Where Are We Going?
I grew up with a fairly external understanding of leadership.
Leaders were people who lived somewhere else. They did not live where I lived, in rural Wisconsin, or when I lived there. I read books about leaders in history, and thought it must have been wonderful to have lived in such exciting, challenging times.
I thought it would have been so great to be a leader and to have the answers to such important questions!
Grown ups would tell me stories about what things were like when they were kids, and it was exciting to think about how what they did then affected my life before I was even born. I decided that I would go where leaders were, that I would spend my life finding ways to make a difference.
I went to school, and went to work, and had a real challenge finding the leaders who knew the answers. I worked with people who had positions of responsibility, who were recognized as leaders, and they seemed to be as confused as I was. They would ask me for help, and I even had some of those positions myself.
It took me a long time, and lots of work, to recognize that leaders are not people who have the right answers. It took even more work to appreciate that having those answers is not really that helpful.
As I worked with leaders in many different places and many different roles, I slowly came to appreciate that leadership is much more about asking good questions than about finding the right answers.
Leadership is much more about being the person you are, the person you were meant to be, than about responding to particular problems. As I grow into my truest self, and connect with the deepest selves of the people around me, we draw the best from each other.
Leaders help us grow into our true selves.
Where would you like to go?
[Image by Jack Zalium]
4 Comments
Wayne McEvilly
January 25, 2012Good morning Greg!
Ah! Good to absorb your communications here. I would like to confess that after 75 years on the planet I tend to feel the necessity at rare moments to a sort of leaning in the direction of, for lack of a better term, weariness. This is something I fight with all my might. It is only when I go within (to that place where I sit down in the presence of what I call “The Divine Within” that I become fully cognizant of the primal fact: you have within you, Wayne, all the energy you will ever require to accomplish your most love-invested dreams.
But enough about me! I am commenting on the fact that your post has been of real value to me this morning. It will resonate throughout the day, and no doubt the week, and on….I do not believe such affirmative vibrations ever come to an end – There is no final shore.
Where I would like to go is to bring the joy of my Mozart to millions – especially children.
That is one of my destinations.
And as I get closer to it, you will have proven to be of assistance in the process.
Thank you.
Wayne
Strategic Monk
January 25, 2012Good morning, Wayne! Thank you, I appreciate the opportunity to resonate with you, and look forward to going on and on.
healingmuse
January 25, 2012Hi Greg,
I wish to go to the next hour knowing I don’t have the ‘answers’ either. But, like your posts says, I have the ability to be me 100% and that will just have to do.
monika
Strategic Monk
January 25, 2012Thank you, Monika. You are much more than “that will just have to do,” you are the best you possible. Keep asking the questions.