Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Liana Taylor, a psychologist and mindfulness teacher, explores the inner obstacles to wise leadership over 99 minutes. She begins with a guided meditation grounding the audience, then asks them to reflect on personal strengths and weaknesses as leaders. The core teaching draws on research by Collins and others identifying eleven habits that derail leaders and destroy organizations—arrogance, melodrama, volatility, excessive caution, habitual distrust, aloofness, rule-breaking, eccentricity, passive resistance, perfectionism, and eagerness to please—as well as five fallacies in thinking: unrealistic optimism, egocentrism, omniscience, omnipotence, and invulnerability. She stresses that the antidotes are metacognition (seeing one’s own mind in action) and self-regulation, both cultivated through mindfulness. The talk is practical and inclusive, pitched at working professionals and leaders in any context who recognize that true leadership rests on emotional intelligence, humility, and the willingness to admit when you don’t know.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2008 12 19 Buddha in the Boardroom 19-12-08.mp3
UUID: 9b3a1853-11d5-4c81-9e04-3b51dcce410f
Teacher: Liana Taylor
Collection: Liana Taylor Buddha in the Boardroom (Liana Taylor)
Date: 2008-12-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~7,674
It seems very loud Jampa. Welcome everyone. I’m not sure is anybody here for the first time tonight? Welcome. Nice to meet you.
Some of the others have been here many times so their faces become so familiar I almost forget to introduce myself so I’m Leanna Taylor and I’m a psychologist I’m a meditation teacher and Most of the time in my working life these days I teach mindfulness based cognitive therapy to other health professionals and I teach mindfulness based leadership programs to leaders and managers. It’s most of what I do in my working life these days. I’ve got somewhat of a passion for Argentine tango and once upon a time I used to walk in high mountains I don’t do that anymore but those things are interesting things to say because they flavor the the things that we do here and the way that, we work together. So starting this evening, this evening’s talk is called stress and derailment, what to do about the eleven habits and five fallacies that derail leaders and destroy organizations. We don’t always know how to describe what wisdom is.
Let alone wisdom in leadership. But we certainly wisdom in leadership. Henry David Thoreau said that it’s a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. And one of the things mindfulness is profoundly useful for as well as all other types of meditation and some spiritual practice is to help us notice the kinds of desperate things that we do so that we might make different choices. It requires wisdom, said Walter Lippmann, to understand wisdom.
The music is nothing if the audience is deaf. Wisdom is not knowledge, but lies in the use we make of knowledge. We know that wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Tom Wilson said, sometimes age just shows up all by itself. No wisdom alongside.
Mark Twain once said, when I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty one, one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. In the Bible, in the wisdom of Solomon, it says, for the very true beginning of wisdom is the desire of discipline, and to the care of discipline is love. Last week, we were talking about love as a part of our leadership practice. The Dalai Lama talks about wisdom and compassion being two wings of the bird of two wings of the bird that flies over the ocean of truth and that we need both at the same time.
Confucius said, the greatest fortune of people would be to keep ignorant person keep ignorant persons from public office and secure their wisest men to rule them. We’re stuffed up with bush, didn’t we? Yes. Some would say so. Throughout history people have talked about wisdom, they’ve talked about leadership and more recently people have been talking about these two things together.
And this series in Buddha the Boardroom has been about looking at the ways that we use the Buddha’s teachings for our leadership in the boardroom or any other context that we’re using leadership in, and the importance of understanding ourselves and of other people, other words personal leadership in terms of leading in the world. We often ask the question of ourselves and of other people what is the wisest thing to do here? Where is the wisdom And that’s not always obvious to us. Leadership has inner elements and outer elements. human wisdom requires that we make wise decisions for ourselves, whereas leadership means that not only are we making wise decisions for ourselves, but we also must make decisions based on the needs of the people around us, our organisations, our community, the public, the nation and the globe.
We invest our leaders with the power to determine our destiny, our very history as a species, in fact, simultaneously performing acts of profound faith and of an unconscious and biologically informed intraprimate compulsion to give power to someone who will lead us to safety. Do we not hold our collective breath and silently pray that we are right when we choose our leaders? We want to see them as having good sense and as having wisdom. Let Let us stop here for moment and oh, it sounds so strange when I move. Let us stop here for a moment and take some time to meditate with ourselves, to come into a place of stillness, the kind of stillness that over and over we’ve talked about through this series is the place to be making wise decisions from so that we are acting wisely and not foolishly.
Anybody in the room not meditated before at all Okay, so I’d encourage you to take a sit on your chair Backside well back in the chair With this spine being supported by your sit bones and your knees comfortably apart so that your belly is loose. Just rocking your body from side to side, loosening up the body, allowing the movements to get smaller and smaller until your body finds its own balance point. And then rocking your head from side to side. Allowing those movements to get smaller and smaller until it too finds its own balance point. Either closing your eyes and having your eyes underneath your lids with a soft focus or having your eyes open with a soft focus looking to the floor about two meters in front of you.
Softening your tongue and your mouth, your chin and your jaw. Relaxing your shoulders and allowing your arms to fall comfortably from your shoulders, and your hands to sit loosely in your lap, and softening your belly. Notice the touch of the skin on the soles of your feet on the floor. Feel the sensations sensations there as your feet contact the floor, and allow your feet to sink down into the floor. Notice the contact on the back of your thighs and of your backside, on the chair or on your cushions.
Just noticing the sensations that you’re aware of. And allow your backside and your legs also to sink down. Down. And notice the contact of your hands and your lap. Open up to all the sounds around you, listening to sound just as sound.
Listening to the sounds in the room, the sounds outside the building, listening out as far as you can. Softening into the sensation of sound as if you were resting in a huge sphere of sound that gently nourishes and supports you. Bring your awareness to your breath as it comes in through your nostrils or your mouth. Noticing the warmer breath and the cooler breath. With each breath in, just silently say to yourself, breathing in.
And with each breath out, silently say, breathing out. And on the next breath in, silently say to yourself, breathing in one. And with each following breath in, continue counting. Breathing in two. And continue to count like this, silently saying to yourself, breathing in one, etcetera, until you go up to twenty.
And if you reach twenty, go back down towards one. If thoughts arise, just notice them. Let them drift into the background and return to the counting. If you get lost in thoughts and lost from the counting, then just return to number one and start again. Remember to keep the counting going, and don’t let yourself drift into a deeper state just now.
Stay focused on the counting. And on the next in breath, let go of the counting and feel the in breath and then the out breath through your whole torso as your chest and your belly rise with each breath in and fall without each breath out, gently massaging the body. Maintain your awareness on the movement of the breath in your body. And imagine expanding the out breath through your whole body. You may even feel it as if the out breath is going out through the skin throughout the whole body.
And then on the following breath in, imagine following the breath down to the heart center, slightly slowing down the in breath. Just following the breath all the way down into the heart center, breathing out naturally. And now on each breath, focus on your out breath, breathing out right to the end of each breath. Let Letting the out breath slow right down. And letting go of the awareness on the out breath, bring your awareness back to the breath as it comes down to the heart center.
And then once again, letting go of that, and this time following the breath as it goes in through the torso as the chest rises and the belly rises, and the chest and the belly fall, massaging the body with each breath in and each breath out. And then letting go of your awareness of that coming back to notice the movement of the breath as it comes in through your nostrils and out through your nostrils. Noticing the cooler breath in and the warmer breath out. And then letting go of your awareness of the breath altogether. Become aware of the sounds around you, the sounds outside, the sounds in the rest of the building, and the sounds in the room.
Notice the touch of your hands in your lap, your backside and your legs on the chair, and your feet on the floor. And as you’re ready, gently come out of the meditation and allow your eyes to open. And you might like to stretch. And as you’re coming out of the meditation gently, I’d like you to take a couple of minutes to reflect on your own leadership. Those of you who have been here through some of the series will recognize and may reflect on some of the things you’ve learned during the series.
From week one, the getting of wisdom, looking at the seven disciplines of wisdom. From week two, when we were exploring taming self doubt and other fictions of the mind, noticing the kinds of doubts that get in your way, the other fictions in your mind that get in the way of your leadership. From week four, adventure as an attitude, knowing becoming aware of the attitudes that you have, the attitudes of adventure that support your leadership, and those attitudes you have that don’t support your leadership. Week number five, personality factor and life intelligence. Those aspects of your own personality that support your leadership and those aspects of your personality that don’t support your leadership as well.
And from last week, leadership, what’s love got to do with it? Those aspects of your capacity for love in its broadest terms compassion equanimity loving kindness equanimity the qualities that you have in abundance that support your leadership and the qualities that you perhaps don’t have so strongly that aren’t supporting your leadership. And so just reflecting on the qualities in your in you, in your life that really support your leadership and that you want to nourish, that are your strengths, and those qualities that perhaps don’t support your leadership, and that you might want to add some support to or get other people to help you with. Just take five or six minutes to find another person in the room and to share whatever thoughts came up to you in that What are the qualities and characteristics that you have personally that support your leadership and what are the qualities and characteristics, fictions of the mind or whatever that don’t support your leadership, don’t serve you so well. Let’s find someone to talk to.
About six minutes. And I’ll invite you to wind those conversations up. In terms of noticing, easy was it to notice the qualities that support your leadership? It was that like? Were you able to identify some of the qualities that you have in yourself that support your leadership?
There’s a couple of nods and nothing else going on. Was it easy to how was it trying to identify the things that don’t support your leadership the aspects of yourself that interfere with your leadership? Yes some people find one more easy to identify than the other that’s certainly thing that gets in the way. Yep absolutely okay as I’ve said before that in the last few years there has been quite a lot of research not only into leadership post all the kind of management research that’s been done in the last forty years and post all the things been written about wisdom for thousands of years. But in the last decade or so, has been a lot more writing about wisdom in leadership.
Collins in two thousand and one said that level five leadership, and I mentioned this is a kind a leadership style that I spoke about last week, is an important element in sustaining corporate success. He conducted a five year research project searching for the answer to the question of what makes a company, for example, change from a really good company to a really great company. The results showed that the most powerful transformative leaders possess a paradoxical mixture of personal humility and professional will. They are timid and ferocious, shy and fearless. They are rare and unstoppable.
It’s interesting because most of the traits seem contradictory to what many have thought were positive to key leadership roles, and yet this is what came out of this five year research program about what makes companies great. Another example in the same sphere of life in the corporate world of level five leadership, Nana Vander in two thousand and six described the leadership style of Ken Chenault. Ken Chenault’s CEO of American Express and one of only three African American leaders of Fortune five hundred companies in the world, or at least at that time. He was able to win his employees’ trust and build cohesion, partly, they say, through his empathy and his ability to express his emotions, and that this was core to his leadership style. He’s described as understated, modest, unassuming with quiet warmth and a style that makes people want to be on his team.
Interestingly, leaders are often seen as risk takers. Risk takers who create, who vision, who change, who shake things up, and set direction and tone. Leadership can be quite different from management, although, of course, managers lead and sometimes as manage. Managers, on the other hand, need to be conservative and cautious. They need to control, they need to plan, they need to keep track of things, solve problems, and cope with complexity using authority and rules to keep everyone lined up and everything in its place.
And I’ve completely forgotten his name, Drucker. Drucker said once of a manager’s job is to do the right thing no, is to get things right, and a leader’s job is to do the right thing. Slight difference. There’s a need in leadership to be resilient under fire, maintain hope and optimism for ourselves and for others, to be emotionally intelligent, and able to have crucial conversations skillfully. Leaders do this by being present, most of all, by being present in their flow and steady and responsive to all that is around, regardless of whether we like what is happening or we don’t like what is happening.
This is a core skill that we learn in mindfulness. Mindfulness is the activity, a skill, a process and a philosophy of living which invites us to choose responsibility because we know that we buy freedom with responsibility. At least responsibility for our responses to what is happening around us, regardless of what arises. Our leaders have much expected of them, and yet few things are more difficult, anxiety arousing and humiliating for leader, whether that’s us or the people who are leading us, to have to admit that they do not know what to do. Have you ever been in a situation where you feel like you’re in a leadership role and you have to admit that you don’t know what to do or that you don’t know what to do and you’re wondering what’s going on.
Leaders can feel extremely and the research is showing that leaders have talked about this and they talk about that in the coaching context in particular that leaders feel extremely naked, alone, and very vulnerable when there are no rules to guide them, often no real idea about how they might gain new knowledge that would help them and guide them, and especially in the places they cannot see, the blind spots about themselves or about the organizations and the people that they work with, or the places in themselves they feel ashamed to show. So it comes back to leadership, and this is where we come down to the eleven habits that derail leaders and destroy organizations. Again, this is based on some research done by Dotlich and Cairo. And I’m curious in this room, if you think about leaders that you’ve known throughout time in history, either current, past, present, who have acted foolishly, spectacularly foolishly. Who who who would be on your list of leaders that have acted foolishly, unwisely?
The one who they threw shoes at. The one who they threw shoes at. Yes. Leaders that have acted unwisely. Nixon?
Mugabe. Yeah. How do we spell Mugabe? M M u g a b e. It was Bush in there who else?
Yeah Yes Who else what other leaders have we seen throughout time? I mean all leaders make mistakes All people make mistakes. But what leaders do we know of? Clinton. Yep.
I wonder if Hitler thought he made a mistake. Some of the rest of us thought he did. Stalin? Caesar, is that like Caesar salad? Yes.
I’m sorry that that’s where the reference comes from in my memory. That’s what’s in front of me, Caesar salad on a menu. My visual memory. Who else who else do we know? Who else do you know in Australia, in in the arts, for example, or in the entertainment world, or in the field of literature, or in music?
Warnie? Yep. A leader is a person who has followers. Well, yes. Say what?
Ben Cousins. Ben Cousins? So it’s c o u z i n s? Yeah. C o u s.
One of them. Cousins. Who else do we know? A guy called Howard, some people would say. Mostly political leaders.
Leaders. Are there other It’s so interesting that they’ve got new women up there. Yes. Women don’t make mistakes. Do women get hurt about in history?
Thatcher? Nice one. Thatcher made some Oh, you’re Willie? Winnie? Yeah, that was Oh, yes.
I’m sure someone could write a book about that. It’s a nice little topic. Who else can we think of? Oh, Chris Jeffreyrey. Chris.
How did I get that wrong? Oh, for people, I should know this. Yeah. Prince Philip? Yep.
He was the one I was thinking of this afternoon. Mind you, were you thinking of any particular incident? I know he’s made a few. I can’t recall. Yeah.
Is the leader of the Democrats? Oh, yes. She was the teacher from Queensland. Ah. What about our famous what is xenophobia?
Oh, Pauline. Pauline made a few mistakes. I mean, we all make mistakes. These people just do it publicly, unfortunately for them and sometimes for other people. There’s a good list from South Africa if you want.
Then most interestingly, mostly the leaders we’re putting up here are political leaders. Mean if you look at American culture, for example, and I use that because it’s so public, you can look at the rap rap dancers and rap singers and some of the songs that they’re making. Would see some of those people as accidental leaders because they have followers. They have people following them. Michael Jackson, good example.
So these are just some of the examples of some of the leaders, people in leadership positions who are leading in the world who have kind of made some fairly spectacular mistakes. I was thinking of Prince Charlie and the famous tampon story. I thought, fancy being the prince of, you know, the United of the of the of the UK and of the whole what’s the word? Commonwealth. And have a whole Templin story published about you.
So what does the research say? What does the research say about what are the eleven the eleven habits, the eleven most common habits among top leaders in the world that derail them and destroy organizations? Number one, arrogance. Insisting that we’re right and that everybody else is wrong and that we know and that they don’t. Number two, melodrama.
Always trying to be the center of attention. Who do we see has got arrogance here? Napoleon. Napoleon for sure. Mugabe.
McGabee. Bush. Hitler. Stalin. Stalin.
Quite a few of them. Melodrama? Winnie, Imelda, Jackson. Ben Cousins. Ben Cousins maybe.
Or Chris Jeff. Chris Jeff. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Third one. Volatility. Nixon. Yes. Sudden unpredictable mood shifts.
Nixon. Stalin. Actually, Napoleon was pretty well at times. Napoleon, Hitler. Yes.
Number four, excessive caution, which is about indecision. I don’t know if any of these were suffering that. It’s listed as one of the in the in the research This is number four on the list of top habits that derail leaders I Suppose if you if you’re if you’re being derailed by that you might not actually make it into the public eye quite so strongly. Five Habitual distrust, focusing on the negatives. Stalin.
Nixon, very much. Nixon. Howard. Howard. Yep.
Definitely. Caesar. Caesar. Six, aloofness. Disengaging and disconnecting from the people and the organisations and the community around you.
Thatcher. Michael Jackson alienating himself from his Philip Howard to some degree. A disengagement in an unhelpful way, what were you saying? Withdrawing. Yeah, withdrawing.
So there’s a difference between having some capacity to get perspective and see from a distance versus aloofness which is a kind of withdrawing from the community or the people around you. One would assume these are seen in the negative light rather than the positive light of aloofness. Seven. Yes. Constantly bending and breaking the rules.
Mischievousness. Yes. Cousins, Warnie. Michael Jackson. Yeah.
Sounds like a positive one. Say it again? It seems to be a positive one. I expect there’s an element of each of these that has its positive elements. If you are a leader, you make the rules.
You make some rules, but you can’t make all the rules. The world does exist. They often attend to me. They do. Do.
They do. This is more cheapy. This is more childlike behavior. Well, as as Jampa said, that can be a real asset, but it can be a real downfall too. As, you know, as I think we’ve seen some of our sporting can be disruptive and actually get in the way of your leadership.
Eccentricity. Eccentricity in the in the negative sense that it’s talked about here is very much trying to see yourself as different regardless of the outcome of that. So it’s kind of wanting things to be different or see yourself as different in some way regardless of the impact that that is having on others. Passive resistance, Which is about silence and inaction on your part, but that is seen as agreement by other people. I don’t know.
Who would who would have had that here? Yes. Could imagine. Yeah. Trying to think most of the other people are much more upfront than that passive resistance Passive resistances it’s like it’s when you’re supposed to be leading and For example, you’re not agreeing with something with someone that that what they’re saying, but you’re not saying anything.
You’re just being passive and quiet Not acting not doing anything Showing poor leadership because you’re not stepping up and saying I don’t agree with you. I think we should be doing this, sitting back passively. Ten, perfectionism. Some of us will understand concentrating on the understand concentrating on the details while missing the big picture and what’s happening, trying to get something so right that we just sometimes miss the context of what we’re doing it for and the timeline that we need to do it in. And eleven, eagerness to please, which is treating leadership like a popularity contest.
Contest. Some of us parent like that and learn to do it better after a while. So what I’d like you to do now is go back into your partnerships and just notice if there are any of those that you notice are part of your habits and that you might like to bring some difference to since while most of the weeks we’ve been here We’ve looked at our strengths our positive assets and our skills certainly tonight We’re looking at the habits and the fallacies the things that can derail us and the Organizations we work for when we’re looking just going back into pairs and just notice have your tendencies towards any of these Have you had the tendencies and already shifted them or in fact as Jampa was saying would you like to pick up a bit more of some of them? Which might be the case take about five minutes with your partners Remembering, it’s not that everything about all these qualities is so unhelpful. It’s the aspect of the quality that you know is interfering with your leadership.
So the degree to which this happens and interferes with your leadership is the conversation I want you to be having. And as you’re ready, I’ll invite you to continue any of those conversations you want to have at tea break Looking at those aspects, these are the eleven habits listed as the most common habits that derail leaders on their way. Just recognising those aspects in ourselves or the people around us that are not serving us. As I said, the degree to which they serve us enjoy them. The degree to which they do not serve us, that’s that’s the awareness.
They’re the blind spots that sometimes we’ve had about ourselves. Sometimes we continue to have, and these are some opportunities to open up and have a look at that. So let’s go for a tea bag for about ten minutes. See you back in here at about five past. Folks.
I hope you had a nice tea break. So we’re looking here at the habits that derail leaders according to research, according to one lot of research in environments. The two aspects that are talked about in terms of being the antidote in a way to dealing with these habits are meta metacognition and self regulation. Metacognition involves knowing about one’s own cognitions mind about proven accuracy in perception rather than just feeling like one knows that what one thinking what one’s thinking is in fact accurate. Kegan and others said that they showed some research demonstrating that it’s possible to teach people, including young children, to watch their minds in action and thereby their performance at all manner of mental behavioral tasks.
Now, of course, from a Buddhist perspective, this is what mindfulness is about and what meditation is about, learning to still the mind, to watch what opens up, and to watch what unfolds in life as well. And this research has nothing to do with Buddhist meditation. It just comes from standard psychological research. So that they know that through systematic education, the human mind can learn how it learns, how to change how it learns, and to watch itself go through those experiences with an evaluative intent to improve over time. And these are the key aspects for metacognition and self regulation.
In developing that ability to see ourselves, we also develop the ability to regulate our own emotions, own responses, even our own thoughts, even our automatic thoughts after a while. So these are the two keys. The other lot of research that I think is relevant, again, in the same sphere of the world, in the corporate world, was a long term research done by Sternberg and others looking at wisdom in leadership again. And they mention five stereotype fallacies in thinking or fictions of the mind as I might call them, in which a leader can get caught. And these are: the unrealistic optimism fallacy.
Anybody here ever get caught in that one? Believing that only good things will happen from your actions? That what you do is always gonna have a good outcome because you’ve thought it out, and you’re going to do it. And it doesn’t matter that it might be true a lot of the time. It may not always be true.
The second fallacy, which relates to some things over on this other side, the ego centricism. It’s a bit like the arrogance, believing that your opinions are the only ones that matter and nobody else’s opinions matter. So here we are in two different lots of research finding the same cues. I’m not sure if any of you have ever done this in your life, but some of us might have a little bit of egocentricism, a bit of arrogance at times, and sometimes it might get in our way of doing what we want to be doing in terms of our leadership. Sometimes it can be quite handy.
The third one, the omniscience fallacy. Not only believing that you’re right, believing that you know everything, just everything. Now I don’t know about all of you when you were raising your children, but my child knows that mother was the arbiter of all truth and reality. Reality. And she has grown up and told her boyfriend that she is now the arbiter of all truth and reality.
So she likes to live the omniscient self in her own relationship. It comes in handy sometimes. Optimism is a good thing. When do you know that you can’t the line? When is it unrealistic?
Yeah. It’s unreal. I think like a lot of things, over time, you start to calibrate. You look look at the outcomes outcomes of of what you’ve done, the consequences of what you’ve done or what you thought. Look at what actually happens when you have thoughts and get feedback about what’s going on.
So the feedback might be something you actually ask for. It might be just something you naturally see in in what is occurring after your optimism. So if I consistently expect this five year old child to be able to take instructions, like go down, go in through the corridor, the first door on the right, second door on the left, go up to the second door in the cupboard on the left behind the door, and the kid consistently can’t do it, it might be that I’m overoptimistic about what’s possible. Yeah? Just as a silly example.
So I think it’s about evidence that we see that over time. And the difference between optimism and positivity? Positive yeah. Well, some people would say again, we’re talking unrealistic optimism. So I don’t I don’t know what other people describe a difference between positivity and optimism.
Between Optimism and positivity. Is there a difference, though? Well, that’s what I asking. Isn’t optimism future based in positivity? Present?
Next time. That’s a thought. I’d never thought about that. No. That’s quite nice.
Thank you. It’s always good when you’re teaching a group. If you don’t know something, just ask the group. Somebody will know. And if they don’t, then nobody knows.
But I you’re probably right. Positive is often very much present tense, and optimism’s about the future. But it’s about unrealistic optimism’s problem, not optimism per se. So they’re expecting to win the lotto each week. It’s a perfect example.
Yes. Of relatively unrealistic optimism. And it’s the same, I think, that when we look in the Buddha sense of attachment, aversion and avoidance attachment aversion and delusion that attachment is often about an unrealistic optimism you know we’re attached to something that we want we keep going after it regardless of the fact that we can’t have it or it’s not available to us or if we do get it negative consequences will happen. Same as addictive behaviors. So that’s unrealistic optimism.
It’s unrealistic optimism to expect that your average person can drink, I don’t know, six bottles of beer and you know, a bottle of wine and not have a hangover the next day. But, you know, how many people do drink that and get shocked when they have a hangover the next day? There has to be unrealistic optimism. Yeah. I think plenty of people who drink drink a lot more than that, unfortunately.
Okay. Number four. The fallacy. Again, that’s very much the same as one here, believing that you can do what you want. It’s a bit like the eccentricity one here.
So I can do whatever I want. I’m the all powerful. I can do exactly what I want, and that would be alright. What differentiates three and four? Omniscience is that a knowledge thing and omnipotence is Omniscience is about believing one knows everything.
Right. And omnipotence is about one can do what one wants. So one’s about knowing, and one’s about doing. Yeah? And the fallacy.
Again, believing you can get away with anything. And that relates to a little bit to these. Mysterious here. This is another author, another researcher just coming up with these five as the main factors. What does he describe them as?
Five I said this, Five stereotyped fallacies in thinking or fictions of the mind in which the leader can get caught and stifle their path to leadership and the actions, the outcomes of their leadership. Were you gonna say something? Oh, I just gonna say they all just bring up arrogance. Just kinda put a big circle around them and stick them in this pile. Do you recognize any of them in yourself?
I mean, I have I have had a reasonable amount of arrogance in my time. So I don’t think I’m particularly melodramatic, but I’m sure when I was younger, other people thought I was. In fact, I’m sure some people still think I am, especially myself dancing around the room with a scarf. But I don’t think that’s melodramatic, but that’s all relative, isn’t it? And I’ve never been excessively cautious.
But yeah. So for you, do you have any of those qualities very much? Probably. I I have all of those eleven. Yeah.
All of them. Wow. That’s a it’s a full bag. It’s a truly full bag. Very interesting.
So, again, our task tonight is simply to look at what the research is saying about the things that interfere with wise leadership. And this is what the research is showing in a couple of different, you know, long term studies about what they’re coming up with about the particular qualities more than anything, more than technical knowledge or knowledge of your people or anything else. It’s these qualities that get in the way of wise leadership and derail leaders. When we look at what cultivates wise leadership, were you gonna say something? Yes.
I think if I place this in a good position. I don’t You want robe. Okay. Thanks. Excuse us.
Better? Thanks Jampa is it on yes and Commute I don’t know. I mean I think some of these involve communication certainly eccentricity mischievous aloofness These always food that feed the communication styles and when you look at communication Why aren’t people communicating? It’s not because they don’t have the skill to open their mouth and say the words It’s because of what underlies what drives them in terms of their values and their beliefs and thoughts thoughts about themselves and about other people. I’m assuming that that’s where this comes from, the kind of underlying things.
In terms of leaders that have difficulty in communicating and expect you to know what they want but they haven’t been able to express it either in written or in oral. That’s a form of passive resistance because they’re not actually saying anything. Doesn’t this come down to a skill and articulation? People can express themselves very well and very clearly, otherwise their feelings and their intent might be in a certain way but they just can’t get it across. It may be.
I can only speak here from my experience as a therapist and as an executive coach. Most of the time it’s not that most of the time I’m not saying for all people most of the time it’s if you’re in leadership it’s not that you don’t have the language, you don’t know what’s going on. It’s usually some of these things driving you. It’s the underlying, I don’t actually trust that person. That’s why I’m not saying it, or I don’t trust myself.
That’s why I’m not saying it, or I’m too arrogant to think that I should have to say these things, or I’m too passive in my resistance to think to, you know, to actually sit out and say these things. So it’s usually those underlying things that interfere with our ability to say those, say what is needed to be said. If you’re in a position of leadership, things those skills will be given, and that these are underlying the use of your skills. I did say that, but I don’t mean that. You have been Because I think I think it’s the case that often we’re we’re leading in our own lives whether we’re in a position of leadership or not.
So leadership is an aspect of most of our lives whether we’re in an official role of leadership or not. For most people, not all people, certainly, you know, I sit with people and teach them communication skills. But for the majority of adults, don’t lack the words. Sometimes they lack the awareness of what they might be feeling or thinking or wanting certainly, but they don’t usually lack the words. If you’re dealing with, you know, a boss and the subordinate, is usually some of this stuff that’s going on that’s driving why they’re not saying what they need to be saying or why they’re saying in the way they’re saying or why they’re thinking what they’re thinking That drives them to say the things that they do that then cause the problems So that would be my experience, but I’m not saying that as based in the research.
That’s just based in my experience. Were you gonna say something before? You get if you find yourself in a leadership position, it’s probably because you do have a rudimentary set of communication skills to begin with. Yes. It’s only these eleven aspects of personality may be your doubt.
Yeah, that stop you using them wisely. Just a sort of general question. Would you say that in terms of, I guess, when you look at the basic leaders, the political leaders, would you say there’s more bad leadership around? I don’t know. I think that that’s a judgment call.
I just kind of look at the fact, well, it is interesting that we’ve had nuclear weapons for, you know, nearly a century, and we’re actually still here. So, you know, is it all bad for leadership? Well, you know, obviously not. People have got the power to blow us up many times over and haven’t done it. I was Been a few close calls.
Yes. And a few coming. Yes. And the way they’re able to market themselves to. Yes.
Because then we’re not really choosing the person who’s best fit for their job. Yep. We’re choosing the one with all the glitz and the glamour and and all the money to create this amazing marketing. It seems like that all over the world both in politics and in the corporate sector and in government. I mean, I don’t know too many.
Apart from small businesses in lots of government organizations certainly corporate less in corporate sometimes but in government situations certainly lots of people are in leadership roles because they aspire to be in leadership roles not because they’ve got skills of a you know skills of a leader. As you say, they can market themselves, sell themselves, make themselves look good doesn’t actually mean they’ve got the qualities required for good leadership. So that’s a personal choice, think, to lead from a values base that’s about cultivating wisdom. Yep, it’s a kind of whole global system that operates in a certain way and would require a fair bit to change. One of the things that Ericsson demonstrated and talked about in nineteen ninety six is that it takes a minimum of about ten years for any individual to rise to the level of recognised excellence in any focused area of human activity.
His review of the research into human performance and effectiveness literature suggested that leadership therefore in any particular leadership role requires about ten years to develop, to rise to a high level of excellence. He said in addition to these qualities of metacognition and self regulation capacity for developing those, he suggested that the other variables accounting for excellence in human behaviour are focused and structured practice in whatever the endeavour is which includes leadership and also the presence of and interaction with expert mentorship or coaching during the period of development. He then goes on to cite that that mentorship is the difference between what will accelerate a leader’s skills and what will make that progress slow. He talks very much about the importance of It’s not easy to assess the exercise of wisdom in leadership because of the scope of time against which a leader’s assessments, judgments and actions must be evaluated. For example, Mandela and Gandhi at different times, one might have looked at their behaviors and the fact that Mandela was jailed, the behaviors of Gandhi’s and thought, what are these people doing?
There is nothing wise here. And yet, their character and their steadiness led them both to change the faces of their nations and eventually became great leaders in their own rights. Of course, this is the exercise of time and we don’t have that opportunity oftentimes to look at a leader and assess their leadership skills. Unique conflicts and challenges of leadership arise as well as untold treasures of human competence and creativity as we have seen in other people who have led us to safety, to creativity, to excellence in various ways. Wisdom is a deep and mature understanding based on insight and leading to good judgment.
I’ve got a confused look on your face. No, I’m just thinking when you brought up Mandela and Gandhi, their rise to leadership, Absolutely. At the right time, doing what’s necessary at that time. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Yes, a lot of time for reflection insight cultivating those disciplines we talked about in the first week To put those into action and do something wise in the world yeah, and their human capacities to do that as well I don’t know if any of you know Robert Fulgham’s guide for global leadership. Do you know it? It’s called all I ever really all I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learnt in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of graduate school mountain, but there in the Sandpit School. And there’s a copy of that on my website.
It’s a beautiful little piece of writing about all of the qualities that we learn in kindergarten about holding hands with each other when you walk across the road, when you’re grumpy, have a nap, share your cookies and your milk, be nice to each other. They’re the values that we learn in kindergarten and they’re the values that we learn there that carry us to the top of the mountain. And let me finish tonight by sharing what Napoleon said. Napoleon said that leaders are merchants of hope and that we are not limited by the size of our resources, only by the size of our vision. May you lead wisely in your lives.
That is the end of the series. There are handouts actually not up on my website because I was away last week and sick this week. But they really will be up in next couple of days because I sent them to my PA today. There’s a copy there of some of the courses the Mindfulness Centre is doing if any of you are interested in going to any of those. There’s Mindful Relationships Cultivating the Heart Mind with Mindfulness, mindful leadership, and a few others.
And Jampa might even share, do you know what’s on at Buddha House next year? Yeah. Do you want to share some of six twenty seven twenty eight, there’ll be three day retreat. Oh, yes. Like a smorgasbord.
Yes. Of all kinds of possibilities. That you’re Remy? I’ll I’ll be part of that. Yeah.
Yeah. And then there’s a the new newsletter is out, and you’re you’re welcome to take one with the program for next year. Yes. There’s this very special teacher coming in the middle of January, so that would be really worth checking out. Robina Courtin is coming in February.
She’s always out of Entertaining. So anyway, yeah, so take along the newsletter if you like. Yeah. So thank you for being here those that have come On behalf of Buddha House for all your wisdom and leadership, thank you very much for your support. Oh thanks, Joan.
Thank you. Enjoy yourselves. See you later. Okay. I’ll get you to put those on the bench over there in case somebody wants one because I need to detach.