In my last posting I mentioned the importance of resilience as a characteristic of a leader. Leaders also realize that it is not tools that make a leader but rather how those tools are used. It is also leadership in practice that provides the real world of leadership for an individual. I have noticed a key difference between students who have limited or no work experience and students who are working in the way they react to a leadership development course. For students in the first group, the content seems abstract while the working student sees the content in a practice modality.
I have used many leadership tools over the years. I have tried some of the fad techniques at times and found some of these tools useful for me as a leader and some of them not so useful. I have continued to use some of the tools even when the fad ended because the tools continued to be useful. An interesting happening is the rediscovery of long ago rejected tools when a new leadership event required the use of an old fad tool. All of this is meant to make the argument that I am not the same leader I was ten years ago or even last month. Leadership is an evolving process nurtured by the new books I read each month, my blog where I test ideas, new work experiences and the new people that I meet. More recently, I have become better at communication as I try different characters in a play reading group that my wife and I have joined. Over the years I have also learned to use skills and approaches from multiple disciplines. Although I trained as a sociologist, I am also a public health professional, a psychologist, an economist, a political scientist, an epidemiologist, a management consultant, and a leadership scholar and practitioner. I collaborate more with people from all these disciplines and we work together on new approaches to problem solving and decision making. Frans Johanssen calls this creative approach from a multidisciplinary perspective, work at the intersection.
The great lesson about the evolution of a leader is leadership doesn’t stop at age 65. It can last a lifetime. The context of our work is also different all the time. Leaders can always be excited by the many new opportunities that their leadership brings about although I do admit that stress still exists.
Rowitz On Leadership 
As a former MARPHLI Fellow, I benefited much from your teachings. I recently retired and just found your blog through LinkedIn and was again blessed by your insights on leadership. Your recent recent blogs reminded me of some of the things a former business colleague, Jim Rohn, taught me, (and many others.) His favorite: “The challenge of leadership is to be strong. but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly!” Thank you again, Dr. Rowitz for enriching my life.
Hero Tameling
Thank you Hero for the nice comments