Extra Credit - The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes & Posner, Part 2

     In Chapter 3 (the first chapter of Part 1), Kouzes and Posner (from here on, referred to as KP) discuss values and the personal and public (community based) clarification of those values. Nearing the end of this chapter, KP suggest writing yourself a memo of your values, but we've done that already in Leadership Foundations (how convenient!). Further than just defining your values, though, they suggest writing a one page, concise "Credo Memo." This is, in essence, your values and what you intend to use those values for. In their model, it is easily used for a specific time frame and goal, but I think this Credo Memo could also easily be used for a more broad sense of how you live your life: because values are not only applied to goals. The values you use in leadership are the values you lead your own life by. 

     Near the beginning of the chapter, KP state, "You can't believe in the messenger if you don't know what the messenger believes," and "You can't be the messenger if you don't know what you believe." The discussion and the struggle of finding one's own voice is one that any college student, or anyone around the age of 18, should be familiar with: after all, we've become adults and we've left home. If you leave home prepared to spout all the beliefs you've grown up with, without branching out, researching them and owning them yourself, you're not going to come off as authentic. It just won't happen, and I can promise you that. 

     Finding your own voice is a battle you'll fight against others, members of your community, our family, and with yourself. Because at some point you will think that what you are saying is something you believe in, and then something will happen or you'll hear something or meet someone who completely changes that belief or value. That is exactly why it is incredibly important to make these values a conscious decision. Now that I know and have written out my own leadership (AKA life) values, I couldn't imagine going through life without having that necessary moral mind struggle that I had while writing that paper. 

     Before writing the Values paper, I was in a place a lot of people, both young and old, are stuck in. Let's imagine I hadn't defined my values at the beginning of the semester, and let's then imagine that someone asks me what my most important value is. I would have no idea; and I would probably just pick the first one that came to mind. Then, when someone else asked me weeks down the road, it would be different. But now, I know what my values are. I know and am conscious of them at all times of the day and night. If someone were to come to me now and ask what my most important value is I would say, "Community," without any hesitation. And that answer would be the same weeks later.

     In the beginning of Chapter 4, KP introduce Juan, the industry solution manager at IBM. Juan introduces a real life leadership problem he once faced and says, "'I found that I could drive myself harder by letting my voice - my clarity about my values - remind me of the importance of my actions. The voice was fundamental in my decisions about getting personally involved in taking action'" (74). This passage immediately brought to me echoes of Deedee's friend Annie and her lesson on wakefulness. In tangent, I am glad I am reading this because I don't know when else I could make this complete connection. In knowing, being aware of, defining, and living by values, one is more able to be awake to the day-to-day occurrences: to change the habitual pathways and automatic spindle cell tendencies. In knowing my own values and practicing them consciously I am more easily and more comfortably - more naturally - aware (as opposed to asleep). 

     This awareness isn't something that just comes naturally though after the definition of values. They must be consciously practiced: that's the key. The following passage is in discussion much later on in the chapter, but it applies well here:
"Critical incidents - chance occurrences, particularly at a time of stress and challenge - offer significant moments of learning for leaders and constituents. Critical incidents present opportunities for leaders to leach important lessons about appropriate norms of behavior" (88). This brings us full circle to the beginning passage, "You can't believe in the messenger if you don't know what the messenger believes." The messenger - the leader - you and I - must have values that are clear, defined, and practiced in our own minds completely enough that we can clearly communicate them to our supporters and our community. In this way, leaders perform one of the functions present in my PLP: teaching. Teaching by example, not by title. By owning my values, I teach them to others. If I don't understand them myself, or if I allow them to falter, I teach false and dangerous lessons.