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“You idiot!” I berated myself for locking the car before taking my bag out. I was in a flap, rushing to an appointment. That morning I had dropped a picture and cracked the glass, dumped half the chicken food bucket over my feet, and slipped taking the stairs two at a time.
Breathe.
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It was getting late. I was trekking with a group of police officers from Singapore, on a leadership training program with Outback Initiatives. We scrambled along a narrow path that dropped away to sharp cliff rocks, pounded by an especially vigorous surf. I kept glancing down, imagining how I’d be able to rescue someone should they survive the bone-breaking tumble and be taken by the furious drag of the sea. Outdoor leaders tend to consider the worst, to be prepared (or maybe it’s just my eerie sense of the macabre).
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I was musing on rock bottom scenarios recently and exploring what we need in our personal armoury to dig us out of a rocky pit.
How bad can it get? Let’s imagine it. What do you fear the most? Disease? Illness? Maiming? Destitution? Public shame? Jail? Divorce? Being found out a fraud? Disappointing someone else? Failing a project? Going bankrupt?
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How confident are you in the future? Do you have a great sense of certainty about how the world will be in five years? in ten?
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“What am I doing here?” I sobbed. I lay face down in the mud with a 40kg canoe pinning me down awkwardly between slippery logs. I was 16, somewhere in northwest Ontario on a portage. The other girls on the canoe trip had gone on ahead and I had been left to carry one of the canoes. Again.
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Sometimes when I meet a new client for private leadership mentoring, the conversation goes something like this:
“I struggle with my colleagues. Relationships are not my best skill. I’m overworked and find it hard to say no and cope with what is asked of me. My work is slipping, things are tense at home, and I’m feeling swamped.”
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On every leadership program I ask, “How do you define leadership?”
The answers vary from, ‘getting people to follow your vision’, ‘working with others to get something done’, to ‘influence’.
My favourite answer by far is this one: “Leadership is hard.”
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In Germany, the CEO of Volkswagen, Martin Winterkorn, resigned ‘taking responsibility’ for the morally bereft decision to install deceitful software in its US diesel cars designed to evade emissions tests. Though he continues to assert there was no personal wrongdoing in the incident. Volkswagen announced it will recall 8.5 million cars in Europe, including 2.4 million in Germany and 1.2 million in the UK, and 500,000 in the US as a result of the emissions scandal.
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We’re marching quickly through the freshness of the new year. I’ve been meeting with clients to discuss their theme word for the year and what they would like to be, do, and have (aka goals).
After a lifetime of learning, teaching, and failing in aspects of goal setting and achieving, here’s what I know that trips us up:
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I’ve just completed the Conscious Leadership whitepaper and overview, as well as my yearly Goal Planner. Please use the whitepaper for reflection, to shape your leadership intentions for the year. There are also some 2015 reflection questions, and some 2016 future-focusing questions in the 2016 Planner on the last slide.
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