, R.S., and Zander, B. (2002). The Art of Possibility. Penguin Books.
Leave a Reply