{"id":1734,"date":"2011-09-28T13:30:48","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T17:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/redletters\/?p=1734"},"modified":"2011-09-28T13:30:48","modified_gmt":"2011-09-28T17:30:48","slug":"the-leadershp-mystique-you-are-what-you-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2011\/09\/the-leadershp-mystique-you-are-what-you-do.html","title":{"rendered":"The Leadershp Mystique – You Are What You Do"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do we become better leaders? Real leaders? There is much to be said about you<\/em><\/strong> as a leader. Most books describe leadership as a \u2018skill building<\/em>‘ process. Read more books, practice different techniques, gain more knowledge. But that type of leadership process is only scratching the surface of real leadership. \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For example, how many of you have hired someone for a job? You look at the application, the skill set, educational background, experience, and everything seems perfect with your new candidate! Then you hire the person and realize he\/she is a relational nightmare creating dissention among workers, spreading gossip and offending people at every turn. The surface didn\u2019t reveal the reality.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s what Manfred Kets De Vries<\/a> is getting at in The Leadership Mystique<\/a>. Each of us have leadership qualities and the kind of leader we are, or are not, is determined by our behavior. Things like: how we treat people, how we respond to information by becoming defensive, angry or withdrawn (p. 13-15), and recognizing the \u2018inner dialogue that goes on in our minds most of our waking hours (p. 38) that becomes a filter for how we see others and how we see life.<\/p>\n

Kets De Vries believes strongly in the \u2018clinical paradigm\u2019<\/em> of leadership based on the following three premises (p. 8):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What you see isn\u2019t necessarily what you get.<\/li>\n
  2. All human behavior, no matter how irrational it appears, has a rationale.<\/li>\n
  3. We\u2019re all products of our past.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The reality is that you cannot change unless you have a deep understanding of why you do what you do. Consider the last time you lost it emotionally in a situation either at home or at work. You blew up at a co-worker or emotionally cut-off your spouse because they did something to offend you. Did you stop long enough to ask yourself why you acted so emotionally? Chances are you did so because of the third premise: your \u2018Family of Origin.\u2019<\/p>\n

    We are all shaped by our home environments when we were younger. As children, we were taught things about the world and life that has contributed to who we are today. For those of us who grew up in emotionally charged home environments surrounded by abuse and alcoholism, we learned that the world isn\u2019t safe, because our mothers and fathers weren\u2019t safe. People are out to get us and we must defend ourselves at all costs. In order to provide safety for ourselves as children we withdrew emotionally, or reacted outwardly through anger, and that has a huge impact on our behavior today.<\/p>\n

    Overall, this was a refreshing read due to the fact that it departed from the normal leadership book. I appreciated that it takes a deep look into the human persona and asks the tough questions about why we act the way we act and where are patterns of behavior originate. You should get it and read it.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    How do we become better leaders? Real leaders? There is much to be said about you as a leader. Most books describe leadership as a \u2018skill building‘ process. Read more books, practice different techniques, gain more knowledge. But that type of leadership process is only scratching the surface of real leadership. For example, how many…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[152,126],"tags":[129,186,187],"class_list":["post-1734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-ministry-degree","category-leadership-development","tag-leadership","tag-leadership-development-2","tag-leadershp-mystique"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Leadershp Mystique - You Are What You Do - Red Letters<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2011\/09\/the-leadershp-mystique-you-are-what-you-do.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Leadershp Mystique - You Are What You Do - Red Letters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How do we become better leaders? Real leaders? There is much to be said about you as a leader. Most books describe leadership as a \u2018skill building‘ process. Read more books, practice different techniques, gain more knowledge. But that type of leadership process is only scratching the surface of real leadership. For example, how many…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2011\/09\/the-leadershp-mystique-you-are-what-you-do.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Red Letters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-09-28T17:30:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/redletters\/files\/2011\/09\/leadership-street-sign12-300x197.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tom Davis\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Leadershp Mystique - You Are What You Do - Red Letters","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2011\/09\/the-leadershp-mystique-you-are-what-you-do.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Leadershp Mystique - You Are What You Do - Red Letters","og_description":"How do we become better leaders? 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A tireless advocate for fatherless children, Davis has spent most of his adult life calling U.S. believers to become the hands and feet of Jesus Christ to the 143 million orphans living around the world. Through those connections, thousands of orphans now have the bright and hopeful future--one that is filled with opportunities and the love of the one true Father. Davis speaks hundreds of times each year at churches and conferences, mobilizing the church to action on behalf of the poor. He is the author of four books. His most recent novel, SCARED is a fictionalized account of his first-hand experiencing living and working with orphans in Swaziland, Africa. Davis' blog is the premier resource for the latest developments in Christian orphan ministry. Davis also currently teaches courses as adjunct professor at George Fox University in Newberg, OR. When not traveling the globe, Davis resides in the mountains of Colorado in the small community of Palmer Lake. He and his wife Emily have seven children, including two adopted daughters from Russia.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/author\/tdavis"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1734"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1740,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions\/1740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}