Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of June 29th
We are excited to celebrate the milestone of sharing 365 morning coffee posts! We have officially written a leadership reflection for every day of the year. We hope you have enjoyed sharing in these with us.
Mining a Deep Vein of Gold
Leadership capacity is buried deep within us all and this capacity is highly diversified. Capacity is like a deep vein of gold that, to someday reach the surface and expose its excellence, must be slowly mined and gradually summoned. Some people are early bloomers; their leadership ability emerges quickly and breaks through when relatively young. Others are late bloomers, needing time, seasoning, and extended travel down the path to reveal their excellence. Unfortunately, much leadership training today ignores this truth, and ignores this great diversity in capacity and growth timelines. We incorrectly view everyone as on the same timetable and same glide scope. We must mine each vein of leadership capacity differently, depending on the readiness of the person. Therefore, we must create the conditions under which greatly diverse leaders can emerge and flourish. This is not so different than a gardener who carefully cultivates the soil allowing many different varieties to flourish.
Hope and Humility
If I read all of these daily leadership reflections, now numbering nearly 365, and listed all of the maxims reflected throughout, it would be easy for someone to say, “Look at our modern world; most of what you extol hardly exists in reality.” Yes, it may seem so. We extol honor but too often we see bankrupt behavior. We speak of responsibility and accountability yet find few stories of it on the evening news. We point to grit and resiliency as foundations of lasting excellence yet see so many falling pray to instant gratification and a thin culture of self esteem. So I am left with hope, even when there are so many examples contrary to what I hope for. I hope that having a clear sense of ideals still matters. I hope that standing somewhat against the modern tide is not only necessary but helpful in reminding me that excellence is never really lost, but at times, just needs reawakening. And with this hope I find growing within me a deeper sense of humility. Hoping yet not fully knowing. Do the best we can, with what we are given, and towards the task at hand. Semper Fidelis. The rest is in Someone else’s hands.
Turning Around
Because this is the 365th reflection in this series I thought I would contemplate the “one big thing” I’ve learned so far. Here it is: Turning around. When I look at everything I believe to be true about life and leadership, I cannot escape the insight that development follows this timeless pattern: We leave home (our comfort zone), move inward to conquer our limitations, and then outward to engage the world in community, hopefully transformed and better able to serve. It seems life, no matter how you parse it, follows this path of growth, failure, and rebirth. Or as others describe it: advance, retreat, advance. Life and leadership development never follow a neat, linear, or straight line. The journey is a lifecycle requiring constant turning around; conversion periods where we both let go of our old self while simultaneously adopting a wiser, better self. This turning around doesn’t happen once but repeatedly through life. We must move down, and break open, to then rise up and outwards to higher realms of excellence. We must first move down, to then gain great height later. And so I conclude again; heroes are made, not born.
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