What is greater than leadership?

What is greater than leadership? It’s moving beyond what our current culture defines good leadership to be and challenges us to think counter culturally.

We live in a world of dialectics – these opposing forces that pull at our ability to stay balanced. Research tells us we need rest to enhance our productivity and effectiveness, but emerging technology makes us available 24/7. The threat and consequence of burnout is lurking just around the corner, but those who are willing to work longer and harder get the recognition. Success, status, and monetary gain will equate to never-ending happiness, yet the U.S. continues to drop in reports of overall happiness worldwide.[1]

Greater than leadership calls us to push past the standards set by a worldly understanding of worth, value, and influence. Greater than leadership establishes a practice of doing differently. Having fewer. Going deeper. Learning to follow. It’s about living in the discomfort in order to be grounded in sustainable, absolute truth.

Greater than leadership is more about service than self-interest.

Leaders ask people to cooperate, greater than leaders ask people to collaborate.

Greater than leaders are part of a larger story, a bigger vision, and a higher purpose than just the act of leadership itself.

[1] According to The Happiest (and Saddest) Countries in the World. Published in Forbes magazine, June 2012.