Modeling Courageous Leadership: Intelligent Disobedience

- The difference between good and great leaders is significant. Displaying courageous leadership is the difference, and part of that is intelligent disobedience. Now, intelligent disobedience is a concept, comes from the world of seeing eye dogs. Picture this, if you will. You are standing at a street corner with your seeing eye dog. Your seeing eye dog is on a rigid harness. That harness makes it easier for you to command the dog, but it also makes it easier for the dog to guide you.

You're on the street corner, and it's one of many street corners popping up all over the country right now, that not only just have the "Walk"/"Don't Walk" signal, but also have an audible tone associated with it. You are on the street corner with your dog, and you hear the signal turn to "Walk." You command the dog to go forward. The dog, however, has other information. A car is parked at the curb, and is backing into the crosswalk as a means of going out into traffic, presenting a hazard for you and the dog.

You do not want the dog to obey that command. You want the dog to understand the fact that you're crossing the street. You want the dog to understand the goal. But the whole idea of getting you there is going to be different than maybe you anticipated. That concept, in seeing eye dogs, is called intelligent disobedience. They disobey the rules, they disobey your command, but they understand the intent and the goal.

It's one of four components of displaying courageous leadership that I wanna talk to you about today.