You are a Leader!
“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
Dalai Lama
Every care worker and volunteer is a leader within their practice. You are responsible for driving the care needs of those who you care for. It doesn’t make any difference where you have come from: your culture, your education, your past. What matters most is where you intend to go. Change starts within yourself, something only you can control.
Whatever you want to see in the world, you must first demonstrate within yourself. Only you have control of that.
Here are some inspirational links to help you become the greatest leader you have ever known.
The small things… TED talks to Inspire!
“A leader isn’t good because they are right, they are good because they are willing to learn and to trust.”
“Leaders can let you fail, but not let you be a failure.”
“If you are a leader, the people you’ve counted on will help you up. If you are a leader, the people who’ve counted on you need you on your feet.”
“When the leader makes the choice to putting the safety and the lives of the people inside the organisation first, to sacrifice their comforts and tangible results so that people remain and feel safe and feel that they belong, remarkable things happen”
“Maybe the biggest impact I’d ever had on anyone’s life, a moment that had a woman walk up to a complete stranger and say “You’ve been an incredibly important person in my life,” was a moment that I didn’t even remember!”
Solitude and Leadership
One of the greatest achievements any leader can make is the ability to be able to advocate and promote thoughts that are unpopular or even resented by their managers and colleagues. A true leader has the moral courage to stand tall and stand alone to argue for what they believe. But how do you develop that moral courage? How do you argue unpopular thoughts? How do you innovate in a conservative culture of routine and order?
Bill Deresiewicz has analysed the crisis in leadership, or lack of, and presented a must read speech to West Point plebes. Why?
“…solitude is the very essence of leadership. The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may consult, you are the one who has to make the hard decisions. And at such moments, all you really have is yourself.”
The greatest leaders in the world, both our real leaders and our fictional leaders, have one quality in common. They can deliver remarkable changes, insights, and reasoning from a position of solitude. They have the courage to stand and deliver unpalatable ideas, thoughts and observations, and push for difficult actions, when everyone else wants to run in a different direction.
We can sit back and admire [insert your hero here] for their courage, stamina, and insight, but this is something that many of us have the capability of learning and achieving. So how?
Bill describes some critical ways we can develop the confidence, competence, insight and reasoning to become true leaders:
Stop multi-tasking. Your first thought is never your greatest thought, it is the last observation that you made, what you read, heard, saw, or felt. Your brain needs time and space to make associations, draw connections, and take you by surprise. You need time to slow down, think deeply, and concentrate to a single point of focus instead of letting yourself be dispersed everywhere in a cloud of electronic and social input. When you multitask, your mind is rapidly switching between very disparate thought processes that diminish your ability to soak up information and form a solid understanding.
Don’t limit the time or effort spent developing your understanding. Some of the greatest literary artists the world has ever known were excruciatingly slow in their writing. “You do your best thinking by slowing down and concentrating.”
Confront your doubts, your questions, and your difficulties with honesty and courage. Answers to your most difficult questions can only be found from within and in solitude, without distractions or others opinions.
Thinking for yourself means finding yourself without a constant bombardment of other peoples thoughts, “a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice...”
“Introspection means talking to yourself… to acknowledge things to yourself… doubts you aren’t supposed to have, questions you aren’t supposed to ask, feelings or opinions that would get you laughed at by the group or reprimanded by the authorities.”
Things you need to do:
Practice spending time alone, without seeking attention, sympathy, approval or opinions from others.
Free your mind with meditation and hobbies that require focused concentration.
Spend extended periods in solitary outdoor activities where you can be disconnected from social media and peer pressure.
Become comfortable asking yourself the difficult and scary questions, and exploring the answers to those questions.
Dream about what you would be like if you were the greatest ever hero in your world…