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PART I
Wisdom and Leadership
Leadership needs wisdom. Although we can gain wisdom and still not lead well, no-one leads well without wisdom.
THE STORY BEHIND WISDOM AND LEADERSHIP
Leadership needs wisdom
I never particularly liked the word leadership. I always knew it could be a rich word full of nobility and people doing bold or selfless things to open up a way through great difficulties. But it could also mask something narcissistic or even darker.
Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Mandela, and Mary Robinson are all called leaders who served their people well. We hear stories of unsung people who lead people to safety and action in the face of floods, fires, famine, and war. Weāve also seen and heard manipulation, intimidation, belittling, and hype called ābeing a leaderā. Everyone who accepts the call to lead must find a way to think about leadership. For my part, I put it inside the bigger idea of wisdom.
In Chapter 1: Wisdom, I view wisdom in terms of reading the patterns of life. Itās an old idea found in traditions from the ancient Near East to the First Peoples of America. The ways most things happen in the human and non-human worlds forms patterns. We grow wise by paying attention to them and drawing conclusions that help us live well. And living well brings integrity and care into the picture.
In Chapter 2: Leadership, I apply this old insight to leadership itself. What is leading if it too is a pattern? I think this helps sort out some old questions, like: born or made, position or person, formal or informal. Since we were kids just about everyone has led at some time. And, no matter who you are, or what your title or role, you still have to follow. Itās the pattern. That means our positions donāt make us leaders. Our positions are our contexts, where we can lead wisely or foolishly. But we want to lead wisely. So letās start with wisdom.
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CHAPTER 1
Wisdom
Wisdom is the stuff of life
We know it when we see it
Plato recalled Socrates saying, āthe unexamined life is not worth livingā. Whether the old sage was right, we cannot say. But what we surely can say is that the unreflective life seldom leads to wisdom.
No definition will do wisdom justice. Itās simply too vast, subtle, and profound. Yet wisdom is not utterly mysterious to us: we recognise it in the words, actions and characters of people. Perhaps, like love, we know wisdom more tacitly than overtly: we know more than we can say or define. We know love, and wisdom, as much by its absence as its presence, and we can discern the genuine article from pretence. And, like love, we long for the ways wisdom enriches and completes us.
Wisdom is as old as humanity: the accumulated insights of cultures and traditions gained over vast generations. At our best, we live, we notice, we learn, we remember, and we bequeath a better legacy.
Wisdom is as varied as we are. It lives in all our glory and profundity, contradiction and absurdity. We glimpse it in fleeting insights as often as in settled understanding. We name an enduring relationship with our dearest ones as a life of love. Yet not every moment of even the most intimate relationship bears all the marks of love. We cannot live with such intensity. Likewise no-one, not even the wisest, thinks and acts with unbroken wisdom. Just as we lapse into forgetfulness and thoughtlessness toward the ones we love most, so even the wisest lapse into folly.
Wisdom is disarmingly human: always within reach, yet somehow elusive. So how do we recognise it?
Wisdom is close at hand
We recognise wisdom
We recognise wisdom in those we admire as honourable, perceptive or grounded. We bring to mind those we believe have made the world a better place. We recall those who have touched our own lives for good.
Imagine if we could invite them all to dinner, the famous along with our own dear friends. What a conversation that would be! One thingās for sure: they would disagree as often as they agreed. Few would have made the same decision in the same way in the same context. At some point, the simplest might stump the smartest. The obscure might confound the famous. The uneducated might instruct the learned. No-one has a mortgage on wisdom. Wisdom crosses culture and geography, education and accomplishment, personality and experience.
The most precious resource we have for coping with life in an unstable, discontinuous and revolutionary world is not information, but each other. Wisdom is not to be found in a database; it grows out of the experience of living the life of the human herd and absorbing the lessons which that experience inevitably teaches us about who we are.[1]
HUGH MCKAY
We have known the wise
In seminars and workshops over the years I have asked people to recall those whom they considered wise. People for whom we are grateful, whose words and lives have influenced ours for good. Many find it odd to speak of others as wise but, as we recall the stories, the word begins to feel apt.
It feels natural to compile a list of attributes. But no list will do justice to experience: stories are the key. The subtlety and depth of the friends we recall lies in their stories. It is here that the textures and hues of wisdom become apparent.
Some speak of friends who gave strong and emphatic direction and counsel. Other friends would not give advice. Instead they made room for us working things out ourselves, and for learning from our own mistakes. Wisdom came in gentle tones ā or like a whack on the side of the head! I commend to you the same exercise: to consider those who have been wise in your own life.
We begin to sense that wisdom is contextual. An action in one place may be wise, but in another context it may be foolish. The wisdom sayings are commonly misunderstood as rules or moral guidelines. Sometimes this may be part of the original authorsā intent, but generally they are better read as observations of life. Not ālife should be thisā, but āthis is what I have seenā.
THE PRIORITY OF WISDOM
The sages differed on many things. But they agreed on one big thing. Wisdom matters most to people and communities who seek to live well.
Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost you all you have, get understanding.[2]
SOLOMON
He who knows others is clever, he who knows himself has discernment.
He who masters others has force, he who masters himself is strong.
He who knows contentment is rich, he who perseveres is a man of purpose.[3]
LAO-TSE
At fifteen I set my heart on learning; at thirty I took my stand; at forty I had no doubts; at fifty I was conscious of the decrees of heaven; at sixty I was already obedient to these decrees; at seventy I just followed my heartās desire, without overstepping the boundaries (of what is right).[4]
CONFUCIUS
Imperturbable wisdom, being most honorable, is worth everything.[5]
DEMOCRITUS
A man, though wi...
