In this episode, Jonathan guides us through the concept of leadership equating to influence, we uncover the pivotal role of character in determining the quality of our influence. Join us as we explore how character, the indelible mark upon our souls, can be molded and refined, paving the way for positive change in ourselves and the world around us. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment, where we unravel practical strategies to nurture and enhance our character, empowering us to become the leaders of our own lives. Don’t miss out on this transformative journey. Tune in now and join me on this path of self-discovery and empowerment.
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Welcome Aboard
Hello there, my friend. Jonathan Doyle with you again. Welcome to the Daily Podcast. We are helping you to build a profound change in your life through recognizing the power of self-leadership. If you’re just listening today, make sure you go back to yesterday’s episode where I set all this up.
The Nature of Self-Leadership: Constant Growth and Change
Quick summary, we’re talking about self leadership. We’re talking about getting back in the cockpit on the driver’s seat of our own lives. We are all always leading ourselves somewhere.
As far as I can tell, there is no real homeostasis. No one stays the same. You either grow; this is the second law of thermodynamics. Energy moves from a hotter state to a colder state. You are either growing or you’re going backwards. I’m sorry, it doesn’t seem in the cosmos that anything stays exactly the same for any extended period of time. So we want to get into self-leadership.
Understanding Leadership: Defining Leadership as Influence
Yesterday I shared that I was going to take you on a three-part journey. The first part was yesterday where we defined one definition of leadership. I capitulated that there are many definitions, and this is just one that I’m using and I’m teaching to people all over the world. The definition of leadership is: leadership equals influence. What is influence? Something has changed. How do you know leadership is happening? Something’s changing.
Now it can be getting better or worse, and that’s nature. That’s the topic for today. We’re going to talk about what conditions, the quality of the change. But the definition of leadership that we’re working under is leadership is influence, influence is change.
An example that I gave to somebody in the conversation. I know I did this on the speaking tour two weeks ago and I shared this with people. I had a picture of Adolf Hitler on the screen and I said, was this person able to create influence? Did they create change? And everybody was able to say, absolutely. So the question becomes, what determines the quality or the nature of the kind of influence that people create?
Quality of Influence: Character Determines Influence
So leaders create influence. They create change. But wouldn’t we want to know what is it that determines the kind of influence that they have? And this is our topic today. So here it is.
Step one. Leadership is influence. Step two. Influence equals character. You want to know what the term is the influence that a leader has? It’s the character of the leader. What’s character? It comes to us originally from the Greeks. About two and a half thousand years ago. And it means a mark upon the soul, an indelible mark, something almost like a tattoo written on the soul.
I guess the way to conceptualize it. It really appeared again in old English around about the 14th century. Think of it in terms of, it’s not like something like clothing that you can just throw on and off and change. Character is more central. It’s different from personality. Psychologists think the personality is relatively fixed over the life course. So your core personality, say for example, I’m an introvert, I’m an extreme introvert. Everyone laughs when I say that, because they think that I’m a speaker and all this stuff that I do, I must be the most extra. I’m not extroverted at all, I’m an extreme introvert.
I can definitely come out of myself when I’m on stage and I’m speaking and I’m training and I’m talking to audiences and conferences no problem. But my nature, my personality is relatively reserved, relatively quiet, in general. So my personality is relatively fixed.
Developing Character: Character as a Changeable Aspect
You can get it a little changed as I age, but it’s relatively there. But my character is something different and tomorrow particularly we’ve got to figure it out. What is the mechanism by which character? The good news, my friend is a character that is not fixed. Character can be changed and that’s good news for us.
So let’s get in the swing of this, leadership is influence. Influence is character. Character is the internal aspect of the deepest essence of what we are becoming. What we value, what we think is important, moment to moment in the world. We want to get really good at the character piece. So people with great character tend to influence the world in positive ways.
"Our personality is relatively fixed but our character can be changed and the power to do so is in our hands."
Our quest is going to be, if this internal mark upon our souls, this character is the thing that determines our influence. Then what do we do about character? I have some very good news but it’s going to be part of tomorrow’s talk. I’d like to keep these notions short. I say this was a three-part sequence. So I want you to tune in tomorrow so we can do day three and I can show you and share with you exactly what we’re going to do here to make this change.
In the meantime, if you’d love to book me to speak or find out more about what I do, it’s all on the website. jonathandoyle.co. I’m on Instagram at @jdoylespeaks one word jdoylespeaks, and you can find me on YouTube. Go and check out those channels. Give them a big subscribe so I can keep you up to date on a more regular basis. But that’s it for now.
Self-Leadership for Positive Change
Let’s join these dots. No one is staying the same. The nature of existence is change. We get a vote in where that change goes in our own lives. We’ve all got to step up to the plate of self-leadership first until everybody wants to be in the position of leadership. Not everybody, you may not, but lots of people, look at our political class. Many of our politicians would climb over the bodies of their own family members to get elected. They want that urgently.
But what we want to do is do the hard work of self-leadership first, because that self-leadership is going to determine our character. And then our character is going to determine our influence. So tomorrow we’re going to join those dots and we’re going to actually figure out the practical things we actually have to do.
Conclusion
God bless you. My friend, my name is Jonathan Doyle. This has been the Daily Podcast. Tomorrow, we’re going to do the answers. You and I are going to speak again very soon.
