Rob Linn’s Favorite Leadership Principles

1 – Awareness:

• Maintain enough quiet, open-minded observation and reflection to see both what is happening and how it is happening

  • This provides a keen sense of what to do and when to do it

  •  Learn to see beginnings when it is easy to influence with minimal force

  • Be aware of nearing the end of a process and do not get anxious to resolve it before its natural time

• Caution:  Prejudiced leaders see only what fits their prejudices

• Awareness supersedes techniques

2 - Allow Processes to Unfold:

• Facilitate rather than push 

•  Allow others to find their answers; even if you already see them

• Be patient.  Allow time for people and events to unfold on their own

• Caution: any overly-determined behavior produces its opposite

 3 - Honesty/Transparency:

• Generously and kindly, communicate all that is necessary both on the pleasant and the unpleasant; one is as important as the other

• Rather than punish, point out the natural consequences of certain actions

4 - Selflessness:

• Place the well-being of all before personal well-being

• Distribute credit to others

5 - Clarify Your Own Conflicts:

• Understand and be alert to your fears and your unconscious responses to them.  

• Shift to your authentic strengths under pressure in real time

  •  This enables you to clarify the conflicts of others

  • This gives you a grounded centeredness

  • “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.  Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”

6 - Take Time for Reflection:

• Allow regular time for silent reflection

• Reflect on what has happened, how it happened, how to facilitate progress

 7 - Disconnect From Praise and Criticism:

• Do your work and then step back and allow it to have its impact

• Caring too much about either praise or criticism causes anxiety and dependence which distorts your awareness and sense of what life is calling for

 8 - Stay in the Present:

·      Pay attention to what is happening now and how to positively influence those circumstances.  That is how to create a better future.

9 - Speak Rarely, Briefly, but Powerfully:

• Say what must be said, fully, and then stop.

• Listen more than talk.

 10 - Sometimes the Warrior, Usually the Healer:

• Be forceful only when necessary

• Use the least amount of force required to reach the outcome

• Mostly look to facilitate

• Be gentle in the face of resistance even to the point of completely stepping back and using no force at all – revert to silent reflection until the right action emerges

 11 - Practice Potent Leadership:

• Most Potent:

o   Conscious, yet spontaneous reactions to what is happening in the here and now

§  Let your only allegiance be to the principle of awareness of what is happening and how those things happen

• Less Potent:

o   Trying to do what is right based on what you think “should” happen

• Least Potent:

o   Manipulating to get a selfish, desired outcome

 12 - Be Open to Whatever Emerges:

• Respond and facilitate without judgement whatever emerges.  Even with people who exhibit selfish, manipulative behavior.  Facilitate their process of development rather than resist their behavior.

• If you respond with resistance it will breed resistance in response precluding the chance for evolution.

• If you are attacked or criticized react in a way that sheds light on the event and facilitate its resolution

• Use the Honesty/Transparency Principle to point out the unhelpful behavior

 13 - Keep Few Rules:

• Rules reduce freedom and responsibility

• Following rules reduces spontaneity and depletes energy

• Every law creates an outlaw

 14 - Offer Opportunities vs. Requiring Obligations:

• Create opportunities for people to grow vs. merely completing tasks

• As much as possible, collaborate with people on the development of their accountabilities