Return to Table of Contents

Creating Effective Leaders

Covey’s original seven and additional eighth habit act as a compass, because they give us the necessary ingredients for producing effective and inspirational leaders. His habits include:

Being proactive, taking responsibility, and making choices based on universal principles.
Beginning with the end in mind and creating a vision for life that inspires and ennobles.
Putting first things first, and organizing one’s priorities around one’s vision.
Thinking win-win and working from a heart that seeks cooperation rather than competition.
Seeking first to understand, to listen deeply and hear the message of others, be vulnerable to their message, before trying to have others understand oneself.
Synergizing and finding ways to blend opposing visions into a larger and even more ennobling vision.
Sharpening the saw by seeking constant renewal in all of the important life areas in order to increase one’s capacity for effectiveness.
Finding one’s Voice and inspiring others to find their Voice. Voice is the symbol for the unique potential or gift that the individual brings to the world. Voice could also be seen as one’s ‘calling’ (Covey, 2004).

The Principles of Spiritual Leadership

Keepin (2002) gives us a brilliant and insightful look at his twelve core principles of spiritual leadership.

The motivation that underlies our activism for social change must be transformed from anger and despair to compassion and love. We seek to work for love instead of against evil.
We must be detached from the outcome of our acts. We do not let success or failure throw us off from working with an attitude of support for the intrinsic value of our efforts.
Our integrity provides protection from negative circumstances.
We must have integrity in both the means of how we work as well as the ends that are produced. You cannot achieve noble goals using ignoble means.
We must refrain from demonizing our adversaries. We must be open and willing to listen to opposing points of view. This keeps us from becoming arrogant.
We must love our enemies or at least have compassion for them. We are all interconnected.
Our work is for the world and we serve on behalf of others rather than for personal gain. We give selfless service.
On the other hand, selfless service is a myth, because in serving others, we are also served. In giving, we receive. Keeping this perspective helps to keep us from feeling like martyrs.
We must not insulate ourselves from the pain of the world. We must allow our hearts to be broken. In pain, we become vehicles for transformation and healing.
What we focus on, we become. If we focus on struggle, we become struggle. If we focus on love, we become love.
We must rely on faith and cultivate a deep trust in the unknown, allowing divine forces to work through us. Sometimes we must follow our hearts and trust without knowing the precise agenda or the ultimate consequences of our acts.
Finally, love creates the form. If we imagine with our hearts and work from a place of yearning as well as thinking, then we bring the fullness of our humanity to our leadership.

Keepin, (2002) ends with a profound metaphor, that we are called to “serve as hospice workers to a dying culture, and to serve as midwives to an emerging culture.” We must open our hearts and remain present with things ‘as they are’ while we experiment with new visions and forms for the future. We need to balance head and heart – intelligence and compassion.

Spiritual Leadership is not so much a set of rules and regulations, but rather, it is a state of consciousness. This consciousness supports empowerment of self and others, looking within for the highest vision, being strong and wise enough to open oneself to vulnerability, and getting out of the way so that the process can unfold. It demands inner strength and trust in oneself, as well as a high level of wisdom and insight. It requires the individual to be secure enough within herself to allow others to collaborate in the process. Indeed, the highest form of leadership is to help others lead themselves. In essence, this is the role of the Spiritual Counselor. The Counselor works to empower others so that they can assume the role of Personal Leader in their own lives.