A Leader needs the right approach to foresee and create a sustainable future. Here are 4 key hints

I think we all agree that one of the characteristics of Leadership is farsightedness. Or at least it should be. Unfortunately, this is what is missing in most cases. Thirty-something years of experience in the business world have taught me that it is often due to an inappropriate approach. How to improve it?

Let’s pick some key hints from The CASE© Method, which is a very practical approach to sustainable leadership, conflict transformation and decision making. Could I have said, in one word, “Leadership”? Most likely yes. Well, here are a few key hints that CASE© suggests:

1       Hint n. 1 is make your objectives clear. Oh, this should be granted… No, it is not. A lot of people in the position of leaders just don’t know where they are going and are overwhelmed by the day-to-day job of running of their organization. One of the easiest, and most revolutionary things that I ask my clients to do is to impose to their managers – and to themselves – a minimum daily time to think. Just think to where they are going. Quite often they find that they have been steering off-course. It is like steering a car while looking at the side of the road. Most likely you will end up off-road. If a leader doesn’t regularly check the focus on the very important objectives, he/she is likely to miss them and go astray

2      Hint n. 2 is make your objectives your step 1 to change the World for the better. This may sound a bit ambitious, even pompous. Well it is not. As a leader, one of your priorities has to be to motivate your people. Nothing is more motivating for human beings that the feeling that they are doing something that will improve the living conditions of their community and their kin. Some of us may look, or talk, cynical, but deep within we belong to a social species, thus we like to do good deeds for our group. If you are up to improve the World, your people will follow you better and be more resilient in times of hardship. Besides, what is more farsighted than “improving the World”?

3      Hint n. 3 is focus on solutions, not on problems. We have to let go of the “problem solving” approach and switch to process ownership to develop solutions. Problems are simply the starting-point facts. If we take too much time analyzing and dissecting the problem into its tiniest component, we may waste precious time and energy. A problem is something preventing the organization from delivering on the Basic Needs of its stakeholders that it exists to satisfy. Let’s focus on this, and you’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel – i.e. be farsighted. And bring your people there along with you.

4      Final hint is: a leader is the n. 1 servant of the organization and its people. Too often undeserving people want position of leadership to appease their thirst for glory and privilege. That’s the best way to dissipate any power that you have been given and becoming a mere “boss”. As this interesting article on Fortune http://fortune.com/2016/05/18/power-paradox-influence/ tells very well, leaders gain power by empowering others do do the work that needs be done. A leader is there in order to serve, to facilitate the expression of the full potential of the human beings he/she leads. The organization is there to serve a galaxy of stakeholders in some ways. The leader is there  in order to make sure that this work gets done at best. Some glory, at that point, may come as the icing on the cake, but the leader will barely notice it.

Well, for some readers the above hints may be something they heard before. But how many of you really are up to that standard of leadership in their day to day work? Hopefully many. I wish you success, wholeheartedly.

Contact me freely here if you want to know more  about the CASE© approach to sustainable leadership and the transformation of conflicts