Leading with NLP

Starting the Journey 19

business seminar in Prague in the Czech Republic, and the
subject of leadership came up. I do not speak Czech so I had
a translator and it soon became clear that the language did
not have a word that adequately translated the concept that
I was using the English word ‘leader’ to describe. They had
two words: manazer, meaning ‘an administrator’, and vudce,
meaning ‘a Communist Party leader’. The seminar partici-
pants said a Communist Party ‘leader’ had no authority of
their own (it came from Moscow), no vision (they did as they
were told), little knowledge and was certainly no role model
as they would consistently go home first at the end of the
day’s work! Such was the Czech cultural experience of their
erstwhile Russian ‘leaders’ that we had to coin a new word to
even begin to discuss the concept. In the end we decided to
use the English word ‘leader’. So a new word and a new con-
cept entered the Czech language that day.
Our culture influences how we think of leaders. Some cul-
tures, France for example, put more distance between
leaders and followers. The social hierarchies are more per-
vasive. The greater the distance between leader and follower,
the more difficult it seems to be a leader. You have further to
‘climb’ and more risks to take, because ‘the nail that stands
up gets hammered down’. In egalitarian cultures, such as
America, the social landscape is flatter and leadership ap-
pears to be within the reach of everyone. It’s possible for
anyone to become US President (at least in theory, although
a lot of cash helps).
Explore your own ideas about leadership with the follow-
ing exercises.

Exploring Mental Perspectives 2: Leaders

Think of a person you regard as a leader.

How far away in your mental picture do they appear?

Change the picture to make them recede further into

the distance. Do you feel any differently towards

them now?