The phenomenon of on-going personal changes especially applies to leadership. Behaviors and practices once considered core to our leadership shift or fall away when we no longer find them effective or desirable.

Given their long experience in leading, senior sages are readily able to identify the qualities they most and least admire in other leaders.

In this essay, emerging sage leaders reflect on the qualities they most admire in other leaders. They also identify what they least admire in other leaders and what the implications are for leadership when the admired qualities are missing.

By Gary Quehl and William Bergquist [For the complete report on this project see The Sages Among Us: Harnessing the Power of Civic Engagement, available as a link through the Center for Nonprofit Leadership in Nevada County, California.] In the four essays provided in this seventh issue of Sage we continue the exploration (that we began in Issue Three, Four, …

You have been identified by friends and colleagues as one of our community’s 50 top senior sage leaders.

You have been identified by friends and colleagues as one of our community’s 50 top emerging sage leaders.

Senior sage leaders observe that quick, artificial fixes won’t work. Their reality is that engaging more senior civically must involve a one-on-one approach.

Many emerging sage leaders believe that civic engagement is not for everyone, that it makes little sense to formulate a strategy to promote it for larger numbers of community members if they aren’t already inclined to it.

The strengths that most senior sages attribute to themselves are a combination of Jim Collins’ Level 4 and Level 5 Leadership and Robert Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership.

The emerging sages describe and explain their own leadership strengths and capabilities.