An Amazing Example Of Leadership
It is useless to understand leadership if you do not know how to use its essence wisely.
Successful writers, Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone, tell a wonderful story in the book “Success and Attitude”. One morning a pastor was trying to prepare his sermon in difficult conditions. His wife was out shopping. It was a rainy day, and his little boy was restless and bored, having nothing to do. Eventually, desperately, the pastor picked up an old magazine and flipped through it until he came across a vivid picture of a world map. He tore open the magazine paper, tore it to pieces, and spread it on the living room floor, saying:
- Johnny, if you can put them together, I'll give you 25 cents.
The pastor thought that would keep Johnny busy for most of the morning. But ten minutes later he heard a knock on his office door. It was his boy, with the puzzle solved. The pastor was amazed to see that Johnny had managed to finish so quickly, arranging all the pieces of paper nicely and redoing the world map.
- Boy, how did you finish so fast? the pastor asks
- Oh, well, it was simple, Johnny said. On the other side was a picture of a man. I put a sheet of paper underneath, remade the picture of the man, placed another sheet on top, then turned it over. I thought that if I put the man in order, the world would be fine.
Leadership: Do you accept reality before you focus on the things you think you know, considering that what you see is an unplanned image that is gradually being built?
How well do you integrate into other people’s “made-up” world? I must emphasize once again that the vision of an image is the essence of leadership. And the leader always remains integrated, if not in the immediate reality, in any case in the internal matrix of the image he has built about reality, that is, in an inner world in which the image could not exist without him.
A leader who begins to clash with the mentality and attitude of the people, so who cannot redirect people’s emotions to him, will never be able to raise his level of influence.
So he has to build an imposing image out of the pieces that people put together and put together to form an orientation towards a future based on expertise and vision. Moreover, the leader must form a cult of personality centered around the central figures, so to perform a combined search for an image with a certain reality in order to highlight the difference in approach to a knowledge approach.
Johnny played an excellent role as a “human trainer”, conveying to his father, with all conviction, that a man can be “in order” if he succeeds in shaping him (just as a sculptor shapes his works, according to his will, but also according to his own way of being). Anyone can be changed, depending on what you want to see in them, according to your own criteria, provided you are able to integrate into their world – so provided they accept you as a “shaper” and mentor.
If you consider yourself an expert in the field of leadership, if you want to increase your performance and reach a high level of influence, then seek to relate as well as possible to people, learn to arrange those “pieces” that make up each of them and to feed them with that defining energy for their being, for their future, so with an incentive to invigorate their spirit. If your performance does not increase the performance of others, then it is only your fault.
Leadership: Does your prestige reflect on the image you are gradually building about your vision, accepting some form of compromise before focusing on the reality you know?
The image you build of your vision is an expression of your significant belief in two opposing realities: a slowly changing reality as people continue to advance on a beaten path, and a reality that cannot manifest, which is only in your mind, so it’s actually a fantasy. And the only form of compromise that you have to accept before you focus on the reality that you know is not to get fully involved in the search for a vision that cannot come to the surface.
Just as primitive people never researched the disease that afflicted them, they sought God — just as in your case, in vain you seek success if you do not research your own being, if you do not think like a high-level leader who knows exactly what the strengths and weaknesses of the people he leads are. When you research and understand your own being, your own Self, your own character, you feel as if you’ve again won the battle with yourself, you feel that you are advancing, that you are progressing. You feel that you are in control of things, that you have a certain stability, that you have answered every question. You reassure your mind, conscience, and soul by knowing that the principles you have set for yourself are not violated by doubt or indifference.
The measure of your leadership is given by the way you focus on other people, when you focus your attention and care on their Self. Just as a painter seeks to emphasize through light and shadow the individuality of every object in space, so you, as a leader, must emphasize through your leadership the individuality of the special character of other people, by virtue of that sense of nobility which highlights and values their inner beauty.
In vain do you feel comfortable with the idea that everyone else is listening to you and following your example, giving them the responsibilities and authority that they need, because your leadership may not have substance, and you may be wrong about what you truly are. You might be just a boss, not a charismatic and beloved leader.
The essence of leadership is not to shape a vision that makes you no longer distinguish reality from the simulation of “enriched reality”.
An Amazing Example Of Leadership has to do with your involvement in a game with two opposing realities: a reality that is out of your sight, and a reality that is in front of you that is objective. What determines the image of a leader is the vision that springs from these two realities, able to inspire the kind of commitment and energy that he will need to reveal his creative potential.
