Leadership Movie - Invictus - How To Use Symbols As A Leader

Invictus is one of the best movies I have seen that demonstrates the power of symbols in leadership. Morgan Freeman plays Nelson Mandela. The movie represents Mandela’s use of the country's rugby team as a symbol of solidarity against apartheid. If you lead an organization and want to learn how powerful symbols can be to a culture, this is a must see movie. The movie is named after a poem that Mandela read to give him strength when he was imprisoned:

Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

--William Ernest Henley

Looking Yourself In The Mirror - A Requirement of Going from Good to Great as a Leader

I was at the Aspen Global Leadership Network Conference this summer and one of the participants offered a different take on an adage many of us have heard. That adage is "How would you feel if you read about what you had done on the front page of the newspaper?" His take seem to ring deeper with me: "Can you wake up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror with elation and be greeted with a warm smile?"

The person you have to face in life is you. People will have many opinions about your behavior good or bad, generous or stingy, but they will never appear opposite you in the mirror.

Often people go through a journey in life that Joseph Campbell calls the Hero's Journey. Campbell says, "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."

You may feel you have gone on your own hero's journey, having left home to experience "fabulous forces" and won decisive victories. It's important, of course, to share knowledge and spoils with others upon your return. But you don't forget to reunite with your former self. A poem, that I recently came across, brings this point out with such clarity. It is called "Love After Love" by Derek Walcott

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here.  Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.  Feast on your life.

I lost my friend Peter Lytle this weekend

I was suppose to have lunch with Peter today. When he didn't call. I simply thought well he must have gotten caught up in one of his many and varied projects. He does that from time to time and it is perfectly OK with me. It worked both ways with Peter - he called me late one Friday afternoon last fall and said, "What are you doing?" The next thing I know we are heading for his Island up in northern Wisconsin. The next day he said lets go for a drive and off we went to Madeline Island to go scootering the rest of the day. He and I would talk about how we want to change the world - with Peter he wanted to teach the world about how we are destroying the environment. He was not one to simply proselytize uninterested people he would do things that would draw you in and then you would be hooked. He built one of the worlds greenest houses and lived in it. Then he would take everyone who wanted to tour it through it. It never seemed to bother him giving tours of his home - I think it was because he was changing the world one person at a time. And then he built his portal Livegreenlivesmart.com to let people self discover how they can do what he did. He seemed to always be writing and doing research.

Peter and I shared a passion for business, the environment, behaviorial economics, a thirst for education of ourselves and others, and mostly we cared about people. Because of what we had in common our conversations would take us in every direction imaginable - And the depth of our conversation was grand.

Peter would tell me how friends would call with problems and he would help them even when it was clear he had enough on his plate. He valued his friends and his family and just loved speaking of them. He loved life and he packed things in - he was not one for stillness.

Peter Lytle was more than a friend he was a mentor. I will miss him dearly. I would stop by his office and interrupt him all the time - he always welcomed my spontaneous interruptions - I loved him for that....

Who are you going to have lunch with tomorrow - celebrate your time together it is short!

Mary Oliver is a favorite poet of mine and I thought this was very fitting of Peter's passing..


When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Do you belong or feel abandoned?

I was lucky enough to meet David Whyte in my Stephen Covey leadership course many years ago, at the time I had no idea who he was. Since then I have paid to attend his workshops. I have bought many of his books, audios, and videos. He is something very special. I would like to share a poem he wrote that we have hanging on our wall at home.

Self Portrait

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong -- or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying "this is where I stand."
I want to know if you know how to melt
Into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing
To live day by day
With the consequence of love
And the bitter unwanted passion
Of your sure defeat.
I have been told
In that fierce embrace
Even the gods
Speak of God.

~ David Whyte ~

(Fire in the Earth)

From Success to Significance

When you consider the concept of moving from success to significance. The question arises within yourself along the journey, "Do I have to do something to be significant? Or is it enough that I am who I am? This poem by Mary Oliver called Sunshine brings a greater depth of meaning to these questions.

Sunrise by Mary Oliver

You can
die for it--
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.