Yummies

                                            I think there was chocolate cake inside there?

 

Chocolate Duo "Soup and Sandwich"

 

First attempt at Semolina Bread

 

Bacon-Pecan Ice Cream

 

Apple Baklava

Leadership

I have been thinking about leadership a lot lately.
In light of my current employment, I have been reflecting on leadership in my own life from my early training in it, to my assuming roles of leadership and the leadership shown by people in and out of positions of authority in my life.

I listened to a short talk about leadership on Thinking Allowed (a youtube channel) and the thesis of his talk was this:  managing comes from the hands (metaphorically and etymologically-it comes from the word manos which means hands) and leadership comes from the feet.

Managing is about controlling and manipulating and maintaining the status quo.  Our hands control, manipulate things in the place we are.

Leading is about moving, about changing directions and taking people toward something.  Our feet locomote us, change directions, provide a foundation which we can stand on to manipulate things.

I am sure that holes can be poked in this metaphor, I can think of a few myself.

But it did kind of make me see that my views on leadership could be somewhat limited.  I suppose if I had to have a top 3 tenets of leadership, they would look something like this:

• Lead by example.  Clear actions first, clear verbal communication second.  Both essential.
• Respect your followers as humans.  Belittling treatment is unnecessary and counterproductive.  Fear should not be used a tool for manipulation.
• Know what you are working toward and plan accordingly.

I suppose a fourth one, which is probably the most important (but I would say does not apply exclusively to leadership, but to all that living is), would be to bring love/Tao/quality/duende/a million other words that all hint toward the same thing to all aspects of leading.

I think that in my own style of "leadership," I would make a decent manager.  I am able to build rapport with about anyone (except really strungout crackheads and they scare the crap out of me) and I believe through my own experience as a leader and a follower, it is the most effective tool to getting people behind you.  But I also believe that true leadership isn't about getting people behind a person, but getting people behind a greater something for everyone to believe in.  That's where I run into trouble-determining what is it I am working toward.

I suppose this is where the feet kick in (i'm so punny) and set the direction and get people moving.  This is an area of personal growth for me.  I have no particular direction.  I have enjoyed living my life up to this moment tackling the opportunities presented to me, instead of "creating" opportunities for myself and others.  I feel like I am ready to build something.  I feel like I want to create a place where people can feel free to be free with the goal of taking that freedom into their "real" lives.  Take that creativity and acceptance in freedom and offer it to everyone.

I think I am just rambling on now.  But I do feel like so many people feel trapped in their own lives.  They live in impossibility.  They live in fear.   They live thinking they can't take chances because their entire lives they have been indoctrinated to believe a lot of things they haven't gotten around to questioning yet.

For once I don't feel that way.   I want everyone to feel this way.

It feels like love all day,with every person (almost everyone.  i still have work to do), in every task.
it feels transcendent.  it is beautiful.

i've had an idea for a while to start a movement called the re-love-ution.

gotta start fleshing that out.