The Intelligent Leader

CHAPTER 1 Getting to Know Thyself

If you’ve ever taken an introductory philosophy class or spent any time reading the wide variety of personal development books available today, you’ve probably run across the phrase “Know thyself.” This ancient Greek aphorism was popularized by Socrates, who, according to his pupil Plato, expanded upon it to make the famous claim “An unexamined life is not worth living.”

I bring this up not to bore you with a review of the history of Western philosophy, but to orient you to the kind of inquiry that lies at the heart of Intelligent Leadership. If you want to develop as a leader, which means developing as a human being, it’s crucial that you examine yourself as deeply as you can. You need to understand what drives you, what tends to get in the way of your success, and what latent gifts you might possess.

As we discussed in the introduction, the key to making sure your self-inquiry leads to real, lasting results is knowing what you’re examining. Are you looking primarily at accomplishments, skills, and behaviors (the part of the iceberg that’s above the surface—the outer core)? Or are you examining the deeper structures of your inner core, which comprises character, values, thinking patterns, and beliefs? The Intelligent Leadership model is focused on developing your knowledge of all these dimensions of yourself. More specifically, the IL helps you to understand the relationship between your inner and outer core.

I love models. They help us to ...