Now we will explore Leadership Capacity 7: Reset. I mentioned several posts ago I considered calling Leadership Capacity 7: Reset something different. Something like Renew. I didn’t and I want to tell you why.
Stephen Covey in his seminal work The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People listed as a habit, Sharpen the Saw. That sounds a lot like renewal, doesn’t it? I don’t take exception to that as a needed habit. In fact, I agree with all seven habits.
Yet I am not writing of habits here. Hopefully you’re on to that. I am writing about capacities. And while you need the habit of renewing yourself so you do sharpen your saw, the leaders at the vanguard of the new leadership will find the habit alone to be insufficient. They will need the capacity to Reset.
"So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death."
Time by Pink Floyd
If you are going to lead into this unknown future we face, more than a good mind, controlled emotion and a collaborative spirit will be required. You will need your feelings to guide you. You will need to be able to feel your way through the dark. You will need to make split-second decisions in defining moments. You will also need to be able to pause when every fiber in your body is screaming at you to act.
In short, you must attune to life.
To attune to life, develop a quietness of life. You must know how to stop and listen to life and to your own self. That will renew you, yes. But more than that, it will allow you a pause to reflect on what has happened, what you’ve learned and what you will now do differently. You will know things that you have no reason to know and you won't even know why you know.
Few people stop to reflect and truly learn more than once or twice in a lifetime. Some never.
A warrior can do it in an instant, and therefore as many times as s/he needs to in a day, even within a battle. The sun never sets on a warrior where s/he has not learned something and therefore goes to sleep that night different.
I feel leaders will become warriors, warriors of the highest sense. Warriors, I believe, in learning to work with time learn to bend time, and in the flexing of it, they create a wrinkle in time—a moment, a day, a season—and in that wrinkle they Reset.
In our next post, we will complete that last thought.
(c)2008 Otis Woodard
