Thoughts on Leadership

It is December, 2024. For me this month is usually a time to be with friends in the joy of the season. But this year, I am alone. I am staying down a dirt road outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is silent and freezing outside. I am from Southern California and the weather is a challenge! I am taking time to be with myself and consider the year ahead for me.

I pulled up a talk I gave years ago on leadership. I had read what Margaret Wheatley said about Servant Leadership in June, 1999. It was thought provoking and inspiring. As a result I reconnected to why spiritual practices are a foundation for my life in regards to service. When I get quiet in meditation, something wiser than my self-interested ego prompts me from inside to be courageous in leading myself. Only with that correct orientation can I lead anyone else.

To me Wheatley’s inspiration applies more than ever today. She said, We can create a future that we all want when we learn how to come together; that we are one humanity in goodness. To me, the “how” is about a return to the heart, where goodness resides inside each one of us. Then when we come together, we do so from a connection to our own goodness. This to me is the true orientation for sservice. From there, we can create the future we want.

I have heard several friends say they took on mountainous service projects and they each came back later completely depleted and saddened, ready to give up.

The spiritual Masters in my life would speak about the futility of running toward the future. They urged us to spend time in quiet reflection, in meditation, and to ask ourselves, Where is humanity going so fast? This is a powerful question.

Where are we going so fast?

When we take time to go within, we do connect to the goodness inside ourselves and from here, we serve where we are needed when it is appropriate, not from a place of self interest, but from goodness.

Wheatley said, we think we can ignore time by going as fast as we please straight into the future. Isn’t this driving us crazy? Constantly doing doing doing, certainly with no real clarity and overwhelmed in the process. Do we ask if our actions are going to have a positive impact on our own lives, let alone on others and those coming up behind us.

She went on to say, We have forgotten the natural rhythms, the cycles that change is a part of, the natural process. The poet Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, said, "Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. For once on the face of the earth, let's not speak in any language. Let's stop for one second and not move our arms so much. It would be an exotic moment. Without rush, without engines, we would all be together in a sudden strangeness. If we were not so single minded in keeping our lives moving and, for once, could do nothing, Perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves..."

This is why I have chosen to pause my life and consider my future. Of course I meditate daily. I take time to reflect and journal, and to be in Nature. Each of us needs to stop and ask: Where am I going? And what is the rush?

I heard on NPR some years back about a beach geologist who after a hurricane spoke of how he was excited to find a new beach that had replaced the old; he looks for newness, not what has been destroyed. Can we look to see the everpresent newness and the wonder of the rhythms of change. Can we go with the rhythms that renew and surprise us?

Many believe that we exist as individuals separate from one another. If we are going to part the veil of indifference to each other, which we must do to move toward a better future, it requires recognizing who we are. But we don't know who we are, so we lack courage. We must start believing in our own innate goodness and bring it forward.

Take time to be silent, to reconnect to the goodness in your own heart. When you do, you find underneath all the thinking there is goodness. We find this when in a crisis we respond to help each other. So it is true that we can stop being fearful of one another and we can stop creating enemy images of another. When we take time to stop and smell the roses, we can experience the peace, love and beauty of the seasons of time. From the place of innate goodness, we can navigate the future.

Wheatley asked, “How can we keep the heart open? How can we avoid saying, No, that's too much. I can't deal with this. Service is what unites us. This is calling us together as species.” When we find one other, when we see one other, when we see each other's wonder, then we experience joy and peace, because we see goodness and experience love. But first, we need to find it inside.

The Poet William Statford wrote a poem, “A Ritual To Read To One Another”:

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are, then

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world.

The pattern that others made may prevail in the world, and

following the wrong god home, we may miss our star.

The gift is each other. When we are together, more becomes possible. So, in praise of Margaret Wheatley: Stop running toward the future. Spend time reflecting. Ask yourself, Where are you going so fast? Reconnect to the goodness within yourself. Look for the goodness in others, those you know and strangers. Look for the newness, the wonder of the rhythms of change. We are one humanity in goodness. When we return to the heart, we come together in this goodness, in service. From there, we can create the future we want.

Happy Holidays!