[It's your first day on the job.  After completing the necessary HR paperwork, you gather in a large conference room with other new employees.  You find a seat, reshuffle your paperwork, and say hello to the person next to you. You take out your new company notebook and begin to write some notes, when someone in the front of the room interrupts your thoughts to make an announcement that the president of the company has arrived.  She would like to welcome you to the company and say a few words on leadership.]

Welcome to our company!  We are honored and privileged to have you as new members of our great company.

If you were to Google the word "Leadership," you would receive over 455 million references that would take over 15 million hours to read and review.  Given that I only have ten minutes with you today, allow me the opportunity to welcome you to our company, introduce what leadership is at our company, and seek your commitment in our collective leadership journey.  

My objective is for you to become a great leader by enhancing your capacity to lead, developing your leadership vision and fostering an environment of adaptation, change, prosperity, and growth.  Now if I have your interest and attention, let's get started --

What is Leadership?

Our company has embraced the following definition of leadership from the bestselling leadership book, ‘The Leadership Challenge’ by authors Kouzes and Posner:

"Leadership is transforming values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, separateness into solidarity and risks into rewards.  This is in effort to foster the long-term development of our employees, products, and services so they can adapt, change, prosper and grow."

Allow me to elaborate on a few elements of this leadership definition.

A value is an important and lasting belief or ideals shared by the members of a culture about what is good or bad and desirable or undesirable. Values have major influence on a person's behavior and attitude and serve as broad guidelines in all situations.  Our values influence how we think, drive our decisions and result in our behaviors. The outcome of a value-based decision impacts you, those around you, the customer and the company.

The leadership values that we embrace at our company are integrity, courage, inclusion, accountability, and kindness.  These values may be familiar to you, but allow me to explain how they apply here at our company.

Integrity is doing the right thing, even though no one else will ever know.  This value is at the heart of our company. We value courage when times are tough and the odds may be against us.  We value inclusion to involve all of our team members from all backgrounds and perspectives in effort to move our company forward.  We value accountability of our actions, decisions, and behaviors and those that work for and with you. And we value kindness, which is the soul of our company.  Kindness to each other and to the customers we serve each day. Nothing, nothing is more important than kindness.

The other parts of our leadership definition include:

• Visions into realities: this is about our focus on vertical and horizontal execution; getting things done and done right;
• Obstacles into innovations: this provides you with the motivation to experiment and not to give up when confronted with adversity;
• Separateness into solidarity - individually, we are each strands of a rope and can break upon straining; together, our individual stands are unbreakable; and
• Risks into rewards: the reward should equal or exceed the risk, and we should be quick to recognize the effort and innovation that helped us achieve those rewards.
  
  In closing, allow me to share a quote from one of the founding fathers of the United States of America, John Quincy Adams:

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."  

This quote speaks to qualities of inspiration, dreaming, learning, and doing that are exemplified in great leaders.  It is our expectation that you will become that great leader, and together we will make a significant difference in the lives of our fellow team members, customers and in the communities that we all live in.

It has been my honor and privilege to wish you well on the great journey ahead.

Congratulations and welcome to our company!

[You stay sitting at your chair for a few moments and read the notes that you scribbled down in your notebook - "value-based decisions," "nothing is more important than kindness," "dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."  And, you begin wonder if these are the answers to so many unanswered questions in your life.]

Until Next Friday,