Claimed, gathered and sent

Kouzes and Posner in The Leadership Challenge cite "finding your voice" (Kouzes & Posner, 2002, p. 44) as essential to being congruent and credible in leadership. This is necessary to "model the way,"(Kouzes & Posner, p. 13) one of the "Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership"(Kouzes & Posner, p. 13). They write, "There's the message we want to deliver, and then there's the expression of that message. It's about having a voice and about giving voice" (Kouzes & Posner, p. 44). To find our voices, we must clarify our values and express ourselves. Without fully comprehending "the values, beliefs, and assumptions that drive [us]" (Kouzes & Posner, p. 44), we cannot be credible leaders. These are concepts we have thought about and discussed a lot in the classes Creating Shared Vision and Personal Leadership for Change. So, when I saw the post Finding Your Voice on Gifted for Leadership , my curiosity was piqued...

The first step to promoting vision is to align personal values. According to Leading Coherently, “…leadership performance was markedly aligned to values and purpose, both in character and behavior” (Stanford-Blair & Dickman, 2005, p. 53). One can only lead out of who he or she is. Hesselbein states, “…leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do it … in the end we know that it is the quality and character of the leader that determines performance and results” (Levesque, 2003). Step two is listening to your followers. “To attract people from divergent backgrounds and interests, you must discover what aspirations, goals, needs, and dreams they have in common” (Kouzes & Posner, 2002, p. 161). This can be accomplished in any number of ways: eating lunch with employees, being more visible, and “hanging out” (Kouzes & Posner, p. 168). Step three is aligning visions which is “…the process of bringing individual visions into agreement with each other so they support and...