The Central C?

   So, yes, our language lends itself to some wonderful alliterations and clusters around topics as I have pointed out with the letter C and how it stimulates language to describe great leadership.  In the last blog, I listed 14 C's.  The one to which I most frequently refer with my clients and colleagues is Clarity.  Great leaders have the capacity to reach clarity on complex topics and usually faster than most of the people around them.  They also have the accompanying skill of achieving clarity in their communication about their ideas.  Without clarity of understanding and communication there is no vision and, as the good book says, "Without vision, the people perish."  So does this make Clarity the "central C?"  Tempting, but remember, while we love our Powerpoint presentations and the idea of one C being central to all the others offers some tempting simplicity for some overhead slides, The C's are an organic whole.  No one is more important than another.  It can seem so, but the resounding truth is that only when they are all vibrantly present in someone are we likely to be able to say, "That is a great leader."
  So at this writing, we have fourteen C's of Great Leadership. Do we need another list of descriptors for great leadership?  Sure we do.  We need an ongoing discussion to continuously remind ourselves of the subtlty and breadth of specific energies that must be mobilized to master this particular art...and it is an art.  It's a good idea to err on the side of over-communicating on topics of substance. On my website, http://www.bobkamm.com/,  I have a discussion of the 4 E's (Entrepreneurship, Efficiency, Effectiveness and Empathy...available from the leadership consulting page) which takes a  little different look at this, as well as an article called "Trust Centered Leadership" on the home page. 
   Of course, there are many great books that have taken a look at this, not the least of which would be Covey's Principle-Centered Leadership, Executive EQ by Cooper and Sawaf, and Good to Great, by Collins, in which he reveals what he calls Level 5 Leadership, Primal Leadership by Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee, and Servant Leadership by Greenleaf.  This is an ongoing discussion humans have been having about the topic probably dating back to our early tribal ancestors.  Maybe we'll eventually distill it down to just a few C's or other words that contain or imply all the rest.  But for now, better to keep the conversation big, broad and voluble.  Let's have our own conversation. 
   To recap, here are the C's of Great Leadership, in random order...because they are all important and they each are necessary but not sufficient to achieve great leadership.  They constitute a living breathing organic whole.
   1.Curiosity
   2.Collaboration
   3.Compassion
   4.Commitment
   5.Connection
   6.Conviction
   7.Consistency
   8.Constancy
   9.Creativity
  10.Clarity
 11.Consciousness
 12.Competency
 13. Courage
 14.Core Values. 

  I'm going to write about each and all as time unfolds, but I will not do so sequentially.  My own mind functions better when I let it follow its own impulses, rather than having to put everything in neat order...life is not neat.  Leadership is not neat. My mind is associational in nature.  In the mean time, feel free to jump in and offer some thoughts and examples regarding any that are immediate for you.