Agile leadership

This leadership seminar was delivered for Accenture in Bonifacio Global City (BGC) for their Top ACT event. It was the first time they were doing an event such as this for their newly launched mentorship program so delivering the Agile Leadership talk for them was a very big deal for me. I mixed a little bit of tech geekiness in the deck so the sub-title is 'Decoding Leadership in Today's World'. I also tackled why leadership is important and why it's difficult at the same time. I also noted that leadership is more difficult nowadays because influencing people has become more elusive. Technology has increased our awareness and so it has also increased our skepticism. We don't put our faith in someone or something as easily as before. Influence is earned. Which means leadership is earned. And how you earn leadership stems from who you are and how authoritative you are in what you do and say. Earning influence requires a ton of hard work, intentional practice, research and diplomacy. These things do not come often to a lot of people. There are a few gems of an individual that has these and I implore people to work towards having these characteristics as it will serve them in becoming the best leaders they can be. I also talk about passion and how it is grossly misunderstood by the world at large. It does take passion to be a leader but it is the difficult side of passion that enables this. The side that takes a lot of sacrifice and (I daresay) martyrdom. Life is not about work and pay. Rather, it is about sharing your faith to others. Give what you have freely to others. How can you share and give to others if they don't want what you have? Because they don't want to be like you? The Bible says in Titus 2:7 "And you yourself must be an example to them by doing good works of every kind. Let everything you do reflect the integrity and seriousness of your teaching." You have to be someone who matters to people. That takes authority which turns to influence. Leadership is impossible without the willingness to suffer for something you truly believe in. The good news is leadership can be agile! Leadership is not a long, hard development that will launch after everything has been "quality-assured." You learn, you practice - and yes you might faith sometimes and experience 'bugs' along the way, but the important thing is to 'just keep shipping.' This talk was also delivered to Fluor Philippines, in Alabang. They are a Fortune 500 company with more than 56,000 employees worldwide. They also have offices in Manila and Cebu with a combined headcount of almost 3,000 employees. They got me to talk about leadership for their Mentoring program. It was a very exciting time for them and I, in turn, was thrilled for the opportunity to speak about leadership in their event.Read less