Leadership coaching is all over the Internet, and with many references within that industry to Black Belt programs and leadership Dojos its worth doing an article from the perspective of having trained in real Dojos, having done the black belt curriculums and now running a school with its own. When I say real Dojos I simply mean the old school Japanese samurai ones as opposed to the conceptual business ones and by black belt curriculums I mean the ones you fight through.
It's an interesting process having gone through both experiences of traditional samurai training and a life in corporate business because you do clearly see the relationships from one to another. I certainly began to use "Black Belt tactics" (as others have humorously referred to them) in the conference room and construction site when I came back from my first black belt in Japan, and they work. Is that leadership? I think it's strategy and personal perspective which allows a waiting non reactionary state, which those who don't train much don't know about.
It's also about reflexes and the fact that all that motor training has developed your grey matter into a state of razor sharp thinking. When you are presented with 'matters' at work you apply a fighter's mentality. For those only versed with popular media depiction of modern day martial arts, to explain, no that's not aggression or throwing your weight around, it's paying attention to the detail then looking beyond it, about 3 steps ahead beyond it, and deciding which parts to respond or react to out of the instant analysis you've just made of which ones are beneficial to you, what are the possibilities and what are the consequences and outcomes of the potential courses of action.
This is all the functioning of a big highly processing super charged computer. That computer is after all available to everyone. The reason why you can do it is because you spent the last decade or two training to do it. Those skills set you apart, because most people react, can't control their emotions, don't dispassionately view a situation and analyse it with a strategic mindset, and have no idea of patterns sequences and consequences. Time and energy are two factors you learn a lot about in traditional fight training, how things play-out, the sequences and the weight of decisions as they carry energy on through time changing state, impacting.
The other thing you learn about is problems. I sat in the back of a taxi once with one of my bosses, sharing the return journey from a particularly excruciating meeting. He made a comment about my calmness. He later turned round and said to me "what do you think you get from all this fight training you do at the end of the day?" How could I sum it all up in one single sentence for him? I replied "my idea of a problem is not your idea of a problem." He nodded and looked out the window. Soon after that I received a promotion.
These abilities naturally get you promotions because you're performing beyond the rest and making informed well considered decisions.
So what 'makes' a leader, how do you become one if you want to be one, and when we have to select one how can we choose?
From what I've seen you can't become a leader just because you want to. In fact most people who become leaders at work, by that I mean true leaders, were busy doing something else. That is precisely it, the qualities that 'make a leader' come out of doing something else: advancing yourself. Advancing yourself normally commences with focusing on what you are passionate about, what you enjoy. Find that inner flame to fuel your fire energy of action and away you go...
All the Dojos I've trained in and the ones I run today are all about that: advancing the individual. That is the Budo concept. I watch as the students graduate up through their belts, they naturally become humans with leadership qualities. What they are focusing on is having fun, getting better at what they like doing. What I'm focusing on is their personal development, getting them to go beyond what they think is possible to become themselves. The process naturally creates a flourishing. Appointments of responsibility amongst a tightly bonded team with a common cause and good positive communication and respectful manners develop naturally.
It's not just Dojos however, which make leaders. I was once in a Tender reading for a construction project to build a particular school and anyone who's ever done this knows it involves sitting in a small cupboard-like room in your local government authority offices with a waist high pile of documentation folders x 3 with 2 or 3 other 'readers' and a 7 hour deadline. That means you each have to read through every page of your 3 piles without speaking to each other and be complete within 7 hours. For most people it's a near impossible task because the mind wanders, it's unbelievably boring, you have others in the room you're not supposed to talk to and the conditions lead to the mind breaking the simple task of reading one word after another until it's done.
Fresh back from another black belt in Japan and I was finished 3 hours early, but so was the guy next to me! We left the room. I looked at him, now interested. How did you do that? I had worked on a project with this guy for months but underneath the pink shirt and breezy persona here was a former operative who had carried out serious service in Ireland and Bosnia and more. It turned out he couldn't make the next project meeting because he was receiving an award for his heroic setting up of the incident room for part of the London bombings when a bomb went off outside an office he was having a meeting in. I can't do the account of his actions justice. Perhaps I will ask him to write it if he hasn't already, but he would probably be too modest.
So there next to me was a leader. I knew he was a leader at work because of his position, but his true leadership qualities lay deep within and as applicable to project managing a school construction project as to instantly responding to a bomb in the street, barricading the front of the building and setting up an incident room outside appointing the company secretaries (the only ones ensured to have first aid certificates) to assist him. I was told those women did that, following his instruction, without flinching.
You see a lot of this in the private sector. Under the sharp suits and colourful ties people who have gone beyond the normal limitations of what is expected from them to be able to offer more. Those are the ones who naturally take positions of leading others because they can do it without personal agenda. They're doing it not because they are trying to do it, they're doing it because simply they can.
Unfortunately those types of people don't often become available in the public sector arena of candidacy. Not to sweep too broad a brush across our politics today but the heckling of other parties and slamming of tactics diverts from the true integrity needed for a position in which other people rely on you to do something they can't do or won't.
At the end of the day a true "leader" is another human being who ideally can brilliantly do what some of the others can't and therefore paves the way in front, inspiring and looking after those they 'are', or they 'feel', responsible for.
For more information on leadership and training opportunities visit www.fiveringstraining.com
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