Be the leader. Be the change!

I tried but couldn’t do it.

?Every time I sat down to write last week’s Thoughtful Spark, the bullet riddled baby’s body, the abducted grandmother wedged on a motorbike between the two men who had just murdered her husband, and the jumble of decimated cars, their occupants killed at the Festival of Peace and Love on the Israel-Gaza border streamed through my mind on an endless loop of horror and heartbreak.

?Writing a short essay about leadership and horses and signing it “Cheery bye” with these shattering images ever present seemed surreal and soulless.

?How could such things happen in this day and age?, I kept asking myself. We say we’d never let another Holocaust occur, but genocide has been and is alive and well across the globe today. Think Rwanda, Syria, Bosnia, Yemen, Burma, Darfur, Chechnya, among others recently. ?Now Israel and Palestine are committing war crimes against one another.

?What does this say about leadership??

?It says leadership exists on a spectrum for good and for bad. There’s leadership to inspire, empower, and to create positive impact. That’s leadership for the betterment of all.? And there’s leadership to manipulate, subjugate and destroy. That’s leadership for the benefit of a few or of one.

?It says that leadership is a tool. How it’s wielded depends on the values and vision of the leader.

And as we are all leaders in some way or another, how we lead in any given situation depends on what we believe in, and how we choose to show up.

?It’s tempting when we’re frustrated or angry, ambitious, or needy to show up with our own agenda front and central. Why would we want to help someone else succeed if it’s at our expense? No! Our self-advancement comes first. Why wouldn’t we appropriate that which we covet? We did it as children, snatching toys from others. Why not do it as adults, especially when no one is around to reprimand us? We think it's our right to achieve, amass, and become masters of our own fate even at the expense of others. So, let’s do it. If others achieve a few things too, fine, but our success comes first.

Years? ago, I read People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck, M.D. author of the best-selling classic, The Road Less Travelled. I was struck by his thesis that evil starts one small acquiescence at a time.

No doubt you weren’t excited about working in a concentration camp from the get-go. But you were mesmerized by Hitler’s message at first. Becoming a Nazi, like many of your friends, ignited a sense of purpose in you. Your first assignment in your service to the Reich must have made you proud of your patriotism. Maybe the next one, like helping to herd up Jews and stuffing them in trains headed for the camps was a little more difficult, but you subjugated your ethics and let group behavior be your model. i.e., If my pals are doing it, I should follow suit. By the time you became the person pulling the lever to fill the gas chambers with carbon monoxide you were mentally converted and emotionally numbed to the twisted rationale of your behavior. At that point you were beyond realizing or accepting that from the onset you chose how you wanted to show up every small step of the way. You're Attikan Skywalker turned Darth Vadar and your goal is to destroy any dissenters, even your own children. And you don't care how you got there.

We all know that it’s harder to be a good leader. You must leave your ego at the door. You have to solicit opinions, be fair to all, have an open mind when handling conflict. You must be courageous and thoughtful. You must encourage and mentor your coworkers, support your team’s ideas and efforts, give the credit of success to the whole, but take the blame of failure solely on yourself.? You must accept that you will make many personal sacrifices for the benefit of something much larger than yourself. And you must seek peace and balance for your mind and soul in these outcomes, none of which is easy.

?My head, jumbled with all these thoughts last week, left me zeroing in on the daily choices large and small that every one of us makes in all aspects of our lives. Do we arrive 15 minutes early or 15 minutes late to an appointment? If so what does that say about respecting our time over that of another person's? Do we overschedule and under deliver? ?What does that suggest about our commitment to excellence and our generosity of spirit? ?Are we mindful of what the other person needs and feels, or do we hang tightfisted to our own negative emotions and reactions? Where there is injury will we pardon first? Do we seek to console rather than to be consoled? ?Will we try to understand rather than be understood? Where there is darkness will we sow light? ?What will we do to make the world a better place in that situation on that day, for that person or those people when we are confronted with challenge? Just because we aren't CEOs, NFL coaches, or heads of state, we need to be thinking about these things.

?We are all blessed with free will, staggering intelligence, and inherent leadership ability.?The question is how are we going use these powerful gifts to be leaders for good when we are confronted with all kinds of challenges every day that tempt us to take the more travelled road of acquiescence?

?Good leadership is a demanding call of mindfulness, self-awareness, strength, courage, perseverance, and a dedication to a vision and a cause greater than ourselves. That’s hard! But good leaders commit to it. And every one of us who embraces these values can be a good leader in the field of our choice-from our jobs to our families, from our colleagues to our communities..

?So be the change you want to see in the world, NOW! ?TODAY!? The well-being of the planet and of humanity depends on every single one of us to make the hard choice of good leadership over every hurdle we face every day of our lives.

?In that pursuit, I support you, I celebrate you, and I thank you.

?Namaste!

?Susanna

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