Tag Archive for: Leadership Principles

The Kaleidoscope of Leadership

As a child I remember having a kaleidoscope, with each simple turn a new beautiful pattern appeared. Kaleidoscopes constantly generate changing symmetrical patterns from small pieces of coloured glass. In a similar way a kaleidoscope can symbolise anything that changes continually. Consider leadership!

“Trying to describe leadership is like having several viewers trying to compare what they see in a kaleidoscope when the mere act of passing the kaleidoscope shakes up its design.” Neal A. Maxwell.

Growing older, I am beginning to see that life can be frequently like a kaleidoscope. We can get shaken up from time to time. However, by pausing, slowing down a little, reflecting and looking inside our kaleidoscope of life and holding it to the light – beautiful new patterns emerge. Perhaps we all play the busy card too often and don’t 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 long enough to see the beauty appear.

So it is with the kaleidoscope of leadership. Endless patterns, endless models, endless ideas, endless determining factors constantly shifting and shaping our leadership styles. What matters most are the constant principles that create the most respected leaders – namely kindness, patience, meekness, humility, honesty, forgiving, commitment, respect, selflessness obedience and finally living the golden rule – do to others as you would have them do to you. Each of these qualities produces a kaleidoscope of beauty, no one can eclipse.