The Three Levels of Leadership – Scouller Leadership Blog James Scouller | The Three Levels of Leadership - Scouller Leadership Blog
Deal with Life Compass in Egypt
The Scouller Partnership has agreed a licensing deal with Life Compass, based in Cairo, Egypt, starting January 2022. They are now our exclusive training partner for eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Life Compass will design and deliver training experiences for ME&NA leaders based on the principles of James’s book, The Three Levels of Leadership.
Life Compass has sole rights in the region to market their training experiences under the Scouller Partnership brand name. We’re giving Life Compass exclusive help in their ME&NA region by passing on our knowhow in applying the book’s ideas, techniques, tools and processes. James will also appear at some of Life Compass’s training events.
The author is James Scouller, an executive coach. The second edition of his book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published in September 2016. You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com. If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews. If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE. You can read more about his executive coaching services at The Scouller Partnership’s website.
Two Tools for 4D Leadership
This article proposes a breakthrough leadership idea. An idea whose time has come. An idea that makes it easier for leaders to lead. An idea that also makes it easier for companies to build the atmosphere they want. Not only that, it explains how you can apply this idea using two new tools.
But let’s start at the beginning…
I’ve learned that experienced executives find it difficult – sometimes impossible – to define leadership in a way that helps them perform their jobs as leaders. Yes, when pressed, they can define it in an intellectual way. But when I ask, “How much does that definition guide the way you lead and where you place your attention week to week?”, they say it doesn’t. They don’t have a practical useful definition of leadership. So what? It makes it harder for them to lead.
But there’s something lurking in the background that makes it harder still. I find that although leaders come up reasonable definitions of leadership, that’s not what guides their behaviour and decisions when they’re leading.
People’s Hidden Mental Model of Leadership
What’s guiding their behaviour? Well as I explain in this video in my 10-part series on my YouTube channel, the Leadership Mastery Suite, it’s usually a belief that runs like this: Continue reading →
The Leaders Growth Curve
The Leaders Growth Curve is a graphic model I use in coaching. Like all models, it’s a simplified depiction of a more complex reality, but it tells an important story. It maps nearly all leaders on to seven points on the curve and shows how most find themselves stuck on what I call the “leaders plateau”.
I use the Leaders Growth Curve with clients in two ways. First, to help them figure out where they stand in their growth as leaders. Second, to help them decide what position they want to reach.
Research
What did I base the Leaders Growth Curve on? I used five sources of data:
- Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” research in the late 1990s.
- The people I met during my 28 years in industry before becoming an executive coach.
- Clients I’ve worked with in my 16 years (5000+ hours) as a professional coach to leaders.
- The Center for Creative Leadership’s research into why successful executives derail.
- Gallup’s research into the connection between engagement and business results.
The Four Dimensions of Leadership: New Video Series
When I consider all my ideas, models, tools and processes, I can classify them into three learning blocks. I call them Mental Model Mastery, Self-Mastery and Know-How Mastery.
This post focuses on the first learning block – Mental Model Mastery – and a new 10-part video series I’ve just released on my YouTube channel, The Leadership Mastery Suite. Continue reading →
Measuring the Results of Executive Coaching
I posted an article on LinkedIn three days ago that’s getting a fair bit of attention. It’s titled, “Executive Coaching That Makes a Difference”.
It shows how I measure the before-and-after results of my coaching with leaders, using ideas and tools from The Three Levels of Leadership. I introduce what I call the Dual Perspectives analysis with a real-life example using two graphs.
I thought it might interest readers of this blog. So here’s a link to the article: Executive Coaching That Makes a Difference.
Why Don’t We Get The Political Leaders We Need?
This is a new version of a blog article I wrote in May 2011 that struck a chord judging by the comments I received. I felt an update was timely with what’s happened politically this year in the UK and USA.
I’ve met people who feel our political leaders aren’t leading us anywhere. They suspect that while maybe they’re solving short-term problems, there’s no sense of destination … that the same old issues keep recurring. Like boom and bust. Or fighting wars we don’t support. Or house prices outstripping earnings so fast that even people with jobs are being turfed out by landlords when they can’t afford the rent. Or politicians making silly or insincere pre-election promises and quietly binning them when they take office.
Others believe there is a sense of direction, but don’t like what they’re seeing. I suspect people who didn’t vote for Brexit or President-elect Trump feel that way.
How are those who feel there’s no direction … or don’t like the direction they’re seeing … reacting emotionally?
From what I’ve seen their response ranges from anger to apathy. Apathy often accompanies feelings of impotence and resignation; the sense that life won’t ever improve.
But there’s another factor at work. A factor that’s making the atmosphere even more unpredictable: people’s worldwide distrust of political leaders. Continue reading →
The New Second Edition Has Just Been Released
A letter from James Scouller
Hi,
My guide to growing yourself as a leader just got better. An expanded second edition of The Three Levels of Leadership with new content, ideas and models has just been released and I thought you’d want to know.
It’s just out in the UK (you’ll find it on UK Amazon here). It’s also listed on US Amazon here, but isn’t yet (as of 12th October) the default choice as I imagine they still have stocks of the old version to sell.
You can distinguish the new book from the old version easily – it has a gold flash on the front cover saying “new enlarged edition”. Continue reading →
How do I get rid of the False Self the fastest way possible?
After The Three Levels of Leadership came out in 2011, readers followed up with questions on leadership, leadership psychology and self-mastery – all of them interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I’m releasing my answers here as they supplement the “Three Levels” material and others may find them useful. Here’s the seventeenth in the series. I’ll post the others over the coming months…
Q16. The question I was asked at a leadership workshop was: How do I get rid of the False Self the fastest way possible?
Answer:
“Consider this, how long have your False Self fears been inside your mind? I realise you won’t have an exact answer, but you can be pretty sure the answer is, “Most of my life.”
Now what’s the average age of the people on this programme? 40 years? So in other words, the chances are that your False Self has taken the best part of 40 years to develop.
So what do you regard as “the fastest way possible”? What is “fast”? Continue reading →
How Do I Stop Others Taking Over as Leader?
After The Three Levels of Leadership came out in 2011, readers followed up with questions on leadership, leadership psychology and self-mastery – all of them interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I’m releasing my answers here as they supplement the “Three Levels” material and others may find them useful. Here’s the sixteenth in the series. I’ll post the others over the coming months…
Q16. The full question I was asked was: If I share leadership, how do I prevent others taking over from me? The questioner posed this during a discussion about shared leadership.
Answer:
“You may want to consider whether your interpretation of “leadership” is getting in the way here.
In my book, The Three Levels of Leadership, I described leadership as a four-dimensional process. More Continue reading →
What Went Wrong at Chelsea (Part 3)
Why did Chelsea football club go from runaway English Premier League champions to relegation candidates within 16 games in 2015?
It was an extraordinary collapse that no one foresaw. In 2014-15, Chelsea won the English championship by eight points having lost just 3 games over a 38-game season. But 16 games into the 2015-16 season Chelsea were only one point above the relegation zone, having already lost 9 games. Experienced commentators said they’d never seen anything like it before in professional football. So what happened? This three-part post explores the possible system story behind the club’s on-field collapse which led to Jose Mourinho’s sacking … and what leaders can learn from it.
On Monday I posted part 1, defining what I mean by a system and a system story. Yesterday, in part 2, I posted the Chelsea story. Today, in the final part we’ll analyse the story to see what leaders can learn from it. Continue reading →
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