Inspire! Lead!

Chapter 244

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." ~ John Quincy Adams

I am a leader. I want all my actions to inspire others to dream and learn and do and become.  It is essentially the TIME leadership model, which postulates that all leadership activities involve Thinking Inspiration Mobilizing and Empowering. The TIME process is what I am all about. 

This is about to become even more important to all of us, in the post Coronavirus world. Nothing is ever gonna be the same as it was. Especially the way we work and live. The world has changed more quickly and more completely in the last 12 weeks than at any point in history. Cities of millions, with empty streets and empty stores and businesses as people stay home in hope of not getting nor giving the virus. Unfortunately this is the only frame that people are currently focusing on, how the isolation keeps them at home.

But the larger story is how we are going to work and live and move forward in this highly connected world that has shown us new vulnerabilities, new possibilities, and new challenges. We need thinking inspiration mobilizing and empowering more than ever. We need leaders who aren’t stuck in the psychic prison of the isolation cycle of this new reality. Leaders who inspire dreams and learn and do and become and bring others along with them. 

Lead! Instead of being self-absorbed and whining about why your favorite restaurant is closed, or why you can’t go to church, or your after-work club is no longer an option, but as I sit here at this table and listen to my 80 year old dad tell of the working world in the 1960’s and 70’s, the contrast is startling. That world is long gone and won’t be returning. And the one you remember from the 20/teens won’t either. 

Lead!