Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light

By: Brian Kolodiejchuk

Friends,

Let me steal a family story for a leadership lesson.  It’s dangerous being a leadership teacher, because it gives family and staff license to hold me to my “best self” standards.

I was hitting a tennis ball with my 3 kids a couple weeks ago.  Kate and Cece were on one court.  Jack and I on the other.  Jack is in the early stages where the racket flops, the wrist flips, the feet forget to move; it takes a lot to get it together.  I was coaching for all I was worth, trying to keep it down to about three instructions.  As I wandered toward Kate’s court to pick up an errant ball, she asked me The Great Question:  “Are you open to some coaching?”

I learned The Great Question about ten years ago from Denise Stein and Brad Zimmerman, two great executive coaches.  I’d used it with Kate.  And this wasn’t the first time she’d used it with me.  Can you put yourself in my tennis shoes, being asked that question by one of your kids?  In my psychic shoes I had mixed feelings: curiosity, pride (that she was using a lesson I taught her), openness, but also the great mix of pride and defensiveness (as in, “who does she think she is using my lessons on me and trying to tell me how to coach?!?”)

I said, “Yep, I’m open to coaching.”  She said quite simply, “Quit coaching him.”  She was so right.  What I was doing to Jack was what I used to do to that ridiculous Country Sedan I used to drive to the Ford Plant in the 70s, when it conked out:  I’d flood the engine.  Poor guy wasn’t getting enough air; just a lot of gas from dad.

I hit with him again yesterday.  He asked me “are you open to coaching?”  So, I knew where that was going!  “Quit all the coaching?” I asked.  “Yes” he said.  I told him I would only say one thing and that was “good.”  I don’t know about you, but sometimes I need to be reminded to turn off the (well meaning), over-charged critic in order to

Lead with my best self,

Dan

Friends, 

I’ve enjoyed talking to all sorts of groups about my book Everyday Leadership: Getting Results in Business, Politics and Life.  It’s confirmed for me that there is a certain consistency about leadership principles.  In just the last two weeks I’ve had engaging conversations with a very diverse group of audiences — architects and Rotarians, cyber-educators and energy providers.  Most fun for me, each audience teaches me.  I was surprised at a point the architects amplified last week.  

I talked to them about energy and how to unleash it.  I came to a point I usually touch upon quickly:  Release the past!  I speculated that everyone in that room had someone on their team who had messed up something, and that each one of my listeners was to some degree holding onto that past.  What surprised me was their response when I asked the admittedly leading question: “Don’t you think that when you’re still holding on — disappointed or angry with them — that they will know it – whether you think you’re communicating it or not?”  The overwhelming response was, “of course.”  If I’d had a meter to gauge their level of agreement with the question it would have touched on 85%.  Sometimes I say things that I think I know intuitively.  Sometimes audience response tells me, “You have something there . . . but not much.”  This time, I clearly hit something . . . and then some. 

So let me finish the point, and please comment on this blog about the degree to which I am on to something.  People make (what we think are) mistakes.  When we don’t engage them, or we engage but still feel unresolved, we tend to carry the indictment, frustration, even anger.  And then we communicate it in smirks, avoidances, preferences for other players on the team, sarcasm, or defeatingly low expectations of the offender. 

And the prescription is . . . ?  If there’s something to say, say it.  Get as much resolution as you can, take appropriate action.  AND MOVE ON.  If you hold onto negative feelings and expectations, you will unconsciously and perhaps consciously, create more of the same.  You have to be prepared for and expect their best if you hope to, 

Lead with your best self, 

Dan      

Friends,

I have always been most humbled and most inspired by a certain kind of leadership.  These leaders get me energized.  They make me think anything is possible.  They make me start to think about what I could do that I’m not doing.  I’ve seen these leaders in the political sphere, as well as the domains of business and of social change.  And last night, along with my family I watched just such a leader in the field of the arts and of social change.  His name is Rick Sperling, and he founded the Mosaic Youth Theater of Detroit.

Rick created something out of nothing.

At the newly renovated Detroit Film Theater inside the nearly, completely renovated Detroit Institute of Arts, Rick’s troupe of 40 or so Detroit high school students completely wowed that packed theater with their performance of Rick’s original musical, Now That I Can Dance.  15 years ago Rick had the vision of young people in Detroit having a place to perform musically and theatrically at a world-class level, and now quite simply they do it.  They have performed internationally, played at the White House, and now year after year recruit and train and graduate wonderfully talented young people. It started with the dream, continued with impoverished sacrifice and extraordinary passion, and then spread to hundreds of people whose fires of hope were lit by Rick’s enthusiasm.

What could you create out of nothing?

Perhaps you have a big dream like Rick’s. Will you end up 70 or 80 years old and wonder, “what would’ve happened if I gave it a try?”  So why not give it a try?  Perhaps you have simpler vision.  You think your department could work much better.  You see yourself changing the life of a child as a big brother or big sister.  You’ve thought about adoption.  You have an idea for a company, a book, or writing a song (at the center of Rick’s historical musical is the wonder of a 19-year-old girl who wrote a song in two days time which became Motown’s first number one single).

A dream or vision is a serious thing.  If there is one in your soul, protect it, play with it (or pray with it), give it just a little room to breathe.  Perhaps wonder most of all: am I here to create the reality of the vision, or is it possible that the vision is here to create the true reality of me?

Rick Sperling invites us all to ask questions that would really lead us to

Lead with our best selves,

Dan