Six Roles of an Active Citizen and Engaging Leader
Leadership, at its core, is the bond we create with others that engages their enthusiasm to serve, to act and to persevere as we pursue our worthy goals. Personal or virtual though those bonds might be, they are the sine qua non of leadership – the absolutely indispensable and essential thing of leadership.
The Citizen Leader Seminars provide you with interactive frameworks and tools designed to help you build and strengthen those bonds in ways that will engage the enthusiasm of your partners and followers to dedicate themselves, and to deliver on the service and actions that will further your worthy goals.
The Citizen Leader approach is novel and unique. I identity and frame your interactions as a leader into six leadership roles that you regularly – perhaps reluctantly – take on from one moment or meeting or member of your team to the next.
The six roles of an active citizen and engaging leader that I explore with you are:
- Active Citizen
- Visionary and Voice for Tomorrow
- Conscience of the Culture
- Champion of Innovation and Change
- Coach of Our Talent
- Trusted Partner and Collaborator
Your success as a leader – indeed the success of the people you lead – requires you to take on the right role at the right time. For each one of these essential roles as a leader, my aim is to equip you with a dynamic framework and diagnostic tools that will help you emerge a more active citizen and engaging leader at work and in your communities.
It is my core belief that we are all co-creators of the world in which we live and work. Our families, our schools, our places of work, our places of worship, our neighborhoods and towns – all of these are the communities that make up our world. Through our daily behaviors, words, actions and choices, we contribute to the character of these communities, and we individually shape the world we share with our families, our friends, our colleagues, our co-workers and our fellow citizens.
The foundation for your being able to build strong bonds with your fellow citizens is your needing to have a strong sense of who you are. The foundation for your being able to build strong bonds with others begins with your firming up your own self-awareness.
In Active Citizen – the foundational role for all of your other roles as an engaging leader – I ask you to explore the deep truths about yourself that respond to the challenge, “Who are you that anyone would want to follow?” I pose powerful questions to help you explore your beliefs about yourself and the service or the work you perform. I ask you to examine your values and guiding principles, your commitment to lead, and your courage to persevere. In sum, I give you an opportunity to delve into the content of your character. Character is a leader’s bedrock. The more solid your character, the stronger the substance you will have upon which to build and strengthen your relationships with others – relationships that will inspire them to participate, to serve, to act and to persevere.
The ensuing seminars focus on your roles as an engaging leader. In these seminars, I teach you and guide you in applying interactive frameworks that will help you strengthen those bonds as you step into the leadership roles that will require you to: create and communicate a meaningful vision craft a purposeful culture, lead innovation and change, coach the talented members of your team, build trusting partnership, and collaborate broadly. Additionally, each of the seminars provides practical tools specifically designed for the leadership role to help you diagnose, plan, communicate, share decision-making and distribute ownership with others in your group and in your community.
Each seminar has been designed with the express purpose of making it possible for you, if you wish, to partner or team up with others, and create a forum for reflection, sharing, sharpening, learning and getting feedback.
Each one of the seminars provides for learning through doing – that is, invites you to apply what you are learning to a current initiative or project for which you can assume a leadership role. Application…application…application…are essential ingredients for and investments in your learning and growth.
Humbly, I hope that the insight and learning you derive from The Citizen Leader Seminars will enrich your life, and help you to make meaningful contributions at work, at home, and in your world.
