Five Fundamentals for Emergent Leaders

The definition of emergent is “coming into being.” In this episode, Ralph and Bill discuss foundational principles every emergent leader needs to be aware of, and importantly, needs to strengthen over the course of their leadership journey. So even if you’re at a more mature stage of your own leadership, listen in for a valuable refresher on fundamentals you should be continually refining.

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*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors

Bill Berthel: Welcome to the Get Emergent Podcast, where we discuss leadership concepts and best practices. We like to provide ideas, concepts, and pragmatic experiments to help you develop as a leader. I’m Bill Berthel.

And I’m Ralph Simone.

So Ralph, today we’re talking about emergent leadership, emergent leader. What is an emergent leader?

Ralph Simone: Well, great question. I mean, it’s the name of our company, Emergent, and I think I’d like to respond to that, that you know, emergent actually means coming into being. And so as we look at, we think everyone’s a leader, and how do we help people come into that leadership role and continue to grow and develop in an effective way?

And so we’ve laid out a program and a pathway for people to emerge as effective leaders in our organizations.

Bill Berthel: So let’s talk a little bit about that program and what it entails. How did you choose the content? And you’re the original architect of this. How did you choose the content? Why this material?

Ralph Simone: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting, there’s lots of very good models around developing leadership and you know, and so at some point you have to focus on what you think the essential elements and put ’em together. So we went back and forth on a lot of things, but we think there are five fundamental things that every leader needs to be aware of and be strengthening as they evolve on their leadership journey.

And we identified them as leadership presence, which we like to think is your brand. It’s who you wanna be, your purpose, what you value, how you show up as a leader, yes. Is communicating clearly, which is almost trite, but this idea of being able to have shared understanding because as a leader we’re inspiring and influencing people to take purposeful action.

And so we need to communicate that clearly, but we also need to listen. We need to hear where we may be off track.

Bill Berthel: It’s one of the most unique communication trainings I’ve ever been part of. Because it really starts with noticing self. So many communication development opportunities miss that. It’s all about the listening and the sending of signals receiving and sending signals.

This is about noticing self first.

Ralph Simone: So all emergence starts from the inside out. Not the outside in. When you can get training and present