How lined up are you as a leader?

Few people have inspired me to the point where I’ve done something significantly different from what I was going to do; where I have exerted myself to help bring someone else’s vision into reality. Maybe you’ve seen many more, or perhaps you’re still looking for a first. While I don’t worship these various characters (making heroes out of our leaders doesn’t help them or the followers much, from what I’ve seen) there is something different about them. The field of leadership development is not short of explanations, but I find few of them truly useful.

I experience each of the above people differently of course, but they share some attributes. In particular, they all embody a strong alignment between their action and words, creating a sense of possibility, conviction and focus. The practice of embodied leadership brings ideas like alignment into a solid, useful place where I can practice doing something different. But what is embodied leadership? Well, this is tricky, because a head job it is not, so describing it doesn’t take us far. A story might help though.