A Small Act of Leadership

Weekly wisdom to bring you home in 2 minutes.

A SHORT STORY

I’m still thinking about my time discussing leadership with the professors at West Point during my recent residency there. One of the topics of our seminar was examples of good and bad leadership within Shakespeare’s plays.

We talked a lot about how working on a play can be analogous to running a mission. And as we were talking, a short instructive story surfaced for me.

It was 2012, and I had the pleasure of reading the stage directions in my dear friend Patrick Page’s play Swansong. Roger Rees was directing the reading, and even though I was just reading stage directions, he made me feel valued.

Roger was one of the great actors of his generation, having come up at the Royal Shakespeare Company alongside Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, and others.

I was obviously nervous and felt like nobody really wanted to listen to me. I thought I was there to say my stage directions as quickly as possible and get out of the way. But Roger looked me in the eyes and said, “You hold up the play for us. Take your time. Know that we want to hear what you have to say.”

It seems simple now, but I think about that moment often. It is a reminder that we all hold up the mission in our own ways. And how powerful it is when someone looks at you and reminds you of that.

Sometimes leadership isn’t about commanding the mission.

Sometimes it is about looking someone in the eye and reminding them how much they matter.

Who in your life might need to hear that from you right now?

A POEM

“If” by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Grateful,

Michael