Those with New Hearts and New Spirits #2 (1035 words, read time 5 minutes 30 seconds)
By “new” I mean different, fresh, recent, and in mint condition. New is also synonymous with neoteric, which as a noun means a person who advocates new ideas. Thus, leaders with new hearts and new spirits are those that also exhibit new degrees of courage, new awareness, new sensitivities, and new capacities among a list of other compulsory post-COVID-19 assets.
A new heart occurs as a result of a modification or correction at one’s core. A new spirit is how a new heart expresses itself in new actions. Take, for example, Ebenezer Scrooge from “The Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. Scrooge’s first name is a complete contradiction, because Ebenezer means a stone of help or a stone of commemoration or a remembrance of victory. Certainly not the case with Scrooge prior to his new heart. Scrooge is first seen as a miserly and cheerless person who is rude and wretchedly unfeeling towards his employee Bob Cratchit. After a disturbing visit by the ghost of his dead partner Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s heart and spirit are transformed and he becomes a pleasant, attentive, and caring person, far different than before.
Working our country, our businesses, social institutions, ourselves, and our families out of the grasp of the COVID-19 reality requires all leaders and all those led to develop a new attitude. A new attitude and new heart and a new heart are in nearly all ways synonymous. New moods, new predispositions, new mental states, new levels of sobriety, new guts, new clarity of purpose and a new work ethic, not a retooled one, are all required of the new “us.”
These are needed to produce more profound, durable, and widespread results in a post-pandemic world than those produced in a pre-pandemic one. This is a challenge for everyone but more so for leaders who are expected to get things quickly rolling again by their intellectual, technical, and human skills.
*In the last post I wrote: Critics will likely say that new hearts and new spirits are mushy, soft-skill stuff; when what we need is hard data and hard-charging operators able to grasp and exploit our new realities. Yet, without new hearts and new spirits we will not be able to envision what GOOD SUCCESS looks like all the time for all persons and for all organizational entities who bear the effects of a COVID-19 world.)
When suggesting that leaders need to have new hearts and new spirits, then the follow-up questions are: What do leaders with new hearts and new spirits do and what does a new heart and a new spirit produce?
New hearts and new spirits are expressed in compassionate and urgent responses to need. When 35 million people are unemployed, something new needs to happen that will not happen with old hearts and old spirits.
New hearts and new spirits within leaders will result in financial and emotional stability for people, organizations, and governmental entities. Then, all will move ahead toward prosperity via a renewed and revitalized normal.
I am not certain that a new normal will in time be different or better than the old normal without new hearts and spirits. And, I am not interested in recovering the old normal where old hearts and old spirits were de rigueur and simply good enough to get by. Now, nothing can be just “good enough,” because “normal” has been so enormously altered and the stakes remain so incredibly high.
Although new hearts and new spirits are free for the having, they are enormously valuable and not to be gained on the cheap. New hearts and new spirits require turning loose of one’s old heart and old spirit, and then self-creating one’s new heart and spirit. I am certainly among those that believe there is an ultimate power and personality that oversees the affairs of humankind, but I am also convinced that a new heart and a new spirit lies within the power of a person to achieve. God can lead us horses to the water, but drinking is up to us. So, too, is one’s willingness to have a new heart and a new spirit.
New leaders with new hearts and new spirits…
- exude confidence.
- demonstrate humility.
- avoid hubris.
- demonstrate new levels of discernment about what it will take to connect productively with site-based and with remotely working subordinates.
- exhibit new levels of perspicuity to produce new means of motivation and engagement and new forms of accountability.
- show empathy, patience, and generosity.
- express appreciation for work done well and encouragement and suggestions for work done not so well.
- nurture freely.
- correct appropriately.
- connect with people meaningfully and opportunity expertly.
- engage challenge courageously.
- not stand aloof and expect others take the risks of launching new initiatives when they will not.
- know the difference between good risks and bad risks.
- redefining work/life balance.
- focus on problem-solving and not just problem-managing both in the long and short term.
- stop emotional bleeding among their peers, and within their subordinates and customers.
- reveal their genuineness of motive.
- validate their bias for action.
- achieve transparency of character and action and model it for others.
- minimize group differences and maximize group similarities.
- provide a cheerful hand-up or a willing hand-out in timely and appropriate ways.
- embody flexibility and personal balance.
- inspire ingenuity artfully.
- instill good hope in others through masterful judgements and on-point tenacity.
New leaders with new hearts and new spirits will move intentionally and freely from one level of the Data to Nobility Process to the next. See GOOD SUCCESS: Learning Good Lessons from Bad Leaders, page 103.
- Independent data points–recognized and properly interpreted
- Aggregated data points–comprised of properly assembled independent data points
- Information–aggregated groupings of aggregated data
- Knowledge–properly aggregated information (the point at which data takes on moral character)
- Understanding–properly interpreted knowledge
- Wisdom–properly applied understanding
- Virtue–moral behavior resulting from wisdom
- Humility–personal behavior resulting from moral virtue
- Large-heartedness, generosity, magnanimity–all a result of morally applied humility
- Compassion–properly focused and engaged generosity
- Nobility–character, state of being, and carriage resulting from moral virtue and properly applied compassion
3rd installment on New Leaders with New Hearts and New Spirits
- They have new focus and energy.
- They have a broadened Sensing Range
- New leaders pivot from a solid base.
Good Lessons Group 
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