To create your personal leadership philosophy, you must define your principles or code of conduct.  These principles you will live and work by are called maxims.  In the context of the leadership maxims approach, it is a short, personally meaningful, and easily explained statement that reflects one of your assumptions & beliefs about leadership.

Maxims do not contain buzzwords (like leverage, optimise, outside the box, win-win).  Maxims are simple, clear statements that serve as reminders for how you want to behave and lead and how you want your team members to behave.  When written well, your leadership maxims become simple daily reminders of how you should behave so your actions are consistent with who you want to be as a leader.

The all-encompassing nature of your leadership maxims provides you a means for living your leadership philosophy during every waking moment of your existence.  It is that constant application of your leadership maxims that strengthen the leader you are and will become.  Theory is nice.  Application and behaviour, is where you have an impact on the world around you.

The approach outlined in "One Piece of Paper" by Mike Figliuolo will help you to clarify, for yourself and others, the heart of your personal leadership philosophy, and to do so simply enough that you can capture it on a single piece of paper.  As you apply this method, you will write down fifteen to twenty emotionally powerful statements or reminders of personal events that will serve to guide your behaviours on a daily basis.

To get a complete view of your leadership philosophy, you need to evaluate four aspects of leadership:

1. Leading yourself: what motivates you and what are your rules of personal conduct?

2. Leading the thinking: where are you taking the business unit, firm or organisation and how will you innovate to drive change?

3. Leading your people: how can you lead them as individuals rather than treating them like faceless cogs in the machine?

4. Leading a balanced life: if you are burned out, you are worthless.

All four aspects of leadership are equally important.  If you truly want your philosophy to be well-constructed, the tools you use should all come from the same toolbox. Check out, Mike Figliuolo: “One Piece of Paper: the Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership”.