The Case For Leadership Awareness Intelligence

I stumbled on the idea of Leadership Awareness Intelligence (A.I.) about 8 years ago while sitting at a local café. Sitting there for over an hour waiting for my next appointment working on some administrative items when I noticed the sweater I was wearing looked odd. I looked down at the cuffs on my sweater and saw that three threads were dangling from the outside of the sweater (INDICATOR). Because of this I began following the threads up the sleeve and noticed that the seam of the sweater was also exposed. As I made my way up the seam I finally discovered that the tag on my sweater was exposed and that I was wearing my sweater inside-out (EFFECT). As a result I discreetly made the walk of shame to restroom, as embarrassing as this was, to turn the sweater outside-in, or right-side-out (RESOLVE). It was this sweater that led me to discover what I call Leadership Awareness Intelligence.

As I reflected on this process (INDICATOR – EFFECT – RESOLVE), I began to think about the dynamics of this situation and many of the leadership situations I was facing with individual staff, teams, and organizations I was working with. The goal is to equip leaders to behave in ways that will cause them to excel their in both their personal and organizational leadership with self-imposed leadership tactics that get them to perform beyond their current potential. Repeating this process effectively helps us to improve self and others at the same time. The better we get at Awareness Intelligence the better we become at self-improvement and improving others.