Leadership as push or pull?

To push an idea, a person, a team…might be necessary. Yet it is unsustainable in the long term.

The burden of creation and success lives in constant pushing, and in the process removes the intrinsic desire of people to be self-generating towards the future being created.

Pushing as a regular practice has people fall into the lesser elements of their nature. Laziness, lack of accountability and responsibility and the slow steady disintegration into victimhood. 

To pull, to be the exemplar, the model – to create a tension between those who are seeking to move in the same direction as the person leading – this type of leadership demands the leader increase their metaphysical mass, their gravity, inviting those they lead to step into that space between, to evolve, to take ownership, to become active participants and generators.

The hard work for the pull type leader is in being the model. Demonstrating the change everyone is seeking to make. Refusing to get entangled in hubris or arrogance. Allowing vulnerability, transparency and integrity to be the strange attractor.

In Syntropic World we call this pull type leadership Stewardship.

Photo taken November 24th 2015