Discovering your Leadership Principles
What are Leadership Principles?
Leadership Principles (LPs) are intentional commitments to yourself about how you want to show up as a leader in the world. Everyone is a leader in some way in their life, whether it be leading yourself, leading family, community leadership, or a designated or natural leader in your organization.
Why should I care about LPs?
LPs validate what’s important to you as a leader and provide an opportunity to match your intentions and what’s going on for you on the inside with what is demonstrated to others on the outside. Being intentional about your LPs is a path towards coherence, where the inside you and outside you are in alignment.
If we don’t develop our own leadership identity through our LPs, we’re left to have our leadership shaped by the desires and expectations of others or by unconscious, conditioned behaviors that emulate others' leadership. LPs serve as your self-prescribed guidance about how you want to show up as a leader of yourself and as a leader of others.
LPs are essential for conscious leaders seeking to deepen their commitment to leading authentically from the heart.
What does an LP look like?
LPs are often a series of statements written as affirmations that are often aspirational. We are all works in progress, striving towards fulfilling our LPs. LPs can change over time so it’s important to take time to reflect on your LPs at least annually, even more often is better.
Here are some examples of LPs from some of us at Conscious Revolution:
I respond instead of react
I slow down, pause, and breathe (this LP intentionally reinforces the first LP above)
I resource myself through intentional practices that center me and keep everything in perspective
I embrace and practice abundance, rejecting scarcity mindset
I am present in the moment and practice that the most important person and moment is the one right in front of me
I do what I say I will do, and I don’t commit to something I can’t do
I create clear boundaries and pay attention to what drains me
I voice what I’m feeling and experiencing with humility and curiosity
I remain light and seek the joy and learning in everything I’m experiencing, while recognizing that we can do hard things
I embrace differences of opinion and get curious about what I can learn
I focus on relationships first, not outcomes
I seek to engage in dialogue and learning from others
I strive to ask better questions and not focus on knowing answers
How do I discover my personal LPs?
LPs are often an extension of your personal values so starting with your values is a natural way to begin playing with LPs. If you’d like to clarify and deepen your values, this is a great resource.
After clearly defining your top 5-6 personal values, below are some prompts to facilitate discovering your LPs. After reflecting on each question, consider how that reflection may lead to the emergence of a LP:
What are the values that guide my daily life and decision making?
How do I apply those values when leading myself each day?
How do my values get demonstrated in the places where I desire to be a leader?
What kind of leader do I aspire to be and what would that look like?
When I’ve experienced resonant leadership and felt inspired, what did that look and feel like? How could that experience inform my own LPs?
When I’ve seen ineffective or toxic leadership, what did that look and feel like? How could that experience inform my own LPs?
What do I need to fully practice my LPs?
Once you’ve determined your LPs, start to actively apply them in leading yourself and others. Consider sharing your LPs as a way to deepen your commitment and request feedback from others about when you show up in alignment or in contrast to your LPs. Regularly do your own self-assessment about how you are living your LPs, remembering that you are striving for progress, not perfection.
How do LPs apply to my organization?
LPs can be translated from a deeply personal exploration to an organizational exploration. The organizations we work with create leadership principles that are shared commitments or agreements among the designated leaders of the organization about how they will lead the organization together, setting shared expectations and shared accountability. In an organizational context, leadership principles define what successful leadership looks like at an organization. Successful leadership is defined differently depending on organizational strategy, values, industry, stakeholder needs, etc. Additionally, leaders come into organizations with an imprint of what leadership looked like in prior organizations or bring in their own assumptions about leadership. For a leadership team to be fully aligned, effective, and successful it’s essential to define what a successful leader is at each organization.
Below are some prompts to facilitate discovering your organizational LPs. After reflecting on each question, consider how that reflection may lead to the emergence of an organizational LP:
How do our organizational values guide our interactions and decision making?
How do our organizational values guide our definition of leadership?
What do our leaders need to demonstrate to cultivate our desired culture?
What do our leaders need to demonstrate to achieve our organizational goals?
In what ways do our leaders need to work together to optimize our opportunities?
In what ways do our leaders need to work together to address our challenges?
Here are some sample organizational LPs from our work with clients. These LPs apply to a full leadership team and are often co-created with the current leadership team for shared accountability. Organizational LPs also provide recruiting guidance and set expectations for new leadership.
We have a strong sense of integrity that’s inherent to who we are. We are honest and trustworthy at all times
We genuinely care about all of our stakeholders because they are fellow humans and we deeply care about others’ well-being
We invest time and resources into developing strong teams that are smarter and more capable than we are as individuals
We embrace and lift up “smarter” people than we are
We support our team to live their best lives, always putting people over profit
We are committed to our team's well-being and support and respect each other’s dreams
We create clarity and alignment by facilitating a shared vision
We challenge the status quo and encourage creativity
We provide transparency on firm and team goals
We practice compassionate accountability
We consistently provide honest and respectful feedback
We actively fight siloes and think and act holistically as one team leading the entire organization
We take the time to celebrate and recognize a job well done
Organizational LPs require regular self-assessment from leadership team members. It’s also ideal to share organizational LPs across the organization and request ongoing feedback from employees about what is going well and what needs to be addressed to fully live the LPs. Employee feedback can be gathered through one to one conversations and/or employee surveys.
Paired with values, individual and organizational LPs are tremendously powerful and increase your conscious leadership potency in so many ways. If you’d like further support on LPs, please contact any member of the Conscious Revolution team and we’d be happy to provide additional guidance!
