Still the same?

Leadership has been a topic I've thought a lot about lately.  Mostly because I have new leadership challenges in front of me - at work and in my personal life.  

I read my dad's Leadership Journal when I was a wee thing, was a member of the youth group's leadership team and was praised for my leadership ability.  The latter got old quick when I realized I was leading more often than not because people expected me to, not because I wanted to or because I necessarily cared about the goals.  

Figuring out what to lead might be just as hard as learning how and actually leading.  There are a few things I'm leading right now.  Luckily I know the goal, which is sometimes half the battle. But I'm noticing that the way I've led for the past few years isn't working in the face of these new challenges.  I'm looking around and I don't see enough followers.  

So I'm getting back to the basics.  

I picked up the quintessential book on leadership, John Maxwell's Developing the Leader Within You, in the hopes of being reminded of the important, rather than the urgent.  The root of the book focuses on influence.  You are a leader if you have influence.  Influence only comes from people giving you permission to enter into a relationship with them to accomplish something together.  

I've also been working lately on not caring what others think of me.  If I had a dollar for every time I wondered what others thought of me, I would be as rich as Bill Gates.  So I've gotten more honest. More unapologetic.  More driven.  More focussed on what I think is right to do, rather than what others think of me while I'm doing it.  But that isn't leadership either.

Because to be a leader you have to care what others think.  They have to want to have a relationship with you.  

In fact, you might need to care more about that than the objectives of your own leadership.  They have to want to follow you so you have to start with where they are.  

Crap.  

So, now what?  You'd think that I have an answer to that question because this is the first time in months that I have posted here.

But I don't have an answer to that that I like yet.  My answer for now is to keep praying, keep walking and keep hoping that there is more God in my leadership than there is me.

While reading Maxwell, I noticed pencil scribbles in the back inside cover.  I'd really like to know when I made these scribbles.  It would give some perspective of whether or not I am the same leader I was when I wrote it.  It was a draft personal mission and list of values that I was once triggered to write down:

mission: To gather meaningful information on societal attitudes and activities in order to communicate and illuminate truth.

Values:

• Detail: The whole picture
• Cause: What is the root?
• Think: Be still, then act
• Others:  Focus on others
• Self: Love thy self

I'm still the same girl.  What I'm doing isn't the same when I wrote that.  But I still care about the same things.  But I'm not the same leader I once was.  

Now I am searching for a new definition of leadership.  Not on the whole, but one for me.  One that focusses on others and comes out of loving thy self.  Or something like it...