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Ever find yourself face-to-face with an obstacle the size of a continent? Maybe a challenge the likes of which overwhelms possibility? Perhaps disaster and ruin are just waiting to make you a bug smear on the windshield of fate?
Take heart – we all run into that proverbial wall sooner or later. Plus, that’s the end of my mixing of metaphors.
In an article by Ryan Holiday entitled A Leadership Lesson From Eisenhower’s Stoic Reversal At D-Day, he outlines the leadership of the Supreme Allied Commander as he faced setbacks like the Battle of the Bulge. One of the lessons of Eisenhower’s leadership is to see the opportunity in the challenge we face – not always an easy task, but it is a critical leadership duty because, as Holiday puts it:
“The hard thing about hard things is that people often make them worse by seeing the disaster and not the opportunity presented.”
Or, as Mark Twain put it, “I’ve lived a long life and seen a lot of hard times, most of which never happened.” Most of the disasters you see won’t happen either.
Remember that people always emulate their leader. So, if you fall to pieces, so will your people. Don’t do that.
That is why Fully Alive Leadership Practice #8 is: Be Their Confident Captain.
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Ed. note: Thanks to AH for directing me to this article.
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