DEFINING MOMENTS

THE POWER OF LEADERSHIP – III

Our microwave society lost its way about what it takes to build leaders. We have fully diluted what it takes to become a leader. Corporations spent billions of dollars for their employees to go to leadership programs, courses, seminars, and lectures yet everywhere we look we see the obvious lack of leaders. America needs more crucibles*, defining moments, to develop more leaders. What young potential leaders need are tool kits to make their experiences relevant, to learn from their failures and struggles. No failures and struggles and no leaders emerged. Leadership is about education, not training. Leadership is about learning the principles that last for a lifetime. America became the best in the world to train and instruct; we because a nation that lost its way in educating the young generations. We train dogs; we educate people. Training worked in the industrial age, when employees were instructed to push buttons. We, the boomer generation, created this void in leadership. We will only fix the problem by taking responsibility and ownership for the problem we created.

1.      Leaders do what they say they will do. “What you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you say”

2.      Leaders become themselves, the makers of their own lives.

3.      Individuals start becoming leaders when they decide for themselves who to be first, then they do what leaders do, influence others to follow them.

4.      Individuals become leaders after becoming sick of being sick of their status quo, replacing illusion with reality, and starting to close the gap between their painful realities and their vision.

5.      Leadership is a process that takes a decade to master, involving being your own teacher, taking responsibility and placing no blame,  knowing you can learn whatever the mind is set to learn, and reflecting from experiences.

6.      Leaders know that true learning comes from self-discovery from reflecting on their own experiences.

7.      There is a huge gap between understanding and truly knowing. A genius knows something after repeating the skill 50 times, the average person 200 times, me only God knows, 1000 times!

* Crucibles = situations in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development.

Be blessed and be a blessing to others!

Carlos Fontana, President of Phalanx

Co-author of the book Follow to Lead (The 7 Principles to Being a Great Follower)

Author of the book PRICELESS (Sixty-Six Simple Stories of Reflection, Love, and Legacy)