Rob Linn’s Favorite Leadership Principles


1 – Awareness:

  • Maintain enough quiet, open-minded observation and reflection to see both what is happening and how it is happening

    • This provides a keen sense of what to do and when to do it

    •  Learn to see beginnings when it is easy to influence with minimal force

    • Be aware of nearing the end of a process and do not get anxious to resolve it before its natural time

  • Caution:  Prejudiced leaders see only what fits their prejudices

  • Awareness supersedes techniques


2 - Allow Processes to Unfold:

  • Facilitate rather than push 

  •  Allow others to find their answers; even if you already see them

  • Be patient.  Allow time for people and events to unfold on their own

  • Caution: any overly-determined behavior produces its opposite


 3 - Honesty/Transparency:

  • Generously and kindly, communicate all that is necessary both on the pleasant and the unpleasant; one is as important as the other

  • Rather than punish, point out the natural consequences of certain actions


4 - Selflessness:

  • Place the well-being of all before personal well-being

  • Distribute credit to others


5 - Clarify Your Own Conflicts:

  • Understand and be alert to your fears and your unconscious responses to them.  

  • Shift to your authentic strengths under pressure in real time

    •  This enables you to clarify the conflicts of others

    • This gives you a grounded centeredness

    • “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.  Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”


6 - Take Time for Reflection:

  • Allow regular time for silent reflection

  • Reflect on what has happened, how it happened, how to facilitate progress


 7 - Disconnect From Praise and Criticism:

  • Do your work and then step back and allow it to have its impact

  • Caring too much about either praise or criticism causes anxiety and dependence which distorts your awareness and sense of what life is calling for


 8 - Stay in the Present:

·      Pay attention to what is happening now and how to positively influence those circumstances.  That is how to create a better future.


9 - Speak Rarely, Briefly, but Powerfully:

  • Say what must be said, fully, and then stop.

  • Listen more than talk.


 10 - Sometimes the Warrior, Usually the Healer:

  • Be forceful only when necessary

  • Use the least amount of force required to reach the outcome

  • Mostly look to facilitate

  • Be gentle in the face of resistance even to the point of completely stepping back and using no force at all – revert to silent reflection until the right action emerges


 11 - Practice Potent Leadership:

  • Most Potent:

o   Conscious, yet spontaneous reactions to what is happening in the here and now

§  Let your only allegiance be to the principle of awareness of what is happening and how those things happen

  • Less Potent:

o   Trying to do what is right based on what you think “should” happen

  • Least Potent:

o   Manipulating to get a selfish, desired outcome


 12 - Be Open to Whatever Emerges:

  • Respond and facilitate without judgement whatever emerges.  Even with people who exhibit selfish, manipulative behavior.  Facilitate their process of development rather than resist their behavior.

  • If you respond with resistance it will breed resistance in response precluding the chance for evolution.

  • If you are attacked or criticized react in a way that sheds light on the event and facilitate its resolution

  • Use the Honesty/Transparency Principle to point out the unhelpful behavior


 13 - Keep Few Rules:

  • Rules reduce freedom and responsibility

  • Following rules reduces spontaneity and depletes energy

  • Every law creates an outlaw


 14 - Offer Opportunities vs. Requiring Obligations:

  • Create opportunities for people to grow vs. merely completing tasks

  • As much as possible, collaborate with people on the development of their accountabilities

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