In this solo update, Jim Bouchard, founder of the Sensei Leader Movement, outlines eight practical strategies for aspiring and emerging leaders and explains how they are explored in depth in upcoming workshops. He begins by emphasizing the paradox that great leaders must first be good followers, describing the flexible nature of leadership and followership. He then stresses the critical importance of finding a mentor (the "right master"), citing internal polling that shows only 33% of respondents currently have one. The third strategy calls for a commitment to personal and professional mastery, urging leaders to embed disciplined development habits despite competing priorities. The fourth strategy urges proactive behavior: ask before you’re asked and act before you’re asked, while maintaining humility. The fifth strategy addresses the need to learn to operate under uncertainty, recommending exposure to ambiguous situations as the only path to competence. The sixth strategy focuses on communication skills—both speaking and writing—suggesting venues like Toastmasters, community theater, improv, and debate clubs. The seventh strategy advises prioritizing experiential growth over immediate financial rewards, arguing that early career choices that favor leadership experience yield exponential long‑term returns. The final strategy frames leadership as a sharing activity, encouraging leaders to distribute power, authority, knowledge, courage, and compassion. Throughout, Bouchard intersperses a brief promotional plug for an upcoming December 7 workshop in Portland, Maine, whose proceeds benefit the Boots to Roots organization. He concludes with a rapid recap of the eight strategies and a call to share these ideas with other developing leaders.
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Hi, Jim Bouchard, founder of the Sensei Leader Movement, with a kind of a Sensei Leader update and also a focus today on one of the biggest questions we get and one of the topics that really is in the most demand for our workshops, and that's how to help aspiring leaders and emerging leaders take that next step in their journey. And if you're an aspiring and emerging leader yourself, how to walk that walk. Here's— I'm just going to share with you the strategies that we'll be diving into deeply at this workshop and all the others. In fact, many of the ones that I read on that list are going to be Aspiring Leaders Workshops. First, work first on being a good follower. All the best leaders are great followers. And what I mean by that, people get confused by that sometimes because they, they kind of pigeonhole those designations into fixed roles, I guess is the best way to say it. And that's not what it's all about. These are not fixed roles. They're flexible roles. They're not fixed positions, flexible roles. Being a leader and a follower— being a good follower means sometimes you have to know when to step back and let other people with more knowledge, more experience, more wisdom in that area take the lead regardless of their position of authority. So right from the start, you want to work first on being a good follower, how to listen, how to be open to other people's input. Number 2, probably the most important, find the right master. When we do our SL15 polling, we always ask people these two questions when we're doing the Aspiring Leaders Track. And the first question we ask is, "How important is finding a good mentor to your success in your career as a leader?" That is a person. And I don't remember one time— we might have had a stray, but out of the hundreds that we've done so far, I can't remember anybody who said anything less than "important," and most people say "very important" as a response. Then we ask another follow-up question: Are you working with a mentor right now? And so far, only 33% say that they are. That's something you need to fix. The right mentor can make a huge difference, especially when it comes to leadership, because you can certainly learn a lot about leadership from books. I'm not gonna— I'm not gonna blow that horn, but the best information you're gonna get and the most responsive feedback you're gonna get is working with a great mentor. So find the right master. Number 1, work on being a good follower. Number 2, Find the right master. Number 3: Commit yourself to personal and professional mastery. Now, if you follow the Sensei Leader movement, you'll know that that shows up in all our tracks. That particular strategy is applicable for aspiring leaders, for people that are more experienced that work in our Sensei Leader track, and for senior executives working in our Sensei in the C-Suite track. We share that same strategy with all, and we really want you to dig deep and think about that. What are you doing right now? What disciplines are you installing in your daily life to help yourself develop personally and professionally? Now, especially for leaders, this gets difficult. Other people's priorities can get in the way, emergencies, whatnot. Can't let it happen. Got to dedicate some time to your own personal and professional development and mastery, if for no other reason because you're going to expect other people to. And if you're going to talk the talk, you got to walk the walk. So let's recap again quickly. Number 1, work first on being a good follower. Number 2, find the right master. Number 3, commit yourself to personal and professional mastery. Number 4, ask before you're asked, act before you're asked. This is critical. Leaders lead. That means sometimes you've got to go first. Now, of course, you want to have a healthy sense of humility and deference. You don't want to step on toes or jump over people, right? But those are the exceptions, not the rules, when you come up against that. Most of the time there's lots of great stuff waiting to be done, lots of opportunities to really showcase your talents and develop your talents, and these tasks and these needs are just going wanting for someone to do it. So ask before you're asked. If you see something needs to be done, why not go up to your supervisor or someone in charge and say, "Hey, you know what, I think I can handle that." And when appropriate, act before you're asked. Just do it. Just do it. Number 5, learn to deal with uncertainty. One of the biggest issues facing aspiring and emerging leaders today is an inability to deal with uncertainty, and that's something that we have to address. The earlier you develop this, this ability, the better, and there's no shortcuts to it. Again, in workshops we would dig into this deeply to help you find some design and implement some disciplines to help you do it, but simply put, it's just this: the only way to learn to deal with uncertainty is to expose yourself to it. And if you're in a position of developing leaders, that's what you have to do. You have to give new aspiring and emerging leaders the opportunity to deal with challenges and uncertainty. Because one thing is for certain, we're going to be dealing with uncertainty. Number 6, learn to talk and write good. And if you don't get the joke, we've got a lot of work to do. One of the primary functions of a leader is to communicate clearly and and effectively, and I'm gonna add enthusiastically. So the earlier you do it, the better. Find opportunities to develop your communication skills, and there's plenty of them out there. I always recommend for new and aspiring leaders, join Toastmasters or start a chapter right at your organization. The Toastmasters is always open to starting new chapters. Give presentations, and it's not always in the office. Find opportunities outside in the community. Perform. Share yourself with your community, and community theater is a great opportunity. Improv groups, all kinds of opportunities you can do that, or speech and debate clubs as well. A little quick recap. Number 1, work first on being a good follower. Number 2, find the right master. Number 3, commit yourself to personal and professional mastery. Number 4, ask before you ask, act before you ask. Number 5, learn to deal with uncertainty. Number 6, Learn to talk and write good. Number 7: Focus on experience over rewards. Critical, critical idea here. So often, and I understand it, believe me, I understand it, especially with new and younger leaders jumping for the money, right? You've been suffering through college, you've been suffering through an internship, something like that, and you go for the big bucks. That's fine sometimes, but make sure that you're not trading a little bit of extra money for what might be a vast opportunity and experience. For instance, I've talked to so many people who really took a job for less money than they could get at another position, but they knew that they'd have better and quicker opportunities to actually lead, to actually gain some experience, and that experience over time will pay back exponentially. And finally, Number 8: Lead by sharing, not accumulating. If you follow the Sensei Leader Movement at all— well, if you haven't, you're going to hear it now— Leadership is sharing. That's it. A leader shares. What you share and how you share it really is, is the subject of a very deep dive in most of our workshops. So, but you have to decide that you're going to share, that you're going to be unselfish as a leader. The best leaders share power, they share authority, and of course they share their knowledge, wisdom, and experience. They share their courage and their compassion. Okay, so that's what it's all about. Let's recap real soon, and just for a note, you can find all of these in deep explanation in 8 Strategies for Aspiring Leaders, which is the companion, of course, to our flagship book, The Sensei Leader, which you get in a free ebook edition when you subscribe at thesenseileader.com and join the movement. Doesn't cost you a thing to do that. So anyway, real quick recap. Let's go over the 8 Strategies for Aspiring Leaders. Before I do, one more commercial for the— if you're listening in December 2018, December 7th, at Portland, Maine at the UNUM headquarters. There's going to be an 8 Strategies for Aspiring Leaders workshop open to the public and all the proceeds benefit Boots to Roots. The link is just below thesensileader.com/boots-to-roots. Boots to Roots is an amazing organization connecting soon-to-be veterans with meaningful careers here in Maine. Terrific organization. We're very glad to support that. So come on down and do that. And there's an organization— oh, by the way, I forgot to say If you sign up, today's the last day for this. If you sign up today, okay, this is December 3rd, then you can bring a friend, or if you do the group donation, you can double the amount. Instead of 6 people, you can bring 12 for the same donation. So please take advantage of that today. Now, real quick recap. If you want to be, want to take that next step, want to take that next big step in leadership, number 1, work first on being a good follower. Number 2, find the right master, find a mentor. Number 3, commit yourself to personal and professional mastery. Always remember that runs through all our tracks, all the way up to Sensei in the C-suite. We never stop learning, growing, and developing. Number 4, ask before you're asked, act before you're asked. Amazing how many doors open for the people who are willing to do that. Number 5, learn to deal with uncertainty. The only thing for sure is that we're going to be dealing with uncertainty. Learn how to deal with it by exposing yourself to it. Learn to talk and write good. Once again, if you don't get the joke, we've got a lot of work to do. Number 7, focus on experience over rewards. And number 8, lead by sharing, not accumulating. Leadership is sharing. A leader shares. Hey, thanks for tuning in and listening today. Hope you enjoyed that. Hope you got something out of it. And remember, if you're developing and supporting human-centric leaders yourself, if you're responsible for developing new leaders, Make sure you share these ideas with them. As always, we appreciate you sharing all these different programs, and we'll keep it up as long as we can. Thank you very, very much. Jim Bouchard, founder of the Sensei Leader Movement. We'll talk again very soon.
