Speaking of Leadership
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Aug
7
The loving work of the leader-creator
Filed Under Uncategorized
Friends,
Robert Fritz writes that “Creators love their creations before the creations exist.”*
Poets, painters, conductors, he says, love the piece before it’s ever finished, read, or performed. It is true also of the creator we call “leader.” They (you?) love what they are out to create, long before it is there. Marianne lights up when she talks about her project to end poverty. Jim gets fired up talking about an economy that has become diversified. John can’t stop thinking about doubling the number of college graduates. Linda’s undaunted by challenges as she sculpts a world that celebrates diversity.
Family leaders are impassioned about their image of happy and growing children. Others stay up writing sermons because they are on fire with the idea of their church becoming a community that changes the world. Still others see the possibilities of breakthroughs in plant resistance or fuel efficiency or a Detroit river teeming with fish species that have returned home. Each loves the creation long before the work can be clearly seen let alone completed.
Some can’t stop talking about the creation they love and live to create. Others burn more quietly but no less insistently.
Alas, many of us forget that we came to work, whether in an office, shop, hospital or home, to do the loving work of the leader-creator. What is the creation you love? That you wish to bring into being? That’s worth the frustration of false starts, dead ends, and seemingly endless approaches?
The world is an awesome workshop in which to lead and so create. There are countless groups full of the potential to make something magnificent, and they are looking for someone to really love the challenge of creating with them. You’ve got to love your creation even before it exists, if you want to.
Lead with your best self,
Dan
* Robert Fritz, Your Life as Art, (Vermont: Newfane Press, 2003), p. 33.
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