Leadership is often associated to being in charge, in command, and in control. Yet my most memorable leadership experiences have been when I lost control. Like many, over the years, I have envisioned myself going places, achieving a number of things. I developed visions and plans to get there. In fact, I was particularly good at it. But the hard part and where I truly learned about leadership was when life took me to places where I did not want to go – at least consciously. I would feel that something had gone wrong and that I made a mistake. My fault or not, this would always be associated with some disheartening possibility.
What if things going wrong were to take us to a place where we needed to go for reasons deeper than our own ability to reason? What if these detours and disruptions were necessary to shake us loose of an illusion of control? It usually takes something major to wake us up, and the point is rarely to go back to what we know, but rather to remind us that the way forward lies in what we do not know. How many discoveries were made by accident, changing the course of history? These major wake up calls soften us and make us vulnerable to the point where we can release our resistance and let go of control, of what we know and understand.
You may have visited this undesirable place lately, where your response to difficulty has prompted you to witness some of the patterns of behavior that come up unconsciously, unresolved emotional baggage that stands in the way of an easier life, a more joyful existence. It takes courage to face these moments, surrender to what is, and leadership to create a new path rather than return to familiar ways of being and doing things. You will only get a finite number of opportunities to change course and emerge transformed. What is true individually, also applies internationally.