The Institute for Transformational Leadership has established a set of Leadership Principles as a guide for emerging and current leaders. Our set of principles act as our “credo” for teaching, examining, and living leadership. Of course, our principles are closely tied to the reality in which leaders must lead, so it’s first important to understand context.

The Context of Leading in Today’s World

1. The complexities and challenges of today’s world can no longer be solved by “command and control” leadership, which is giving way to more collaborative, consultative, and shared models of leadership.
2. Today’s leaders must possess the ability to coach and mentor effectively, especially with the transition from the Baby Boomer generation to the Millennials.
3. The nature of work is changing as professional and personal lives blend because of changing technology, work expectations, and environments.
4. Diversity has become a strategic imperative since today’s challenges require diverse perspectives and solutions – not only diversity of ethnicity, race, and religion – but also of gender, age, and individual thought.
5. Long-term strategic planning is no longer effective. Leaders must cultivate an organizational culture that embraces flexibility, adaptability, and rigorous scenario planning.
6. Leaders must acquire critical perspective and the ability to reflect continuously, which translates to understanding the past but also taking a long-term view of the impact of their decisions.

Our Leadership Principles

1. Modern challenges require new approaches to leadership, and developing leaders in the 21st century context requires attention to all faculties.
2. Transformations are not the result of charismatic leadership, but are the result of discipline and extremely hard work.
3. We explore and develop transformational models of leadership and how to think about leadership from a transformational perspective.
4. Transformational change requires conscious leadership: the transformation begins within.
5. Transformational leadership is an interactive process, and not the work of one great leader.
6. Leadership development must focus on expanding the capacity to lead effectively, rather than simply teaching skills.
7. Transformational leadership draws on three energies: the energy of a big dream, the energy of “inside-outside”, and the energy of working at every level.
8. Transformational leadership seeks to motivate followers by transforming their conceptions of self and their private goals to coincide with the larger purposes of the group.
9. We support the development of the growth mindset in leaders.
10. Individuals and groups have the power to shape history but must work with interdependencies.
11. Today’s leaders must understand how to develop, empower, and mobilize networks. Networks allow the emergence of movements. Movements often lead to social, cultural, and systemic change.
12. Transformational leadership development is multi-disciplinary and draws on theory and science from psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, sociology, and organization development. Transformational leadership development combines theory and practice in a highly experiential, reflective, and feedback-rich learning process.

Learn more about the core capacities of transformational leaders >>