Enable Others to Act: Teach them to fish

After taking a week off I am back with the fourth practice in Kouzes & Posner’s work The Leadership Challenge, Enable Others to Act. The Practice has two Commitments associated with it, “foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships” and, “strengthen others by increasing self-determination and developing competence”. And as we have been doing over the past several weeks, I look at the first behaviour in this practice which is, “develops cooperative relationships among people he/she works with”.

What is your definition of leadership? I am sure that we would get a lot of different responses to that question — if fact I invite you to write yours at the bottom of this post. For me leadership is like the proverb of fishing: “if you give a hungry man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” (Lao Tsu). It’s about giving others the opportunity to grow. This week’s video blog post is my thinking on the behaviour above.

John K Whitehead & Associates coaches individuals and organizations in becoming more effective by helping them improve their interpersonal communications, emotional intelligence, and resiliency. You can read my blog at http://johnkwhitehead.ca

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