Good morning from Vancouver, where the birds are singing, the air is warm and the flowers are actually wilting a little under the sun this week. I was thinking this morning about the coming long weekend. A long awaited visit to my partner’s home on the Sunshine Coast is on the horizon. And I know that those fortunate enough to own in cottage country north of Toronto will be heading up there this weekend for the annual opening of the season. Summer is just around the corner!

Here in Canada, the Monday of this long weekend is called Victoria Day, in honour of the 19th Century Queen and Empress. Our culture often honours individual achievement, and we have this narrative about how wonderful Queen Victoria was; she was strong courageous and willful. There is a great story of her, as a new 19 year old Queen in a breakfast meeting with the Prime Minister of the day, Lord Melbourne. (And yes he’s the guy Melbourne the city in the great state of Victoria, Australia is named for!) Into the breakfast room comes her mother who promptly sits down for breakfast. The Prime Minister says to the Queen Mother, something like, “begging your pardon Ma’am, but the Queen and I are in a meeting.” The Queen Mother says something like, “don’t be silly Lord Melbourne, I’m her mother, she may need me.” Victoria, turns to her mother and says, “The Queen and her Prime Minister are in a meeting. You are excused.”

Those are the kinds of stories that we often love to hear, the power of the individual asserting herself. It is a great story. And yet, in actual fact Victoria, like all ‘great’ leaders was not entirely alone. Even in that story, she was backed up by Melbourne. One of the things I’ve been very aware of in recent months is the fact that “the great man” or “great woman” model of leadership is fundamentally flawed. We are never really alone in our leadership. Yes there are times when the proverbial buck stops here and we are called upon to make a decision. But even then, we are making decisions based on the data we receive from others. 

This is even more true now as technology advances and challenges each of us and our organizations to ramp up, or move over. We cannot survive without each other; learning with each other, challenging each other, collaborating and cooperating with each other. As I’ve been reflecting on this fact, I was reminded of a great quote from late in 2012 from American Sen. Elizabeth Warren:

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

From a leadership perspective, we may need to be reminded, ‘there is no one leader who got to be leader on their own’. Once again, it’s not all about me, it’s all about us.