The Journey is the fourth phase of the Heroic Journey of the Leader.* As you can imagine, it encompasses the majority of your adventure in terms of time and effort.
As the leader, the challenges you encounter on your Journey will be the best problems you have ever had. Each setback will be an opportunity to eliminate what is not working and a chance to find what will work in securing the new vision. Have no fear, support will show up as you deal with each challenge and help will appear just when you need it. And by turning your resistors into allies you will fuel the momentum toward achieving your shared new vision.
Most leaders who rise to heroic levels have had to make the the shift from developing themselves as high-performing individual contributors to high-performing connectors and developers of the people on their teams. For many, this journey from autonomy to intimacy and connection is the most difficult and rewarding.
Here are some tips to help you foster connection with others as you progress on your Heroic Journey to creating the change you seek:
- Share your personal leadership growth goals with your team and allow each person to give you feedback on how you are progressing, help you troubleshoot, and best of all, celebrate and recognize your successful achievements.
- Ask others to share their leadership growth goals with you. At some point, each person on the journey will need to lead as well as follow (including you). Navigating the ups and downs of the journey will offer everyone the potential to grow as a leader.
- Work together to let go of false attachments and outmoded solutions as quickly as possible. This will help you avoid unnecessary delays and dead-end traps that curb momentum.
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*If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you probably know all about the Heroic Journey of the leader. It begins when the Hero/Leader answers the Call to lead their team or organization on the path to positive transformational change and ends when they survive a Supreme Ordeal that teaches everyone involved how to operate on a new higher level that changes the very fabric of the organization for the better.
Embarking on a journey of heroic proportions takes practice. It involves honing your skills and modeling the behavior you want your followers to have on a daily basis. Over the next few weeks, I will be digging deeper into each phase of the Heroic Leadership Journey to coach you, the Hero/Leader, on how you can can live fully into each phase every day. For a primer on the phases of the Heroic Leadership Journey, read this.
Kathryn D. Cramer, PH.D.
Founder and Managing Partner, The Cramer Institute
