Depending on who you are reading these days, you will come across the idea that you must reinvent yourself  every 36 months and your organization every 5 years. Again that depends on who you are reading. Make no mistake CHANGE is the one comforting constant in our life. Because of that change, we must reinvent ourselves in order to influence our world. Influence is the essence of leadership. Here are 5 hats that must be worn for effective leadership.

1. The Emotionally Intelligent Leader – EQ is the realization that your leadership strengths have accompanying weaknesses. Patrick Lencioni’s book The Advantage, is about why emotional health trumps everything in leadership. Intelligence is not the ultimate goal, emotional intelligence is a chief characteristic of effective leaders. As a leader you develop “learned behaviors” to compensate for your strengths. (Ie. learning to be an active listener).
2. Becoming A Leader of Leaders – Growing things by yourself is not sustainable. Eventually things implode and your circle of influence shrinks. If your goal is to become a legacy leader for the long-haul of life. You must invest yourself in becoming a leader of leaders.
3. The Healthy Leader – Everybody has issues. After a few years of leading, your issues will surface before others to view, there is NO escape! Your personal demons will either overtake you or you are going to overtake your personal demons – the choice is yours. You must keep yourself grounded in your present reality and avoid the “crazy-making” of everyone else’s stuff.
4. The Life-Long Student Leader – “If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there.” “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every-time.” A graduate student asked Dr. Paul Feinberg once why he was working on his 3rd dissertation for his 3rd Ph.D.. Dr. Feinberg’s response was swift and confident, “I have committed myself to be a “life-learner.” The leader who wants to be a teacher without becoming a student first will never be a teacher worth following.  There is no point that anyone of us have arrived. We either continue the learning or choose to stop!
5. The Change Agent Leader – Many leaders find it easy to change what someone else introduced, Few leaders find the courage to change what they introduced. Effective leaders must change what you introduced. You need to look those you are leading in the eye and declare; “For this season what we have been doing worked. However the season has changed and here is the new approach!”

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