The document discusses the three fundamental structural elements of a leadership course: 1) Mastering factors like integrity, authenticity, and commitment that form the foundation of leadership. 2) Developing a contextual framework that shapes how one sees and acts in leadership situations. 3) Removing constraints that limit one's natural self-expression as a leader. It focuses on developing an "ontological model" of leadership through linguistic and conceptual frameworks in order to realize futures that fulfill the concerns of those being led.

1. Being a Leader & the Effective
Exercise of Leadership
An Ontological Model
An Artistic Expression
Text is  Copyright 2011 Werner Erhard, Michael C. Jensen, Landmark LLC. All rights reserved.

2. The first of the three fundamental
structural elements of the course are
in mastering the factors that form the
foundation for being a leader and the
effective exercise of leader……..
integrity,
authenticity, and
being committed to something bigger than yourself

3. The second of the three fundamental structural
elements of the course is a contextual framework
for leader and leadership that when mastered
becomes a context that in any leadership situation
has the power to leave you being a leader and
exercising leadership effectively as your natural
self expression.

4. Look into your own life and find a
context that shapes the way you
see a certain situation or a certain
person or a certain group of people,
or that shapes the way you act with
that certain situation or certain
person or certain group of people.

5. • The third and the last of the three fundamental
structural elements of the course are removing
from the way you wound up being what limits
or distorts your natural self-expression.

6. Most of us think that
the way we are being
and acting is our natural
self-expression.
However, our natural
self- expression is
limited and distorted by
certain ontological
constraints that have
become a part of the
way we wound up
being.

7. Ontology is the
investigation of the
nature and function
of being.
At the core of most
approaches to
ontology is the
question of what it
means to exist.

8. An exploration of
Ontology is concerned
with the nature and
function of being when
being a Leader, and
what way one’s being
when being a Leader
affects one’s actions in
the exercise of
leadership

9. Some of the ontological perceptual and
functional constraints that limit our opportunity
set for being and acting are inherent in and
shared by all people…
……..a consequence (without an
effective intervention) of the way
our brains work.

10. The point is until you remove those constraints, you
have no access to ways of being and acting that lie
outside the way you wound up being – your
personal opportunity set for being and acting.

11. As a result of these
constraints, each of us gets
left with idiosyncratic
personal ways of being and
acting that allow us to
succeed in some situations,
but which leave us at best
getting by in others, and
unfortunately failing in yet
others.

12. In our formative years virtually all of us
begin to develop a certain strategy for
avoiding failure that we continue to rely
on as life unfolds.

13. The first half of the strategy is to attempt to
avoid failing by simply staying away from
situations that don’t fit with the way we wound
up being (don’t fit our set repertoire for being
and acting).

14. The other half of the strategy is to attempt to
succeed by polishing that set repertoire for
being and acting, and seeking out
opportunities in which we can succeed by
utilizing our set repertoire.

15. Given that leaders
cannot choose the
situations that require
leadership, if you are
to be a leader, this
strategy won’t work….

16. You need a focus on
discovering where
you might be being
Authentic, and then
when asked about my
in-authenticities,
telling the truth about
your being
inauthentic in that
way.

17. To become a Leader
and to exercise
Leadership
effectively you have
to be open and
ruthlessly straight
about your way of
being and acting.

18. To become a Leader
and to exercise
Leadership effectively
you have to be open
to having your
Worldview examined
and questioned.

19. And, be open to having your Frames of Reference
relative to Leader and Leadership,
And, relative to who you are for yourself,
examined and questioned.
And be open to transforming your Worldview
and those Frames of Reference

20. In order to be a Leader, you must master
being an Effective follower

21. Integrity for a person is a matter of the
person’s word, nothing more and nothing
less.

22. For a person to have
integrity, the word of that
person must be (as
integrity is defined in the
dictionary) whole,
complete, unbroken,
unimpaired, sound, perfect
condition.

23. Integrity Is Honoring
OR
Your Word, and
Honoring Your Word
Is…..Keeping your
word, and on time

24. Whenever you will
not be keeping your
word, just as soon as a. that you will not be keeping
you become aware your word, and
that you will not be b. that you will keep that word in
keeping your word the future, and by when, or, that
(including not you won’t be keeping that word at
keeping your word on all, and
time) saying to c. what you will do to deal with
the impact on others of the failure
everyone impacted: to keep your word (or to keep it on
time).

25. Before giving your word it is wise to weigh the
benefits of giving your word against the cost
of keeping that word. When you give your
word, you are in effect saying, “I will make
that happen.”

26. As this new model of integrity points out, integrity
is the state or condition of being whole, complete,
unbroken, unimpaired, sound, perfect condition.
Such a state is the necessary and sufficient
condition for workability. And, workability is a
necessary condition for performance. As a result, it
becomes clear that integrity determines the
opportunity set for performance.

27. Leadership Is Not Title, Position, Or Authority!
Leadership is not Management!
While it is true that leaders sometimes have titles, or are in a
leadership position, or have authority (decision rights), none of
these in and of themselves, nor any combination of these,
makes anyone a leader nor are they necessarily a part of the
exercise of leadership.
To be a leader, you must be able to lead and exercise leadership
effectively with no title, no position, and no authority.

28. To be a leader, you must be able to lead and
exercise leadership effectively with no title, no
position, and no authority.

29. The context through
which you perceive a
situation, other person,
or group of people, can
be constituted by your
worldview (model of
reality).

30. The way a situation
occurs for me (shows up
for me) is colored and
shaped by my context for
that situation, and my
way of being and my
actions are correlated
with the way that
situation occurs for me.

31. The Contextual Framework
Context for Leader and Leadership – that is, a context
that has the power in any leadership situation to shape
the way in which the circumstances you are dealing with
occur for you such that your naturally correlated way of
being and acting is one of being a leader and exercising
leadership effectively.

32. The Contextual Framework
Linguistic Abstractions (leader and leadership as
“realms of possibility”)
Phenomena (leader and leadership as
experienced; that is, as what one observes or is
impacted by, or as exercised)
Concepts (the temporal domain in which leader
and leadership function)
Terms (leader and leadership as definitions) and
exercising leadership effectively.

33. Linguistic Abstractions (leader
and leadership as “realms of
possibility”)
As linguistic abstractions, leader and leadership create leader and
leadership as
realms of possibility
in which when you are being a leader all
possible ways of being are available to you,
and
when you are exercising leadership all
possible actions are available to you.

34. Linguistic Abstractions (leader and leadership as
“realms of possibility”)
In order to be a leader, what must be present?
In order to be a leader, what must not be present?
In order to exercise leadership effectively, what
must be present?
In order to exercise leadership effectively, what
must not be present?

35. Phenomena (leader and leadership as experienced;
that is, as what one observes or is impacted by, or as
exercised)
As phenomena,
leader and leadership exist in the sphere of language,
whether that be literally speaking, or speaking in the form of
writing, or
speaking and listening to yourself, that is, thinking, or the
speaking of your actions, as in “actions speak louder than words”,
or in
providing a certain kind of listening.

36. As concepts,
leader and leadership exist in the domain of
a created future,
a future that fulfills the concerns of the relevant parties,
that the leader and those being led come to live
into,
which future gives them being and action in the
present consistent with realizing that future.
Being a leader and the exercise of leadership is
all about realizing a future that wasn’t going
to happen anyway.
Concepts (the temporal
domain in which leader and
leadership function)

37. As a term, being a leader is defined as,
committed to realizing a future that wasn’t going to happen
anyway
that fulfills the concerns of the relevant parties, and
with the availability of an unlimited opportunity set for
being and action,
being the kind of clearing for leader and leadership that
shapes the way the circumstances you are dealing
with occur for you
such that your naturally correlated way of being and
acting is one of being a leader and exercising
leadership effectively.
Terms (leader and leadership as definitions)
and exercising leadership effectively. A
combination of the previous 3 Aspects

38. As a term,
leadership is defined as
an exercise in language that results in a created future
that the leader and those being led come to live into,
which future gives them being and action in the present
that results in
the realization of a future (that wasn’t going to happen
anyway)
which future fulfills (or contributes to fulfilling)
the concerns of the relevant parties,
including critically those who granted the
leadership (those who lead you and those you
lead).
Terms (leader and leadership as definitions)
and exercising leadership effectively. A
combination of the previous 3 Aspects

39. One’s Perceptual Constraints distort one’s
perceptions of what one is dealing with
and oneself in dealing with it.
By contrast, even if one’s perceptions
were not distorted (limited and shaped
by a Perceptual Constraint), one’s
Functional Constraints when triggered
fixate one’s way of being and acting

40. One’s being and action are fixated by a
Functional Constraint in the following
sense: When anger, for example, is the
triggered fixated way of being and acting,
while the way one expresses and acts on
the anger may depend on the
circumstances that triggered it, one’s way of
being is fixed as (restricted to) anger. We
may even try to hide our anger by
suppressing our expression of it; but our
being angry is still the fixed way of being.

41. All human beings are endowed with a powerful mechanism that
protects us from danger. The source of this “flight or fight”
mechanism is the amygdala, a small organ in the reptilian brain.
Feedback from the outside world such as sight, sound, etc, enters the
brain and takes two paths, one path leads to the amygdala (several
synapses away) and the other much longer path leads to the cerebral
cortex, the thinking, reasoning, conscious part of the brain (hundreds
of synapses away).

42. The difficulty here is that the amygdala can be triggered not only by the
threat of physical pain, but also by the threat of psychological or emotional
pain. When this system was put in place thousands of years ago the
environment was a much simpler place than it is now and in such an
environment psychological threats played a much smaller role.
We now have to contend with environments involving huge numbers of
people and highly interdependent interactions.
Thus in this new environment the amygdala regularly hijacks the conscious
brain in the face of the mere threat of psychological, not physical pain.
And the result can be highly counter-productive. We have all seen people
“lose it” in reaction to some perceived insult or lack of respect. In the
presence of an amygdala hijack there is almost no chance to have a
productive set of interactions in such situations.

43. One of the flawed
mechanisms that
constrains the
being and action
of any human
being is what we
call rackets.

44. Gangsters run rackets by setting up a front (like a money
losing business) that makes the actual enterprise appear
to be legitimate and justifiable, but which front is kept
in place only to conceal a payoff happening behind that
front.
The Functional Constraint we call a racket run by human
beings functions somewhat like the rackets run by
gangsters.

45. In order to be effective in dealing with this central issue
in being a leader and the effective exercise of
leadership, you will have to deconstruct your existing
frame of reference for “future”.
And then, create a new frame of reference for “future”,
one that provides you with the kind of access to
“future” that leaves you with power in dealing with the
future.

46. People have various kinds of possible futures they think
about, or worry about, or hope for, or strive for.
However, given the way the brain functions, the “future
into which people are living” is a future that is given by
the past.
And, the brain generates being and action in the present
to be consistent with realizing the future it predicts, that
is, a past-derived future.

47. As should now be somewhat obvious, the future is the
context for the present.
Or said more precisely, the future a person is living into
is for that person the context for life in the present.
That is, both what is so in the present, and the
possibilities for dealing with what is so, occur for that
person in the context of the future that person is living
into.

48. What makes this all so dismal is the fact that the
prevailing context is the future people are living into,
and the future that people are living into is by default
derived from and shaped by the past.
Remember, the context is decisive. That means that, in
the default context, people’s being and action in the
present will result in more of the same. It may be more,
better, different, or a change, but it will still be some
variation of the past.
And this is why leadership matters.

49. This was just a Glimpse of
the Transformational
journey a few of us took!!

50. The Times of India Senior Team at the Course
L-R : Neeta Asnani, Course Administrator, R Katyayani,
Werner Erhard, Sandeep Kapur, Micheal C Jensen, Teena
Singh, Rajdeep Lalvani & Suchitra Sengupta
L-R : Sanjoy Sen, Rajdeep Lalvani, Werner Erhard & Dhanush Vir
Singh
L-R : Front Row : Shalini Sarup, R Katyayani, Neeta Asnani, Teena
Singh & Nafisa Thingna
L-R : Second Row : Rasesh Gandhi, Surender Unzan, Gautam Sen,
Sandeep Kapur, Werner Erhard, Rajdeep Lalvani, Micheal Jensen,
Ashok Sen, Kari Granger, Ramesh Menon, Sanjoy Sen, THomaS
George, Nandan Srinath, Ninan Thariyan, Dhanush Vir Singh

51. These PowerPoint slides contain selected quotations from the PowerPoint Textbook for
the course “Being A Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological
Approach authored by Werner Erhard, Michael Jensen, Steve Zaffron and Kari Granger
and taught at Asia Plateau, Panchgani, India (Nov. 22 - 27, 2010). I was a participant in
this course.
I have created this slide deck to to share with you the simple yet extremely powerful
perspective of Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership
FAIR USE: You may redistribute this document freely, but please
do not post the electronic file on the web. Web links to this
document are at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1941387