Foreword

Emotional awareness—becoming aware of who you are and how you respond to those around you, the situations that arise, and the plans that are pending—is a hot topic. With groundbreaking books like Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee and The Heart of the Soul by Gary Zukav and Linda Francis, it appears the human condition is being redefined. Professional and personal emotional acumen are melding, which is not a surprise for those of us who have been teaching the successful character traits of the "authentic leader" for some time. We have been reprogramming, reinventing, and evolving our roles as leaders in a challenging environment for decades. It is this movement towards wholeness that will allow us to maximize our "humanity" both in the business world as "global leaders" as well as in our personal world. Living an integrated personal and professional life has never been more important.

This book is a piece of the ever-growing puzzle in the development of the human condition to serve as global leaders. It is a missing element from most books of its genre in that it promotes a personal awareness of leadership through self-analysis and then provides a means to begin the journey with a step-by-step guide of actions to take to achieve wholeness as a leader. In any development effort, it is critical to consider all the elements of self-development on the journey to emotional awareness or emotional intelligence. In our pursuit of authentic leadership, focusing on the right blend of "self-help" and "self-awareness" is significant to our continued growth and to our sense of personal mastery.

Most fields of development are, ironically, the least developed and the least evolved. Perhaps economic development is one of the best examples. We don't understand even the basics of how a centralized and corrupt regime can peacefully mutate toward a freer, more market-based economy. Political development is even farther behind. Who knows how we move a dictatorship toward democracy? And finally, perhaps the most thwarted, is human development, the evolution toward wholeness, toward integration, toward authenticity, and the restoration of self, which brings us to recognize the magnitude of what we are trying to do through this book. We are convinced that even a small step toward evolution will require a new set of competencies.

Our research since 1997 indicates that global leadership requires a new set of competencies blended with a wholeness of emotional experiences. These include technological savvy, anticipating opportunity, personal mastery, constructive conflict, thinking globally, appreciating diversity, building partnerships, sharing leadership, creating a shared vision, demonstrating integrity, empowering people, leading change, developing people, ensuring customer satisfaction, and maintaining a competitive advantage.

To achieve these competencies requires dedication, practice, and most importantly, a place to begin. This book offers you the opportunity to do just that. It opens the door to starting a self-motivated, self-paced, in-depth view of your domains of leadership based upon a multiyear research study of existing as well as up-and-coming young leaders from around the world.

Learning to experience emotional awareness and building upon our own personal mastery for global leadership is likely to be one of the most difficult and challenging personal commitments any one of us will ever make. Without this talent, our ability to work in a boundaryless, worldwide community will be virtually impossible. True global leadership can come only with the alignment of our own capabilities, our evolutionary brains, our motivations, and our hearts.

Some people can easily combine the application of practice and experience with self-awareness; others need a road map to stay on the journey. This book is one such road map. It supports the path to global leadership in both a national as well as an international environment. It integrates the domains of leadership from our global, multiyear study with the ongoing evolution of the development of emotional awareness required for the success of the human spirit in the environment we knew (or thought we knew) as business today.

—Warren Bennis
July 2002