What makes a group lively and engaged? What is your capability quotient? If you extend yourself, what more can you create? These are questions of a genuine leader who has learned to be less absorbed by her own vanities. In The Art of Possibility, authors Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander write in the Fifth Practice about the orchestra conductor who recognizes that using tyranny to dominate the orchestral players does not fit with the conductor's ever-evolving self, and it dampens the performance of players who feel manipulated and submissive.

Curiosity for what people are capable of—how magnificently they can indeed perform—does not surface into practice for a conductor or leader who is focused on power and on willing people to do things. Rather, this curiosity emerges from the genuine leader who knows innately that her people have untapped talent and unexpressed creativity, and she takes it upon herself to mine the vast power of human potential she has right in front of her.

To become this genuine leader, you begin by being piercingly honest with yourself to locate and disarm even that smidgen of your own tendency to control and enforce. This is not to say you provide no rules or guidelines for people to follow—people like a sense of order and stability. However in order to bring out the best in your staff, you must inquire into their experience, listen to their challenges, and most importantly ask for their input and be willing to implement new ideas—even those not yet proven.

The act of inquiring is an art and requires practice. For workers to trust your sincerity as a leader who seeks their input, your inquiry can never be experienced as a test. Rather, it must be asked with curiosity and anticipation for what will come. At first, responses may be superficial and commonplace. Patience, expressed appreciation, and the continuance of your belief in them will ultimately manifest the talent and creative flair you know they possess.

Once you have enticed your team to respond from their central selves—the part of the self that is remarkably generative and prolific—you keep them engaged by leaning in with the trust and ease of your own central self, remaining lighthearted, speaking directly and intimately with each one, and beckoning them to lighten up and loosen the seriousness that pulls them back into competitive survival mode.

Lastly, speak the truths that unfold. Aid the team in getting to 'the best of circumstances' so that their solutions and plans going forward are aligned with each person being a success. When you look to people's central selves and conduct an honest conversation, a culture forms that is hard to resist. When you proffer an irresistible culture, your people engage and far surpass the capability quotient they originally claimed. All the while, you as genuine leader shine the spotlight away from the fear of 'what will happen if it doesn't go as planned' and directly into the potency of innovative and resourceful possibility.

Lindsay Wagner