Education and Authentic Leadership Development

If you are a regular follower of this blog you will recall that I promised to post on the ten attributes of a leader that leads to trustworthiness. This began with the first posting on the subject on August 16th which was titled, Trust: The Key to Leadership. As promised, I will post later this week on the second attribute of trust building, i.e., loyalty. In the mean time I will leave this for you to chew on for awhile.

Education, according to Plato, is not about putting sight into blind eyes, but is the art of turning the soul from the shadows of ignorance toward the light of truth. Stated another way, education is about developing the heart as much or perhaps more than the mind. It is about becoming and being an authentic person. With authentic whole person education we learn to not only see and understand the truth, we internalize it in our heart. When you believe deeply in a certain way, and when you act upon and according to those beliefs, people see you as authentic and trustworthy? Authenticity is represented well, I think, by our blog motto, Esse Quam Videri: “To be rather than to seem.”

This blog is dedicated to this very type of leadership development. It is a whole person approach to development and growth; the eyes and the heart. The development of excellence in leadership character and competency is our chief interest.

Listed below are a few comments that I think you will like. They are from Christopher Kolenda’s great book, Leadership: The Warrior’s Art, regarding education and development of a leader.

Intellectual development is the key that opens the door to meaning. The education of a leader must move beyond personal experiences and draw on the boundless experience and insights of others.


Personal experience must be augmented by the records of others and synthesized by the insights of history, philosophy, and theory.


Developing the vibrant intellectual core from which a leader can draw insight in the art of leadership requires the courage and humility to immerse oneself in the ideas and experiences of others.


Leadership is about trust – trust in the leader’s vision, trust in the leader’s competence and character, trust in the leader’s respect and care for those under his or her charge. Every effective bond between people has trust as its bedrock. Successful leaders earn the trust of others, and in doing so inspire that voluntary spirit and the act of following.

This approach to leadership development is not so much a process to be mastered as it is an art to be developed.

Esse Quam Videri

Carpe Diem