As leaders, we’re often conditioned to believe the fallacy that we are in control.  “I’m the leader, so all these things that are happening are because of me.” “I can control how other people feel and what they do.”  These are blatant distortions of reality that leaders are frequently invited to embrace.  We’re told that great leaders take responsibility for everything and everyone … they decide what’s going to happen and then make it happen.  Essentially, we’re told - though never in so many words - that great leaders play god.  And for most of my career, I was all too ready to hear it.  That’s often what my ego wanted to believe anyways.  But abundant research shows that the most effective leaders don’t operate that way.

Think about what’s going to happen during the rest of your day.  What are you going to do?  Who are the people that you’re going to be with?  What are things you might say to them?  Now I’m going to invite you to entertain a startling thought.   Imagine that it might be the last conversation you’re going to ever have with those people.  What would you say to them if you knew you may never speak again?  How present would you be in that conversation?  How honest would you be? 

This last week I’ve looked for some outside voices that can balance out some of my challenging inner ones.  I’ve come back to a voice that has given me a lot of guidance and comfort over the last few years. Thich Nhat Hanh was a Buddhist monk and peace activist who was exiled from his native Vietnam in 1966 for refusing to take sides in his country’s brutal civil war.  As I’ve found myself full of emotion and energy to resist in some way, he reminds me that there IS a way to rebel that doesn’t involve more judgment, hate, and polarization.  He saw a radical way to “resist” that is life-affirming and compassionate.  And he saw harder times than these.  

I wanted to share some of his words with you this week.