Leadership Notes -- Thoughts on Leading People and Making a Difference in Organizations

Word count this issue: 325

Estimated reading time:   2:19

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG_TaCHJpkk 

Greetings from yet another rainy day here in Vancouver!

I’ve spent much of the week in Oakville Ontario working with a client. One of the participants in the Leadership Development workshop I was co-facilitating had worked with me on earlier module in the series last year. He approached me on the morning of the first day and reminded me of a conversation he and I had in that earlier module. 

Our work the last time had included exploring how to build trust and he had argued that there was a limit to trust in business. I well remembered the discussion, and wondered aloud where he was on the subject now. He said that a week after our conversation, he was watching the film The Italian Job, where early in the film Donald Sutherland’s character says, “I trust everyone. I just don’t trust the devil inside them.” https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/e1868c72-6b42-4e76-a1b7-8f00ad27e8ef  

And I got it! Finally, a year later, I got his point. As humans we are all good and bad. My mother’s favourite Scottish adage was: 

“There is so much good in the worst of us, 

and so much bad in the best of us, 

that it ill behooves any one of us, 

to find fault with the rest of us.”

The challenge I suggested for us, for business, for leadership, for friendship, for peace in our families, communities, and nations is to seek the good in each of us. To move past the ‘devil’ inside of me, and the ‘devil’ inside of you, to trust, to connect to the good, to seek the best in the other.

Far from easy work, but perhaps the most important work; to work towards seeking and trusting the good in each of us. I wonder what you think.