Jim Bouchard uses the sensei metaphor to define leadership: a leader's job is to inspire and empower people toward their best, turning "me" into "we." This requires emotional intelligence, strong interpersonal skills, and genuine care for people's growth and development.
So what can the sensei teach you about leadership? A sensei's job is just to inspire, empower, and guide people. Inspire, empower, guide people to their very best, right? That's it. Now, isn't that your job as leaders too? Isn't that what you do? Inspire, empower, and guide. Now, in the dojo, That usually means we're helping people get to black belt and hopefully beyond that. What does this mean in your life as leaders? And what do you want to accomplish? And are you doing it alone? Just by the fact that there's a leader means that there are followers, right? So what's our job as a leader? Our jobs as leaders is to try to pull everybody into the same direction so we can all succeed, right? To turn me into we. If we want people to perform at their best, they will only perform at their best when and only when they know their leaders care about them, when they know their work has meaning, and when they have a real opportunity to learn, to grow, and develop. Now, in order to achieve this, we need leaders with a high degree of emotional intelligence. Very strong interpersonal skills, and a well-developed— and I'm gonna add— an accurate sense of self-awareness. This is the type of leader we call a human-centric leader. In a dojo, we call this person sensei.
Why AI-Only Customer Service Is Failing Customers | Danny Snow on Keep It Human
