This week we are considering a broad view of Social Leadership, from our internal belief to our intention, our actions to impact, and our reflective practice. Today, we will consider intention.
Imagine that our beliefs form the landscape of our decision making, then our intention is the direction we intend to travel. Intention is set through a combination of internal and external factors: the things we wish to achieve, and those that we hope to avoid, and as a Social Leader our aim is to have a clear view of these aspects of the landscape.
Our beliefs and values will steer us to an intention to be fair and to do good - but the range of our understanding of ‘fair’ and ‘good’ is wide, and contextual to culture and experience. And our intention is also tempered by fear and force.
In a landscape aspects of both formal rules, and social norms and judgement, we may set an intention that is out of alignment with our beliefs and values, simply because there are always trade offs, or some things we just can’t fight for.
So compromise is both the foundation of pragmatic action, and also of our failure. There is nothing wrong with pragmatism, but overall we need to understand the forces that act upon us, to make them explicit in our thinking, and to ensure the compass ends up pointing at least broadly in the right direction.
Use your sixty seconds today to consider how you use your compass: is it everyday, or once a year? Do you have the time, space, ability, desire, to check your direction?
If we do not calibrate, if we cannot course correct, we may end up acting beyond our beliefs and intention, because we have simply failed to correct our action.
Day #230