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Taking the Road Less Travelled. 

Reflections on building the human edge, the personal edge, the leadership edge...the prosperity edge by taking the higher road

By Irene Rivka Becker, Chief Success Officer, Just Coach It, www.justcoachit.com

A dear friend, asked me to write this week about values driven leadership.  And, the more I thought about this topic, the more I realized that we do not simply need values driven business leaders, we need to become individual leaders in our own right by embracing the values that we cherish.  Values that can help us feel better, live better, lead better and succeed better…one person, one organization, one purposeful step at a time. 

Where do we start?  We start right here, right now.  Impossible?  Think again.  As we stand on a glass cliff of either the greatest renaissance of human values, passion, power and potential that we have ever known, or decline and decent into the abyss of chaos, aggression and destruction...  

It is your ability, my ability, our ability to cleave to the universal values, express humanity and moral courage, be kind to a stranger or reach out and help a colleague in need that will determine being a victim of circumstance OR our ability to USE the circumstances we face to live our values and express our true purpose and potential. 

It is this ability to take the road less travelled by inspiring engaging and leading our best self, that could change our lives, the lives of others, the engagement, empowerment and loyalty we need to build better organizations...and our world, in a profound and transformational way. 

I believe that it is a time for each one us has to find a new balance between independence and interdependence so that we can become our own leader of the values that we cherish deep inside, of the values that we know must be realized for ourselves, for our children and for our fellow human beings. 

And, in so doing, we will help encourage and engage a new paradigm of values driven business and personal leadership that is starting to grow. A paradigm that is not simply based on the short term gain and long term pain of focusing only on shareholder value; but, on building the value that we have the knowledge, technology and potential to create in the lives of shareholders, stakeholders, customers, employees…in the lives of everyone from the top to the bottom of the economic and demographic food chain to the bottom. 

Are there enough men and women who are ready to embrace their values, and realize their true purpose and potential?  Will they be able to help usher in a new age, a better age of peace, prosperity and goodwill?  Will they have the moral courage to resist the blight of need, greed and ego that has felled every great fiefdom, empire and corporation since the dawn of time? 

The race is on, and the ability to run the marathon depends on each man and woman having the courage to make a personal commitment to finding a new way to live better, lead better, communicate better and succeed better by encouraging, inspiring and engage their values, purpose and potential in their lives, in their careers and in the world that we all hold dear. 

Powerful as the lure of command, control and acquire is, enticing as the next purchase looks, it is our ability to recognize that what a great man once said, “man cannot live by bread alone” was meant to inspire us to remember that no matter who we are, no matter what our race, creed, color, social or economic status we all want the same thing from the moment we take our first breath to the timing of our last.  LOVE.  

Whether you are sweeping the warehouse floor, or chairman of the board of a major corporation true love can only be found in building a good life that allows you to express your potential, live in alignment with your values and realize the contribution that you are able to make to those you love, those you lead and those serve. 

Simple?  Yes.  Difficult?  Very.  Illusive?  Yes.  Because, in a world of increasing complexity it is the simple things that often elude us. It is time to get very simple and very clear with the bigger picture, with our truth.  

Love is not only the killer app (to borrow from the title of a best selling business book); it is the only app that can help us build the bridge between a life of quiet desperation of a life well lived. 

And, while there is an innate human tendency to minimize our true power (underachieve) or to relentlessly try to control more and acquire more (overachieve) or stay in a place of stasis (get frustrated and stressed with our lives or careers)...they are all are masks that we wear to cover up a feeling that we are not loved enough, a feeling that we are powerless to achieve what we truly need.   

Love is the truth,  universal values are the motor, and human passion, purpose and potential are the engine that can drive us to an evolution of self, and of others that will take us into the age of innovation - an age of extraordinary possibilities; or push us into an abyss of  fear, despair, destruction, aggression and chaos. 

© 2004-2008 Just Coach It