Once, there was a young man who believed leadership was something you were given, if you followed the rules and did what was required.
A title. A private office. A line on an org chart with more names beneath it than above.
As a teen, he mowed what seemed to be a million miles of grass. Meanwhile, he dreamed of going to college and entering the bright lights of the corporate world. Not very long after he got there and began steadily climbing the ladder, he discovered that the view wasn’t what he had imagined it would be. He learned some valuable early lessons about the importance of culture, however, and discovered things you’ll never find in a business textbook about managing people and projects.
He then returned to the land, this time as a farmer; long days and even longer years taught him, without his noticing at the time, what growing things actually require. Not intense effort in bursts. Careful attention that never wanes. Perseverance through sometimes harsh seasons.
He found himself suddenly leading people, along with delicate crops to tend, and embraced the challenge without really understanding what it was going to take. He initially thought that producing the crops was the hard part of the job. He hadn’t yet learned about the complexity of the people part.
For a long while, he led the way he thought that leadership by example looked. By working harder and longer than anyone else. By assuming that if he wanted it badly enough and worked hard enough, results would arrive, because he’d earned them.
What arrived instead, slowly enough that he barely noticed it, was something closer to patience. You couldn’t force a crop to grow or drive people to the goal. He started noticing the people quietly doing exceptional work without being asked. He started asking deeper questions and began listening to their answers. He stopped measuring his week by what he’d accomplished and started measuring it by who he’d helped become more.
Somewhere in there — he still couldn’t tell you exactly when — the eager young man became a cultivated leader instead.
That young man was me.
I’ve spent nearly fifty years finding out what a small, unremarkable beginning was capable of becoming — and discovered that an acorn holds everything it will become, with no guarantee anyone will ever see the tree.
Today, I’ll reveal what grew when an acorn landed in the right place.
Are you pleased with the fruits of your labor — and still learning how to grow a high-impact life?
Tempus Maximize!
