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I’ve had the privilege of holding many titles over a lifetime, and each title has brought me insights, opportunities, and, as is true about everything in life, challenges. I was, first of all, “son,” and then became “student” and in my early teens, “believer.
Early-20th-century philosopher and poet, George Santayana, said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” With that in mind, here’s a quick look back at seven world-changing events from 2016 and leadership lessons we can learn from them.
Without mistake, the Advent and Christmas season holds profound lessons on humility and leadership. Writers and painters and composers have highlighted these themes of humility for two thousand years—the lowly manger, the poor and dispossessed young couple who were unable to find a decent place for their child to be born, the shepherds and sheep and donkeys and stable.
Throughout the course of the year, I have the privilege of working with extraordinary men and women who are committed to serve others and to serve a calling greater than themselves. Such men and women – leaders who chose to serve, or “serving leaders” – fashion organizations that produce extraordinary good in the world.
A common myth about leadership is that a leader is responsible to “establish a compelling vision.” This is just not true. Many leaders step into an organization that already has a great vision, and they should not try to prove that they are a leader by cooking up some new vision.
Stanford professor of organizational behavior, Robert Sutton, says, “The gap between knowing and doing is larger than the gap between ignorance and knowledge.” I can’t verify Sutton’s observation empirically, but experience seems to bear this out.
At the heart of Serving Leadership is a non-negotiable premise: people are your organization’s greatest treasure. This point of view requires a change in leaders accustomed to thinking of people as a tool, function, or cost.
There’s a famous quote that is just, plain wrong. Those who can, do; and those who can’t, teach. We’ve all had the misfortune of bumping into a couple of blowhards who can neither do nor teach. While they’re “teaching,” it’s apparent they don’t know what they’re talking about.
In my nearly 57 years, I’ve walked many long pathways alongside discouraged, depressed, or despairing friends and loved ones. I’ve sat by their bedsides. I’ve listened to the laments and the outcries of dear souls who feel utterly separated from life’s meaning and joy.
When I was a boy, I was a dreamer. Starting this blog with that sentence makes it sound like I’m not a dreamer anymore. Nothing could be further from the truth, so allow me to write that first sentence more to my point: When I was a boy, my mother worried that I was too much of a dreamer.