A short flight to leadership...

I built this brilliant story into some Leadership development training I was delivering last week; and like all aptly used stories in training, the theme and the punchline kept coming back throughout the day... Enjoy!

From Rick Stengel, who spent almost two years with Mandela working on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom:

“In 1994, during the presidential-election campaign, Mandela got on a tiny propeller plane to fly down to the killing fields of Natal and give a speech to his Zulu supporters. I agreed to meet him at the airport, where we would continue our work after his speech. When the plane was 20 minutes from landing, one of its engines failed. Some on the plane began to panic. The only thing that calmed them was looking at Mandela, who quietly read his newspaper as if he were a commuter on his morning train to the office. The airport prepared for an emergency landing, and the pilot managed to land the plane safely. When Mandela and I got in the backseat of his bulletproof BMW that would take us to the rally, he turned to me and said, “Man, I was terrified up there!””