Providence is defined as the foresight or the manifestation of divine care.  Using this definition, leadership providence is the leader’s ability to have an articulated vision and to consistently produce magnificent outcomes that move towards a stated purpose.  It gives the leader the capacity to string together a series of leadership moments and connect these dots laying out a path of success.

How do we know when leadership providence is working in our leadership journey?   It’s easy to see it in fiction or myth.

Consider Luke Skywalker, from the Star Wars movies, whose destiny calls him to shed the pain of a fatherless childhood and save his people from the oppression and tyranny of the Dark Side.  The movies lay out discrete moments in the hero’s life where he conquers personal demons and powerful villains to save his people from the fate of the dark side.  The Force, or in other words, that divine guidance, helps him make choices and decisions leading to his preordained destiny.

In mythology, we see the example of the Trojan hero Aeneas who was destined to lead his men to establish what would become the mighty city of Rome.  He faces battle after battle.  He even faces and loses love.  But, through it all, he stays connected to his divine purpose.  His followers, seeing this, dutifully support him in every moment.

So, it’s great that we can see it in fiction or myth.  Furthermore, we can easily retroactively ascribe divine providence to outcomes that were successful.  But, how do we see it in our own leadership journey? And moreover, how do we know it’s working when our future or our destiny is so uncertain?

Here are three hints that might help.

1). Use your intuition.

This will be knowledge that you gain without benefit of facts or data.  It will be information not gleaned from your five senses.  Having defined here what it’s not – that leaves everything else.  That’s intuition.

This requires what Dan Pink, in his book, A Whole New Mind, calls right-brained thinking.  This new thinking uses our intuition.  This means that the left-brain’s love of information and data will yield to the conceptual, big-picture thinking of the right.  Thus, the right brain will spark an evolution in how we think about things.

2). Think about others first.

Robert Greenleaf, founder of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, elaborates on this management concept in his essay, “Servant as Leader.”  Greenleaf says that the truly great leader is, at heart, a servant first.  He sacrifices himself for the needs of those he serves.

He explains:

[Leadership] begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.  Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.  The best test is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit or at least, not be further deprived?

3). Be self-aware.

For example, former televangelist James Bakker used his followers’ money to acquire material wealth and satisfy his sexual appetites.  He was convicted of fraud in 1998 after lining his own pockets with more than $3 million dollars that people donated to his ministry.  Not until he sat in a prison cell, broken and alone, did he realize that his selfishness had led him way, way off track.

Perhaps Leadership Providence can be summed up with one word – truth.  It requires being true to your instincts, true to others, and true to the essence of who you are.