An arsenal of eight attitudes

Is your attitude leadership ready? I ran across this article and really enjoyed it. I thought that you might as well. -ts---------------------------------------------------------------- For the generalist leaders, the steepest part of the learning curve is not skills, but attitudes. Those of us who presume to take the lead in a democracy, where nobody is even supposed to be in charge, need an arsenal of eight attitudes. Try these pieces of litmus paper to yourself.

• See if your experience tells you what my experience has taught me about the attitudes that I have found indispensable to the management of complexity: a lively intellectual curiosity, an interest in everything- because everything really is related to everything else, and therefore to what you are doing, whatever it is

• a genuine interest in what other people think and why they think that way which means that you have to be at peace with yourself to start

• a feeling of special responsibility for envisioning a future that is different from a straight-line projection of the present

• an attitude that risks are not to be avoided but to be taken

• the feeling that crises are normal, tensions can be promising, and complexity is fun

• the realization that paranoia and self-pity are reserved for people who do not want to take the lead

• the quality of unwarranted optimism- the conviction that there must be some more upbeat outcome that would result from adding together all available expert advice

• a sense of personal responsibility for the general outcome of your efforts.

Harlen Cleveland (then) Dean of the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs University of Minnesota - excerpted from The Minneapolis Star Tribune. June 30, 1987. ----------------------------------------------------------------