I’m married to a civil engineer. Both her parents and her older brother are also engineers–so I get to rub elbows with a house-full of really smart people occasionally. My partner and I generally share our feelings and ideas about pretty much everything. A few days ago I was thinking about my personal leadership model, and how to “build” it into a structure. I’ve developed that model over several years, and decided that the “structure” wasn’t linked to the ideas in my model like I wanted it to be. I asked her, point-blank, what’s the strongest structure, in terms of physical strength, is it a pyramid? She gave me that “you are so sweet and cute when you think outside your professional realm of knowlege” smile, then sketched out a structure, and told me, “here, this is a Tetrahedron.”
It
was perfect. Why? Because I could do exactly what I wanted to do! I can
represent both dimensions of leadership: internal and external. To top
it off, borrowing terms from one of my favorite leaders on social media,
Lolly Daskal,
it can allow a “heart-based” visual representation of “leading from
within.” I think a Tetrahedron is shaped similarly to the human heart,
so yeah, the visual works for me.
Then
I slept on the idea for a night. Well, I tried to sleep. I kept
sketching it out in my head and trying to fit the key concepts of
leadership into the structure (in my dreams–yeah, I do that too).
Finally, I had to get up and write/draw. I had it figured out!
I decided to write a series of blog posts and define each of the concepts which “build” my internal leadership model, and then my external organizational leadership model. I need something to get me back into writing, and I thought committing to a multi-part blog would probably do that. Like all ideas, nearly all of my ideas, I find that even when I think it is original, it isn’t entirely. Just before I planned to write the first post, I searched for domains that had tetrahedrons and leadership in combination–most were available. I searched for “Tetrahedral Leadership” and guess what. Somebody thought of this nearly 10 years ago. So, here, I give that person credit, though I’m quite sure I never ran across that before. Mr Chris Newham, I think you had/have a great idea, and I’m gonna’ run with it!
For my model, I chose the Tetrahedral-Prism, because it allows me to detail the “heart-based” leadership that I believe is so crucial for my effectiveness, and visually represent how “leading from within” gives strength and structure to the tenants of organizational leadership that I’ve found to be the most critical.
Starting tomorrow, I’ll write the first post of my model. I’ll begin outward and work inward. I’ll begin with the concept that I find to be most critical to organizational health and development. And what is that concept? Oh, okay, here is a teaser: Delegation = Trust. The first post will be about delegation. Until tomorrow…