Leadership Competency #1
Thinking in Essentials - 1/8
NOTE: This module draws from my earlier work under Black Market Leadership. The ideas here predate Chaos Studies in Leadership and form the foundation that made this work possible.
This module introduces Thinking in Essentials, the first and most critical leadership competency. It establishes how leaders learn to think clearly by identifying what truly matters before communicating, planning, or executing. Essentials form the cognitive foundation that underpins every other aspect of leadership development, including identity, systems management, and culture.
The module introduces core philosophical concepts that sharpen judgment and decision-making, not for academic knowledge, but for practical clarity. Once understood, these ideas become impossible to ignore and dramatically improve how leaders interpret problems, prioritize action, and cut through noise. Through examples, quizzes, and supporting material, this module builds the mental discipline required for effective leadership at every level.
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Thinking in Essentials, this is the first of the competencies in level one, and I'm going to say this at the outset, that this module, this particular module is without a doubt the most important module of all modules in all the levels it really is, because you'll find that essentials are the foundation of how you're going to think, how you're going to communicate, plan, definitely execute. And you'll see how I refer to essentials throughout systems, management, culture, identity, very, very important. I mean, of course, are many other different elements important throughout these levels. But essentials is just it really is a cornerstone of developing as a leader because. Well, you'll understand why as we go through this module. So in order for you to better grasp and adopt this material, I'm going to add some quizzes, probably a lot of quizzes and examples for you. And I will continually build on them. But there's going to be a lot of support material for you to to investigate, to peruse, to look through and really just to digest, because, again, I cannot overestimate how important this module is. One more thing. There are some philosophical terms I'm going to bring up here, and some of them may sound little academic and look, I'm not expecting anyone to go around, start quoting Socrates or talking about universals versus particulars. That's not an expectation. But but it is incredibly important for you to understand these concepts, because I promise you, once you understand them, you'll be like, oh, my God, I see this here and there. I see it everywhere. So with that with that again, put your thinking caps on focus and make sure do the quizzes, because this is a really fun, interesting but incredibly important element of leadership.