MY LEADERSHIP - 1
SESSION ONE — THE WALL - the Instinctive question
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Leadership - Session 1 - Principles’
Alongside the Principes video, I have included the ‘Activation Narrative’ that is part of this session in the self-guided workbooks. The stories I tell aren’t comfortable, nor are they trauma porn. They are designed to elicit a specific response from the reader, tied to the topic our clients are working on in this session.
The First Golden Rule:
“You cannot know the future, but we can see just around the corner by following the pattern.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
I was born in Northern Ireland on January 5th, 1971, at the beginning of a thirty-year war that we now call The Troubles. I developed my instinctive leadership sequence in the day-to-day survival caused by systemic poverty and violence. There wasn’t time to read the manual or calculate the best solution for the dangerous situations I found myself in. I needed to act —and act fast — if I was to ensure we got through the latest nightmare. Very few of the experiences that littered my childhood and early adulthood could be predicted or planned for. From an early age, I tended to feel responsible for others, which meant I needed to develop a subconscious sequence of steps that let me think on my feet as a young leader. My goals in those early years tended to be low on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs pyramid. But the sequence I developed then is still what I use today to achieve success in the higher areas of that pyramid.
Where does this instinctive sequence come from, if it's not innate? It originates from the same place all subconscious sequences are built: you encountered a novel experience, and through repetition, review, and results, you developed a reliable method to achieve the intended outcome.
Imagine a toddler stacking wooden blocks. They try, fail, try again. Once successful, they look to the Authority in the room—social referencing, which builds subconscious sequences. If you're an instinctive leader, it means that during your formative years, you were given repeated opportunities to lead, with an Authority Figure offering feedback. You had the chance to explore different ways to lead yourself and others safely.
Like the blocks, you discovered leadership has unavoidable core steps. You must set a goal, assess the potential available, decide on options, and act on decisions. At that point, you discover the last reliable step: leadership always comes with stress.
You don't have to be a genius to sequence how leadership works. This program is laid out without the frills and spills typical of Mystery or Magic models, which are embedded to increase the guru's value by creating yet another way to achieve a successful and healthy life.
In the next post, we'll explore the second link in what we call our instinctive Leadership Kill Chain—managing the biases in our subjective assessments.
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar