Norway August 2011
Last week I had the great pleasure of helping run The Marketing Society’s leadership programme for the eighth year. It is a powerful mix of insights from successful marketing leaders and a large dose of FED. The participants love it.
Fascinatingly all these successful leaders were very different personalities. They were walking proof that there is no one way to be a leader. It’s much more about being the very best you can be.
But while they were all different, there was something consistent about them – they all had been up to something for most of their working lives, it was just how they were. They had me think back to one of my favourite quotes from the great Carl Rogers:
“The process of the good life is not a life for the faint-hearted… it involves stretching and growing… the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life.”
Ooh, there’s an interesting thought – what’s involved in the ‘courage to be’?
And this week reflect for a while on how fully ‘launched’ you are in the stream of your life? What can you do to be more up to something and going for it this week?
By Steve Radcliffe
2 Comments
Orla Whalley
I think my reflection on these words are – it is the courage to be … ‘me’. I have spent a long time trying to fit the same mould as others in my company (often because I have been told to) – so it is having the courage to recognise the fact that I am a different personality to the others around me and it is actually one of my strengths – I bring new thinking and challenge to many situations. However, it is also recognising I still have plenty of learning and growth ahead of me in figuring out how to present that ‘difference’ so people can recognise it as an asset.
Steve Radcliffe
HI Orla, lovely to hear from you. Please absolutely be the very best you rather than who you think others might want you to be so they can be more comfortable. And yes there sometimes is a challenge in then figuring out how to best engage others in the you you want to be. The trick here might be ‘don’t try and work this one out by yourself’. Talk to others about this challenge, learn and practice,
best wishes, Steve