Leaders develop towards their ideal

It’s important to know where you’re headed and why.

According to Boyatzis, the first step towards a self-directed approach to learning is the discovery of what you desire to be and what you currently are (Boyatzis, pg. 19). Coined the ‘ideal self’, the vision of what you want to become in the future. Daniel Goleman applies this research to the efforts of executives and senior managers who have lost the motivation to develop their leadership skills further in their current position or their ‘current self’. Goleman argues that leaders can lose touch with their ideal self for a number of reasons and find that they have no passion for developing further in work that, while it may be intellectually important, no longer holds a close place to their core hopes and dreams for the future (Goleman, pg. 118).

Importance - Application

The examples listed in chapter seven of Primal Leadership are from senior leaders who had been successful but felt there was a missing component to their work. Having arrived at a satisfactory point in their careers, they discovered that their motivation to grow had diminished. Some of them found that they weren’t passionate about their current role, others needed a holistic view because their aspirations included much more than work achievements. Based on the population alone, the material is important to business in that, if one finds themself unmotivated to progress after reaching a senior position, one may need to redefine what their ideal self is to capture their passion again. For the rest of us, this means being clear about where we want to go and why.

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