What Is Audacious Leadership with Dan Leahy – Episode 10

“If you are not willing and able to lead wholeheartedly, get the hell out of the way so that somebody who is can.”

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Episode Summary

My guest for this conversation is Dan Leahy. Dan is an educator with over 30 years of teaching and consulting experience with a special focus on the emergent capacities of complex adaptive systems.

Dan was the president of LIOS (Leadership Institute Of Seattle) for more than a decade and he is currently the Director of the Seattle campus of Saybrook University where he provides strategic and operational leadership for the campus.

In this conversation with Dan, we explore his calling and his journey with LIOS, why in order to change the world you must begin by changing the conversation, and that moment when a student’s eyes light up with a clarity about his or her sense of purpose.

Essential Learning Points:

• Codify the patterns of emergent growth: find the global in the local, identify the universal inside the personal.
• To change the world, change the conversation. If you are unhappy with the situation, work to reframe it.
• What is solution focused therapy?
• How did Dan find his calling of working with people?
• “The moment when the student eyes light up with a clarity about his sense of purpose felt like connecting with the heart and soul of the work.”
• “Delivering content became the opportunity to discover the learning in the moment in the room.”
• “If you are not willing and able to lead this organization whole heartedly, get the hell out of the way so that somebody who is can.”
• Leadership is finding the courage to take stance and voice your conviction.
• As a leader, can I confront the issue of the heart? Am I wholehearted?
• Management helps to maintain the integrity of the DNA of the system and the leadership works to connect to and engage with the larger environment, where the evolution of the system can be found.
• What kind of leadership is needed now? What is audacious leadership?
• Tapping into the potential to evolve is audacious.
• What is fiberglass syndrome in complex systems?
• Courageous collaboration requires that the individuals involved are courageous.
• Generative conversations are intentional conversations.

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