Leadership is in danger of extinction

I originally wrote this article on February 2013. When I posted it, I was forced to take it down.

So, here we go again...

This is what I believe in, and I am choosing to speak up.

I am so disillusioned today on behalf of my 8-year-old son who’s growing up in a world that teaches him that to become another ego-driven leader is a sign of success, and that he must then “lead by example.”

I am so done with the hypocrite politicians in my home country of Venezuela shameless to call upon human dignity on national TV to justify their gross model of government that is no other than one of scarcity and humiliation.

I am so mad today that not even religious faiths that followers defend so passionately, with their most na?ve trust to feel safe within them, are exempt of this global leadership crisis.

I am so deeply sad to see sport heroes break themselves apart from confessing how they’ve cheated (openly to our faces) to be the world's number one.

I feel so powerless today that regardless of their wrongdoing, these people made it to the top, and became role models for those coming behind.

I am sitting here in the darkness of my room amazed by the most profound lack of leadership in the history of humankind. I am sitting here wondering: how do these people make it so high with such a huge lack of self-awareness, misconstrued ethics, and not giving a damn for the irreversible impact they make with their actions? Don’t they care about how disappointed and miserable their people (let’s say “below” their rank) feel as a result?

And sadly, it only seems to be getting worse.

Let alone the cookie-cutter approaches to leadership development that have focused more on selling classes and “tools” versus truly educating people and do nothing but contributing to this craziness.

I look around, and it seems hard to find day-to-day role models to the kind of leader we can aim to become. As if we are on our own in getting the world back on track… And here I am, in my lonely room, dreaming that my words can change all of that.

~*~

We still tend to look back in decades time for those real leaders. Their quotes. Their heroic actions. Their courage. Their humility.

All over Facebook posts, PowerPoint slides, almost every book has quoted them.

But do we actually understand that those leadership quotes and actions were made part of history as lessons learned to help us become our best leaders ourselves?

I worry that we just share their words and stories simply because they sound smart, so if we repeat them, we sound smart too… and we then get lots of “likes.”

Greatly, they don’t seem to get it. Those who are in a formal position of authority and should purposely build cultures and new generations of self-conscious leaders. Where in their way up did these leaders lose their capacity to inspire character and caring? Where in their journey did they change their minds to other things as more important – like their own selfish success in spite of anything (or anyone)?

In my mind, I bet for a more visionary scenario where today’s leaders are reachable, accessible, contemporary people that become a benchmark generation. People like you and I that we can recognize on a normal kind of daily basis. Can we become the new era of quotes and wisdom?

A generation of leaders that united can overcome this worldwide epidemic of lack of trust. A generation of leaders that bring back to relevance values such as care, compassion, humility, and love.

While I can see pockets of this movement beginning to emerge, I hope we all would feel empowered and responsible to take an active part: where tears and fear aren’t condemned as weakness but an act of having a brave heart.

Where being “emotional” is a legit strength.

Where asking “why” questions is a “best practice.”

Where being “politically correct” is no longer an aspiration we are trying to perfect.

~*~

Here's where I wish I could stand at the top of a mountain and say it out loud:

"For our institutions and societies to change, and for the kind of leadership that will make it happen, each of us have to be invested in it; we have to sweat it; we have to prove it; we have to risk it all; and we have to cry over it; but most of all, we have to feel it in our heart and have the guts to show up vulnerable, like a humble earthling, so that others can believe us.”

Let’s get real and stop this avalanche of ego-driven leadership.

We worry about big causes like ending the global warming. We worry about fighting hunger. We worry about terrorism and war.

Why don’t we worry first about stepping it up at leading ourselves and others? Those who we are close to.

Let’s begin by aspiring to be the new benchmark of leaders who stop this non-sense leadership crisis.

We can only control ourselves, and we can only influence our immediate circles. I promise you that all those big world problems will take care of themselves, once we finally get it that it is each and every one of us who will end up screwing it the world up.

Let’s worry that we don’t become an endangered species from our only opportunity to lead in a more real and open-hearted way.

As I began, I end. This is what I believe in, and I choose to speak up. ~Lindsay