-
Leadership by Soul
Regular reflections for leaders who want to make a lasting difference.
Get updates
"Jonathan nimbly blends philosophical insight with practical solutions." -
rich content
"He built his talk to such a powerful crescendo, with such quiet and graceful ease"
Jonathan's Speaking -
remarkable story
"Not many great speakers on leadership can draw on their experiences living in the centers of conflict in Africa and growing up in tribal New Guinea. The audience was mesmerized ... and fundamentally changed by the experience."
The Story
What do you care about most?
What are you doing about it?
Leadership begins with vision. Vision arises out of the collision between what you know matters most, and what’s not right with the world around you — whether what’s not right is structural, technical, methodological, procedural or ethical.
Leadership ends with legacy. Between vision and legacy is unrelenting action — acting on your vision, again and again, day after day, with resolute focus, with dogged determination, relentlessly, for years. All great achievements — the building of value-creating companies, the abolition of the slave trade, the ending of Apartheid — were the result of what the philosopher Nietzsche called “a long obedience in the same direction”.
Action that builds legacy is shaped by purpose, discipline and trust. What drives it is soul — that clear-eyed understanding of what the leader knows is utterly important, and what he or she is uniquely qualified to do about it.
Leadership by Soul™ is where I explore, with you — through blogging, videos and public speaking — how we can make the difference that lasts.
Thank you for coming here. Welcome to the journey!
The Disciplined Leader
It is a tiresome and common fact of our world that the noble-minded are plenty, but few of them act in accordance with their sentiments. Thought-leadership does not a leader make. It is your action that will ultimately define your leadership. But not any action: busyness does not a leader make. Discipline distinguishes the action of a leader from the action of a follower.
The result of discipline in leadership is that an organization’s resources have been stewarded well, when they could have been squandered or abused and exploited; that its efforts issue in excellent and superior products or services; and that it has endured where others failed — failed to learn, failed to adapt and, most especially, failed to be faithful to who it is and what it truly has to offer.
The Quiet Leader
Issue 5.10 | July 2019 In this Special Edition: Remembering John D Wilson. He never saw himself as a leader, [ … ]
Read MoreHow (Not) to Lead Big Change
Issue 5.9 | January 2018 In this Article: to transform whole social systems, we need not only passion and innovation, [ … ]
Read MoreBig Boss: How (Not) to Use Your Power
Issue 5.8 | June 2017 In this Article: there are two basic kinds of power in organisations, and each [ … ]
Read More