More Vorlon Management

During our week of leadership training I was introduced to the idea of finding one's True North and in my reading of Bill George's wonderful book True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership I have started a "deep dive" into the topics we skimmed in class. One of the techniques to find your True North is that of using a life time-line to tell your story, to view the events that shaped you and motivate you. We did a shortened version of this in class but I have been working on a longer one and have hit upon something that I recognize as a source of my desire to lead (part of my answer to the Vorlon question of "Who am I?"). My vision of leadership is to provide an environment where people are free to work, to remove obstacles to their ability to work as they best can. Using the technique I saw some things that showed me where at least in part this passion comes from and why for me leadership is a moral issue and not simply a matter for business.

When I was growing up my parents ran several very small businesses in an extremely poor part of the country (hence we were poor too, just a little different level of poor). They constantly had to battle the government with its nit-picky rules just to survive, often feeling frustrated over having to invest what was for us large amounts of our meager funds just to stay up to code even on things that really were not important to our businesses. When they would turn to their elected government officials for help they were far more often than not turned away. I can recall many times when just trying to comply kept us on the edge of going under financially and my folks would take outsides jobs from time-to-time just to stay afloat because it seemed no one was on their side who had any authority to help. Yet, through all of that, I also saw my parents go far out of their way to help those even less fortunate. My mother spent many hours filling out state and federal papers for our customers who were functionally illiterate just so they could get the assistance that was due them according to the existing laws and statutes (interesting for a bunch of Republicans, eh?). My dad would help pitch in when local millers and farmers had problems. When other people came on hard times their past-due notes to us suddenly became not so past due. These events helped shape my view of leadership, the view that people who lead are also servants, ready to help those around then.

This is part of my life story, part of my attempt to answer the Vorlon question and hopefully become a stronger leader.

Vorlon Leadership

I was honored by being selected as one of a small number employees identified as having the potential to become a true leader within my company and last week was sent to a leadership intensive held at company HQ. One of the early focal points was the concept of authentic leadership whose central idea is that of self-awareness. After a brief introduction to the concept I raised my hand and said "So you're siding with the Vorlons?" Dead silence in the room. I then explained that the main arc from a sci-fi series named Babylon 5 was a war of philosophy between (essentially) the Vorlons and the Shadows. Glossing over a lot of detail, the Vorlons believed the prime question a being should answer is "Who are you?" while the Shadows focused on that of "What do you want?" Authentic leadership has at its core (like the Vorlons) the idea that to be a leader you have to first understand yourself, your own principles, your motivations, your values, before you can become a credible leader. I happen to agree. This is not to negate the Shadow question, but without answering the Vorlon question first trying to answer the Shadow question leads to disharmony and discordant requests that will only confuse those who answer to you. In short, I spent last week learning I am a Vorlon... now if I can just glow in the dark and fly :-)