Senior Sage Leaders Reflect on Their Own Leadership

I am a good and thorough planner. My approach is to think things through and focus on results. I am also good at getting people to engage in things they might not want to do. I accomplish this by stressing our mission and purpose. I also tend to identify the results or outcomes from a meeting well before it takes place.

Politics don’t enter into anything with me. I think my strengths are based in organizational style, personal relationships, and being able to take a group of people and manage the process. And being able to set direction and take initiative, solve problems, and mitigate issues.

People skills. To have a successful action orientation requires that senior sages possess a substantial tool kit of skills in working with others. This includes such qualities as being open and approachable, being able to build relationships, making judgments about how to draw-out potential in others, active listening, teamwork, willingness to give credit where it is due, dealing well with ambiguity, and possessing discipline and patience:

The strengths and capabilities that worked well for me in business were different than those in my community service and nonprofit work now. In the business world I was very action-oriented. I drove people and held them accountable for getting results. Those who didn’t succeed and go up the ladder were destined to a flat career. The principal attribute that has worked well for me in the nonprofit world is learning to be a good listener. I try to find out people’s strengths and then tap into them. And I’m probably much more diplomatic than I was in my corporate days. Another skill I have acquired is communicating well with groups of people and being succinct in dealing with problems without necessarily promoting my part of the agenda. The most important thing I have learned is patience, although I am still more prone to action than not.

I have a perspective on change and reform where there is a combination of problems and a willingness to act on them. I have a strong sense of social organization and networking. When moved, I am willing to take on big projects and gather people to work on them until they are completed. I have learned the value of risk-taking.