By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy
Here’s an idea to help you strengthen the power of your beliefs. Reading time: 3:34

Leaders are willing to wear their BVDs in public for all to see. Your BVDs are who you are underneath it all. B for Beliefs. V for Values. And D for Disciplines.

As Max De Pree writes in his book: Leadership is an Art: “Managers who have no beliefs but only understand methodology and quantification are modern day eunuchs.” Ouch!

The dictionary says that a eunuch is a man who has had his sexual organs removed. Secondary definitions underscore the political futility of a eunuch as one who lacks virility or power.

Even though De Pree’s observation some 25 years ago is obviously sexist and hardly politically correct, the concept is still valid. Leaders without beliefs call into question their manhood, their humanity.

If they can’t stand up in public for something—in their BVDs—then no one can stand with them. Without people standing with you or following you, you are no leader.

So the most effective leaders grow their beliefs, their values and their disciplines (i.e. a regimen that develops or improves a skill) in their gardens of curiosity. There they learn what interests them, what sparks their passion, what drives their thinking, what heightens their vision, what invigorates their involvement and what ultimately validates their existence.

Their beliefs become their MO ( modus operandi) for success—an MO that author W. Clement Stone called a Magnificent Obsession.

What’s your MO? What are you obsessed about? George Washington Carver was obsessed with the peanut. He invented more than 300 different uses for the peanut, saying that his success stemmed from his “love of the peanut”.

With those beliefs well –rooted leaders, standing in their BVDs, are more than ever bathed in courage, awash in conviction and showered in commitment. With those beliefs well-conceived, leaders heighten their vision, invigorate their involvement and ultimately validate their capability to rely on the quality of their ingenuity not the quality (or lack thereof) of their resources.

These belief barons personally take charge of situations much like the musician who smashed his Stradivarius-sounding violin to the ground. Then he calmly explained to the stunned audience that he had been playing a $50 violin a cheap violin that he had purchased at a pawnshop.

The well-trained violinist said: “I smashed that $50 violin to prove to you that performance is based inside the person not inside the instrument.” So is leadership.

Leadership is born within. No one else can define or align your brand of leadership. Only you can stand in pubic wearing only your BVDs, brandishing your Beliefs, your Values and your Disciplines. In developing your beliefs:

• Architects cannot renovate it.
• Businesses cannot incorporate it.
• Churches cannot inculcate it.
• Developers cannot innovate it.
• Engineers cannot calculate it.
• Governments cannot legislate it.
• Judges cannot adjudicate it.
• Lawyers cannot litigate it.
• Manufacturers cannot fabricate it.
• Politicians cannot appropriate it.
• Scientists cannot formulate it.
• Technicians cannot generate it.
• Only you can orchestrate it.

Only you can enunciate your beliefs. Only you can articulate your values. Only you can demonstrate your disciplines. And only you can illustrate who you are underneath it all: standing in public in your BVDs.

Today’s ImproveMINT

Wear your BVDs in public to keep your leadership thinking in mint condition.

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