The Three Fundamentals of a Personal Leadership Mindset

Session Leader: Ray Bernard

Session Summary: 2.5 minutes

About Leadership

A mindset is a way of thinking about things. A leadership mindset is a way of thinking about leadership. Let’s get started.

As internationally renowned business guru Peter Drucker famously explained:

  • Leadership is about doing the right things.
  • Management is about doing things right.

In the leadership and management training provided by most organizations, leadership and management are treated as separate realms. The truth is that all managers must lead, and all leaders must manage.

How do you lead when you are not in the upper echelon of the company? Not by using the traditional position and authority based leadership practices.

John C. Maxwell explains it best: “Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” Maxwell asserts that 99% of all leadership occurs not at the TOP but in the MIDDLE of the organization. So that means you can start leading (or lead more) right from where you are NOW in the organization.

“Leaders become great”, Maxwell says, “not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others.” This is personal leadership, and it requires a new type of mindset that works in the situations where security practitioners find themselves.

The reason we are talking about your personal leadership mindset is summed up by these three quotations from Maxwell:

  • The only one you should compare yourself to is you. Your mission is to become better today than you were yesterday.
  • Your life today is a result of your thinking yesterday. Your life tomorrow will be determined by what you think today.
  • Successful people don’t have any fewer problems than unsuccessful people; they just have a different mindset in dealing with them.

This session provides you with a personal leadership mindset framework that you can use to start updating your leadership thinking. It works in a way that takes advantage of your existing knowledge, skills, and experience and facilitates your continuous growth as a leader and manager at a pace that is comfortable, effective and fits your current situation.

Detailed Session Description: 8 minutes

What’s the Big Deal About Leadership?

Over the past 20 years the security profession has advanced from asset protection based on “guards, gates and guns”, to a broader business-based approach referred to as enterprise security risk management. As part of that transition, many companies now include security leaders in their company leadership training.

However, that corporate leadership training typically focuses on traditional leadership principles for the highest executive positions, and traditional management principles for mid-level positions in the company. While beneficial to corporate security practitioners, that training falls short of what is appropriate for practitioners, for two reasons.

First, the leadership focus for functional area leaders is mostly within their functional area. However, security leaders have a wider sphere of organizational knowledge and responsibility that goes beyond the visible aspects of security operations. That broader knowledge provides them with unique insights and leadership opportunities that can be of tremendous value to the business. Unfortunately, no one outside of security understands this.

Furthermore, very few security practitioners understand the extent to which their existing knowledge and skills can be applied beyond the narrow focus of traditional physical security risk, and the value they can provide to their organization by doing so.

Second, all leaders and managers, no matter what their position is in their organization, need to both lead and manage. And they must move beyond traditional business practices to lead and manage using modern principles that are workable in today’s evolving organizations.

Leading vs. Managing

As internationally renowned business guru Peter Drucker famously explained:

  • Leadership is about doing the right things.
  • Management is about doing things right.

It’s not a matter of “either or.” Both are required. You have to lead and manage. When you achieve the right balance between leading and managing, it becomes easier to do both, and the business results of doing both are beyond previous possibilities.

This requires security practitioners to build a personal leadership mindset that facilitates excellence in both leading and managing.

WHAT EXACTLY IS A PERSONAL LEADERSHIP MINDSET?

To understand what a personal leadership mindset is, we need to define three terms: leadership, personal leadership, and mindset.

LEADERSHIP

John C. Maxwell explains it best: “Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” Maxwell asserts that 99% of all leadership occurs not at the TOP but from the MIDDLE of the organization. So that means we’re talking about you leading right from where you are NOW in the organization.

PERSONAL LEADERSHIP

Personal leadership is about leading (or leading more) right from where you are, regardless of title or position or longevity in the organization. “Leaders become great”, Maxwell says, “not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others.”

Today, especially, companies need this type of leadership. Regardless of your position as a security practitioner, practicing the principles of personal leadership will advance both you and your organization. It is much easier than you probably think, and much more rewarding than you can imagine, to make personal leadership principles a part of your security mindset.

MINDSET

The reason we are talking about your personal leadership mindset is summed up by these three quotations from Maxwell:

  • The only one you should compare yourself to is you. Your mission is to become better today than you were yesterday.
  • Your life today is a result of your thinking yesterday. Your life tomorrow will be determined by what you think today.
  • Successful people don’t have any fewer problems than unsuccessful people; they just have a different mindset in dealing with them.

A mindset is a person’s collection of thoughts, perspectives, opinions, beliefs, attitudes, emotions, experiences and conclusions about life and living that influence, determine, or form the basis for future thoughts, attitudes, emotions and actions. As we go about living – most of the time without thinking much about it – we rely on the thoughts, perspectives, opinions, attitudes, emotions, experiences and conclusions contained in our mindsets when dealing with the situations we find ourselves in.

Often, we talk about a part of our overall mindset and label it as such, for example, a “teaching mindset”, a “parenting mindset” or a “leadership mindset.”

Why It’s Been Hard to Build an Effective Leadership Mindset

There are over 15,000 books in circulation on the subject of leadership. There is universal agreement that leadership is important and that an organization’s success depends on the capabilities of its leadership.

Yet despite the proliferation of leadership models and the millions of adherents to them, the majority of organizations struggle to obtain the leadership results and outcomes that they desire. Why?

Some leadership researchers have concluded that popular leadership models are insufficient to get the desired results because they are incomplete. Although many people have benefited from them, many more intelligent and experienced people applying them are not replicating the successes of the leaders that the models are based on. If we build our leadership mindsets on flawed (i.e., incomplete) leadership models, then our thoughts and actions in trying to lead will be flawed as well.

If, as Maxwell asserts, leaders become great not because of positions of authority or power, but because of their ability to empower others – then what underlies that empowerment? What is missing from today’s leadership models that if understood and applied, would enable many more people to be highly successful leaders and managers?

Three Fundamental Human Capabilities

Recent research has revealed that there are three fundamental human capabilities that underlie all leadership and management successes, including the ability to empower others. All human beings possess them. They form a natural part of our thinking and acting to which we pay little or no attention. It is the fact that we use them without being fully aware of doing so that has kept us from using them to the full extent of their power.

It is interesting that in 20 over years of performing facility security risk assessments, the most common complaints heard about an organization’s senior management stem from their failure to apply these three fundamental human capabilities.

Attendees take note: This session provides you with a personal leadership mindset framework that takes maximum advantage of your own existing knowledge, skills and experience and facilitates your comfortable continuous growth as a leader and manager.