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Learn the questions you need to ask yourself to determine your leadership philosophy.
One ship sails east and another sails west,
With the selfsame winds that blow;
'Tis the set of the sails and not the gales
That tells them where to go.
Like the winds of the sea are the winds of time,
As we journey along through life;
'Tis the set of the soul that determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 19161
IF OUR SAILS ARE SET CORRECTLY, OUR PERsonal leadership philosophy - not the gales we encounter every day - will tell us where to go.
In order to develop an effective leadership philosophy, we first need to look at what we mean by the term, "transformational leader." No matter whether our title is leader or manager, we need to be transformational. A transformational leader is one who is capable of leading the organization from one paradigm to the next.
A paradigm is the way we think. The way we do things. The way we approach things. In health care today we need a new model. We need to think differently. We need to do things differently. We need a new paradigm. The paradigm of the past will not work in the future. Our leaders need to be able to lead us from the paradigm of the past to the paradigm of the future. Transformational leaders lead to the next paradigm.
For a transformational leader to be successful, three things are necessary:
1. The transformational leader must choose the correct next paradigm. It is clear to the transformational leader that something has to change. The organization needs a new paradigm in order to thrive in the future. But what should that paradigm be?
In the 1980s, IBM was a mainframe computer company. IBM was also in trouble because, as urban commentator David Stein has pointed out, the "past was gone, and the present was full of confusion." The leaders of IBM made the decision that the company needed to change paradigms, and needed to do it quickly. IBM decided to make laptops, and the Think Pad was born. It was a very successful move from the paradigm of the past to...