Inspiring leaders cluster

The purpose of the Foundation, as determined by the participants themselves, is to promote and live inspiring leadership. But, who are inspiring leaders, what makes them so, and who says your interpretation is the correct one? Many participants have different ideas and assumptions about what makes a leader inspiring and what it takes to motivate individuals. But almost everyone agrees there is a general lack of inspiring leadership. In FEL's search to define and find inspiring leaders we hope to find a few nuggets of wisdom which we can pass on to the world.

FEL participants are aware that the ideal leader does not exist. We do however think that there are role models from whom other people can learn, sometimes without the role model being aware of what is special about him- or herself. FEL proposes to approach and learn from these 'lesser known' inspiring leaders in several ways:

Project 'Follow Me'

A small group of FEL participants will 'shadow' a number of 'chosen' role models for a considerable time to observe what they do in their daily work. The rationale is that in observing leaders and their subordinates in action we will learn far more than from just interviewing them, the traditional method of research. The 'followers' will meet on a regular basis to share what they have observed and to draw conclusions. These findings can be compiled into articles or publications to show the world what inspiring leadership looks like on a day-to-day basis.

The working group consists of Paul Engelsman, Gytha Heins, Erik van Praag, Alexander Zeverijn, Yeb-Jan Youstra and Lex Halsema. New members are always welcome!

Actions to be taken are:

  1. The group's next task will be to write a paper about inspiring leadership. This will help them to define their approach and provide a benchmark against which to measure their 'designated' inspiring leaders.
  2. FEL participants have been invited to share their views on the characteristics of inspiring leadership, who they see as inspiring leaders and insightful books on the topic. Pick up the challenge and share your views.

Inspiring Colleagues

There is a rich base of knowledge and experience within FEL. We will delve into this by putting some of our participants and their theories in the spotlight. In our first meeting we invited Ber Damen, member of the managing board of Berenschot who recently received his PhD on the topic of ulterior motives of top business leaders. His conclusion: they are in it for the power. Paul Engelsman, now an independent counselor, was the HR-director of respectively Shell IT, Van Melle and Mexx International. He is not very optimistic about the role of HR and put forward the question: is there a future for human resources management?

Due to the success of the first meeting of Inspiring Colleagues we intend to organise one or two similar meetings a year.

Hidden Champions

Sometimes inspiring role models are 'hidden champions', those who don't want to be in the spotlight, or who are trying completely new and revolutionary methods which are not yet on the radar but seem to be working. We will invite some of these leaders to explore their leadership secrets.