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Ten Leadership Propositions

1. "Be effective.  Emphasize results, both through management by objectives and by process.
2. Understand that leadership is a mind-set and a pattern of behaviors.  It is to have made a habit of a new way of thinking and a new way of acting.
3. Be prepared to wake up and to change your perceptions and concepts radically (transformation, conversion) with respect to the human potential and to cultures (corporate, ethnic, national).
4. Lead by teaching leadership, by empowering, by fostering autonomy, providing direction, and lending support.  A teacher is an experienced and relentless learner.
5. Have faith that leadership can be learned and that it can be taught.
6. Know that the leadership mind can hold opposing ideas and contradictory feelings at one and the same time.  It can achieve comfort with the tensions of ambiguity, polarity, and uncertainty.
7. Be a leader in all six arenas of life: work, family, self, ecological responsibility, social responsibility, and financial strength.
8. Inform your products and services with a leadership teaching component.  You do not sell a product or service; you help customers buy leadership in their affairs.
9. Use both reasons or models (living from the 'outside in') and instincts or intuition (living from the 'inside out').
10. Expect leadership to lead you and your organization to a higher state of health (Koestenbaum, 2002, p. 23-26).'

Reference:  Koestenbaum, P. (2002).  Leadership: the inner side of greatness: a philosophy for leaders.  San Francisco:  Jossey-Bass.

Leadership: The Inner Side of Greatness is available on loan from the Ohio State University Leadership Center.  To borrow this resource or any other resource please go to the resource search page http://140.254.85.212/winnebago/search/search.asp?lib

If this is the first time you have borrowed resources from the OSU Leadership Center, please contact us at 614-292-3114 and we will register you in our library system.  Once you have been added to the system, you may request resources via the website.

Learn how the Ohio State University Leadership Center is strengthening tomorrow's leaders today at http://leadershipcenter.osu.edu

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Created: 2008-04-03, Updated: 2009-01-07