Peter Koestenbaum's Leadership Diamond

I strongly recommend subscribing to Peter Koestenbaum’s weekly Leadership Thought from which I re-publish the following:

KOESTENBAUM’S WEEKLY LEADERSHIP THOUGHT – 09 MAY 2011

FREEDOM: The Axiom That Empowers the Human

If there is only one fact of existence we can teach a person, help a person discover and learn, it is that you are born free:

• free to choose what you think
• free to choose what you do
• free to choose who you are
• free to choose who you become
• free to choose to love
• free to choose to serve
• free to choose the art of co-creation
• and free to choose responsibility for who you are

But also free to choose self-deception, to lie to yourself, to convince yourself of fantasies, to deny your share of responsibility, to ignore what happens to others when they are in your presence.

You are free to choose to put on blinders and not see, to shut your ears and not listen, to hold your mouth and not have a voice.

If this freedom you do not teach, help a person discover and learn, then you abandon a human being, give up on a person, dismiss a subjectivity, and neglect, waste, and undermine a soul…, which is a cruel thing to do.

Demand of people that they be free and responsible. But do not abandon them. Choose to make the commitment to them that you care.

#499 – Published Weekly Since 2001. Selected by Laurie Yehia. Copyright © 2011, Peter Koestenbaum. All rights reserved. The Leadership Diamond is a registered trademark and service mark belonging to Peter Koestenbaum.

Thank you, Peter, gifted leadership philosopher and scholar, for your fine body of work. I’m grateful to you also for granting permission to reprint this Leadership Thought.

Please comment and tell me what you think.