eadership is a particular way of approaching life, one of being committed to a lifelong process of growing toward human fulfillment. Framed in this way leadership becomes a vehicle for personal transformation as well as an agent for positive change. Perhaps more than in any other era of our history, the social, environmental, and ethical challenges of our time demand such a perspective on leadership. We need more leaders who are inspired not only by doing well for themselves but also by doing good in the world.
But how do we develop such leaders? Although leadership development has received a great deal of attention in recent years, we still lack a common framework for understanding what leadership is and how it is developed. As James McGregor Burns once put it, "Leadership is one of the most often studied yet least understood phenomena on earth."
A number of years ago, I came across a unifying framework that I found intuitive and compelling, both for its elegant simplicity and for its inherent potential for addressing human fulfillment. This framework emerged from the study of indigenous cultures across the world-Native American, African, Celtic, and Tibetan, among others. Anthropologists and psychologists found these cultures share unmistakable similarities in their views of what it takes to be an effective human being: four or five archetypal intelligences portrayed through the cardinal directions of the compass. More commonly known as a Mandala, or Medicine Wheel, this ancient framework provides a guide for personal growth and effectiveness that has withstood the test of time for thousands of years.
Each direction represents a particular intelligence for learning, relating, and living in harmony with the world. Taken as a whole, the directions symbolize perfection and balance;