Make Room For Windows and Mirrors

I am incredibly blessed to study great leaders for a living. I am even more incredibly blessed to spend most of my days speaking with them as they become even better leaders for their teams, their companies, and their vision of the world.

There are countless theories about what makes a great leader and there will be another dozen books published on the concept this week. But there is one framework that breaks down the complexities to a simple idea that I was first exposed to when reading Jim Collin's Good To Great while on a work visa in London the summer of 2004.

The test of a leader is most easily explained by what happens when they look at the pane of glass in front of them under various circumstances.

When things go right, a great leader looks at the pane of glass and sees through it like a window to the people and circumstances outside the window that led to success.

But when things go wrong, a great leader instead sees their own reflection in the glass like a mirror and carries the blame of failure as their own.

A weak leader, on the other hand, sees their own reflection in the glass like a mirror when things go right and thinks that the success is something that they did.

When things go wrong, they look through the glass as if looking through a window and point to the people and circumstances outside that caused the failure.

This simple framework of what does a leader see in both success and failure can be easily observed in almost every milestone moment of a leader's career. In the high highs and in the low lows, what do they see when they look at the pane of glass in front of them.

By this metric, we have weak leaders in our country right now.

We have a weak leaders on one side of the aisle, who after winning the election, are only seeing their own reflection as to the reason why. They will quickly forget the people and circumstances that are on the other side of the glass and continue to be enamored with what they see in the mirror.

On the other side, we have weak leaders who lost the election and only see the people and circumstances through the pane of glass that they blame for their failure. They will continue to think that it was done to them, and I fear they never take the long, hard look in the mirror that is needed.

It is time for a new generation of leaders.

It is time for strong leaders who know that when things go great, look out the window. And when things aren't great, look in the mirror.

We are experiencing a leadership crisis, and for those who are willing to pay attention and do the work, it is the opportunity of a lifetime.

It starts with each of us choosing to do the work, be the best leader we can be in our current sphere of influence, and model great leadership from the ground up.

I'll be doing my part, I hope you will too.

A Message We All Need

In less than 10 minutes, Sam Harris breaks down the number one underlying issue with society today and offers a couple of very tangible things we can each strive to do to get ourselves and our collective consciousness back on track. All of which are much easier said than done.