Here’s the deal. Ful­ly 75% of the hits to this site are from peo­ple in search of “lead­er­ship poems,” or some vari­a­tion on that theme. Yet no one active­ly con­tributes to the col­lec­tion. Is there a mis­un­der­stand­ing here about where lead­er­ship poems come from? Indeed, I think so.

They don’t come from famous lead­ers par­tic­u­lar­ly, nor folks who feel they are experts on either lead­er­ship or poet­ry. They come from you, the inner leader in you wait­ing for a reflec­tion, look­ing for a mir­ror. And isn’t this an inter­est­ing conun­drum? It says so much about this search for mean­ing and wis­dom. For me, it is like ask­ing some­one in a work­shop to speak first, to stand up here in the front of the room and declare. Yes, you, too, can do it. I believe you can.

Not long ago I had cof­fee with a won­der­ful woman who is part of a train­ing pro­gram in orga­ni­za­tion­al sys­tems work. She has had a fab­u­lous and var­ied life, and yet in her ques­tions I felt a thread of wait­ing, a ques­tion in her to deter­mine what, in fact, her work and prac­tice might be in the world after she got done with her pro­gram. When I asked about this, she referred to all the learn­ing she still need­ed to do to find out what her options were. A legit­i­mate inquiry on one hand, a slight defense on the other.

“So you think the answer to this ques­tion about what your prac­tice will be will come from the out­side?” I asked. And, of course, she under­stood imme­di­ate­ly. “It comes from in here,” I said, point­ing to my heart. Soon, we part­ed and I hope I added val­ue to her day.

Well, lead­er­ship poems are the same, I believe. They don’t come from out there. They come from in here, even if you haven’t writ­ten them your­self. So please, my friends, brave souls that you are, check it out and bring some­thing that says, “I’m not afraid to stand at the front of the room. I am ready!”

This is the audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion part.

Have I got it wrong? Let me know.

A relat­ed sto­ry. Not long ago I took a brief vaca­tion near Can­cun in Mex­i­co. One day my girl­friend and I vis­it­ed a sanc­tu­ary for jun­gle ani­mals that had been adopt­ed and then dis­card­ed as pets. There were a lot of croc­o­diles there (we went right into the cage with them — I hoped they were well-fed…and not on tourists) and many oth­er species, includ­ing some spi­der mon­keys. One of them, Jes­si­ca, had acquired the capa­bil­i­ty of being fed bananas from a human mouth. Our guide encour­aged me to put a piece of banana between my teeth and bend toward her. I thought for sure I’d be bit­ten, but Jes­si­ca turned out to be a very sweet, gen­tle pres­ence, and I had to laugh at myself for my orig­i­nal mis­giv­ings. I was­n’t afraid of Jes­si­ca. I was afraid of some­thing in myself. What was it? Per­haps the Jes­si­ca I did­n’t know in me.

You get the point.

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