Leading with Purpose: How Can You Become an Innovative, Courageous Leader?

It is not enough just to set goals, warned Williams.

Preparation to meet those goals must include building block experiences that give you the skills or knowledge to move closer to goals, credentials that keep you current and relevant on new requirements for what you want to accomplish, relationships that enhance your personal and professional life and role models that exhibit traits you want to develop.

Because leaders with purpose are also innovators, they share a number of traits, Williams pointed out. These are:

• Always question their purpose. “If you are not always asking yourself what your purpose is and how close you are to meeting goals, you are one of the 80 percent of people who are not happy at work,” said Williams.
• Search for new ideas and ways to re-apply them. “There are very few new ideas in the world, but an innovative leader sees something that works in one place and applies it in another place to see if it will work,” explained Williams.
• Engage with other innovators. “If you put yourself in the company of other innovators who are smarter than you and who challenge you, everyone becomes better,” said Williams.
• Experiment with new ideas. “Many people are often overwhelmed with information and frozen when it is time to make a decision,” pointed out Williams. “Innovative leaders with purpose has a bias toward action – they build it and go – taking it to the next level rather than spend time talking about it.”
• Take ideas to scale. Using the cheetah and the wolf as examples, Williams explained how the cheetah’s efforts to hunt prey by itself is not always successful, but the wolf’s approach to hunt as a pack is successful. “Moving an idea forward as a team is more effective,” he explained.
• Lead with courage. Leaders who understand and can communicate their purpose can also be courageous, said Williams. “You can do the right thing in the right way if you focus on your faith, your relationships and your values.”