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"Today and tomorrow, the successful leader is the one who leads the process of learning."
Sir Douglas Hague

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Good morning everyone, and I hope you're navigating through still waters this week, and thus able to enjoy the scenery as you go!

A friend told me over lunch of being in a line up to receive the H1N1 vaccine. I'm not sure how the vaccine is being allocated south of the border for American readers, but here in Canada, the first to receive are supposed to be those who are most at risk. My friend is among those as he has a chronic illness. He spoke of a couple of fit men in the line up, who apparently were not, pregnant, elderly, babies, chronically ill or a health care worker. In fact he overheard them say that the reason they were in the line up was that their organizations could not function properly of they were to miss work because of the flu.

As tempting as it is to delve into the ethical debate about queue jumping ahead of children, from a leadership perspective I'm fascinated that there are those who think that their organization, any organization would be in trouble without them!

First if that is the case, the risks to the organization are tremendous, and need to mitigated immediately. Second, and more likely the case, if you are sick, you will be missed, in many cases missed a lot, but in the end, if you have been a compelling, inspiring, learning focused leader, your team and organization will continue to thrive in your absence. In fact if you have been a good leader, it has to continue to thrive, because you'll have made sure that people are empowered, challenged and engaged with the work, not because you told them to be, but because an environment was created and cared for where they were more likely to thrive.

I hope you remain well this flu season, and if you do get sick, stay home, for the sake of your team's health and to let them thrive without you. And please, let those most at risk get the vaccine first.