eSight Leadership Forum

According to Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” leaders are proactive because they feel empowered. They feel empowered because they have self-awareness.

Read more about Characteristic of Leadership: Being Proactive on eSight.

Here are some lessons from our fine Canada Geese about being proactive in groups. I was at a conference recently where board members of the group acted out this story and even though it was hysterically funny, the story has a lot of good ‘goose’ sense in it, especially for groups but also for individuals. Canadian geese fly south in the winter and back north in the spring but they can not do it alone.

1. As each goose flaps its wings it creates an ‘uplift’ for the birds that follow. By flying in a ‘V’ formation, the whole flocks adds 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew alone. Lesson: People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier because they are traveling on the thrust of one another.
2. The geese flying in formation honk to encourage those up front to keep up their speed. This provides encouragement against greater odds and distances. They can fly 4-5 hours without stopping.Lesson: We need to make sure our honking is encouraging. In groups where there is encouragement, the production is much greater. The power of encouragement (to stand by one’s heart or core values and encourage the heart and core values of others) is the is quality of honking we seek. What does our honking sound from behind?
3. When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of flying alone. It quickly moves back into formation. It moves back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front of it.Lesson: If we have as much sense as a goose we stay in formation with those headed where we want to go. We are willing to accept our help and give help to others.
4. When the lead goose tires, it rotates back into formation and another goose flies to the point position.Lesson: It pays to take turns during the hard tasks and sharing leadership. As with geese, people are interdependent on each others’ skills, capabilities and unique arrangement of gifts, talents or resources.
5. When a goose gets sick, wounded or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help protect it. They stay with it until it dies or is able to fly again. Then they launch out with another formation or catch up with the flock.Lesson: If we have as much sense as geese, we will stand by each other in difficult times as when we are strong. And move forward as a community.

You can quickly share with other members of eSight your thoughts about being proactive by posting your comments.

Liz Seger
Leadership Forum Facilitator
eSight Careers Network(tm)

Stephen Covey says highly effective leaders use their
abilities to harness both imagination and conscience
in accomplishing the “end games” they have in mind.

Covey points out that beginning with an end in mind is
based on a specifically human endowment: having a
conscience, the power of which can range from low to
high.

Today let’s take a look at how imagination and
conscience can make a dynamic duo in accomplishing the
results you have in mind.

My mother used to define conscience as that nagging
little inner voice in your head which lets you know
you’re not doing something that is in your particular
moral code. Cartoons characterize it as a classic
devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other;
conscience is the voice for ‘good’ or what’s right
morally or ethically.

Covey writes:

“Why conscience? Because to be highly effective,
your conscience must monitor all that you imagine,
envision and engineer. Those who attempt to exercise
creativity without conscience, inevitably create the
unconscionable. At the vary least, they exchange
their creative talents for ‘canned goods,’ using
their creativity, their applied imagination and
their visual affirmations to win material things or
social rewards. Then they become hopelessly
unbalanced. They may speak the lines of life balance
script, but, in reality, their constitutions are
written on the fleshy tablets of their spleens.”

Covey cites Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves,”
which won the Academy Award in the early 1990s, as a
film about conscience. I think Michael Moore’s film,
“Bowling for Columbine,” and “The Pianist” make the
same kinds of statements Covey references. They are
done with creativity, spark your imagination and deal
with dilemmas conscience often poses.

John Denver wrote that his music “is my autograph.” He
meant that people didn’t need his signature on a piece
of paper to know they have experienced him or his
music. They heard it with every word that he sang and
wrote.

Denver, especially in his later, lesser-known period,
spoke with conscience in all that he wrote. It infused
his being right to the end.

Covey advises:

“Practice using these two unique human capacities:
first see yourself going home tonight and finding it
in a terrible situation. The house is a total
disaster. No one has done his or her job; all the
commitments made have been unfulfilled. And you’re
beat up and tired.

“Now imagine yourself responding to that reality in
a mature, wise, self-controlled manner. See the
effect that has on someone else. You don’t confess
their sins. You start to pitch in. You were
cheerful, helpful, pleasant. And your behavior will
prick the consciences of others and allow the
consequences agreed upon to happen.

“You just used two unique human capacities:
imagination and conscience. You didn’t rely on
memory; if you had relied on memory or history you
might have lost your cool, made judgments of other
people and exacerbated conditions. Memory is built
onto your past responses to the same or similar
stimuli. Memory ties you to your past. Imagination
points you to your future. Your potential is
unlimited. Using your potential is to actualize your
capabilities no matter what the conditions.”

“You, too, can progress along the continuum from
futility and old habits to hope, faith and inner
security through the exercise of conscience and
imagination.”

Substitute the “house is a mess” example with
incidents which occur for those of us with
disabilities: your caregiver slips up in her duties, a
taxi driver refuses to serve you because you have a
wheelchair, a retail clerk ignores you as a potential
shopper etc. Tell us about some of the examples from
your life where you have exercised the choice of
conscience and imagination.

How have you harnessed imagination and
conscience to get results as a leader?

Liz Seger
Leadership Forum Facilitator
eSight Careers Network(tm)

Interesting topic: moral development. To many, there
may seem to be a lack of morals, or at least a lack of
moral judgment during the last few years in the
entertainment industry, media, politics, churches,
society itself — and especially in big business.

Lawrence Kohlberg did his studies about moral
development many years ago, but it’s still relevant,
even as we discover more about brain development.

Some of his “levels” may have to be extended longer
due to recent developments. Researchers, for instance,
have found the amygdala in the front temporal lobe
develops more slowly and reaches maturity in a
person’s brain in his/her late teens or early 20s
instead of the early teens, as once thought.

This may now explain a lot of the lapses in judgment
high school, college and university students have and
maybe should be taken into consideration when
sentencing young offenders.

Perhaps it isn’t wise to put them as ‘adults’ into the
prison system because they may physically look like an
adult but aren’t.

Perhaps they need to be put separately away from the
bad influences of adult prisoners but yet still made
to face responsibility for their actions and not just
give them a pat on the head and a “do better next
time.”

This also may have implications for business. Perhaps
young adults shouldn’t be in management or leadership
positions of some importance until they reach their
mid twenties or later when they may have more “life
experience” and “maturity” with respect to everything
they do or life-altering choices they may face.

Of course, more study is needed on the brain and its
development, but it does indeed have some interesting
revelations when it comes to moral development as we
now know it.

However, an immature amygdala may not explain things
that have happened at businesses such as Enron, World
Com, where the late Ken Lay and Jeffery Skelling were
supposedly mature adults. Yet, they chose to steal
millions from their stakeholders and workers because
they could.

Nor does it excuse supposedly mature adults having sex
with young people, politicians influence-peddling and
lying and cheating, non-profit executives and
governments not doing all they can because they don’t
like the donors or don’t want to know something is
going on where it won’t be politically expedient to
help.

Kohlberg does say we can become fixated at certain
ties and that may be the explanation for certain acts
by businesses, by non-profits, by religious leaders,
and by politicians.

It may be the “follow-my-leader-no-matter-what
mentality” that exempts them from using their own
independent or individual moral thinking, where they
don’t question. They just follow by blind faith, so to
speak.

You can probably name many examples of this happening
throughout history and up to the present day.

Then again, it could be “peer pressure” mentality that
we warn our children about and that, as adults, we
experience as well. God forbid, we be different and
not follow the herd mentality or have integrity! Why
should we be ostracized or shunned by schoolyard
bullies disguised as adults, wearing adult clothing?

Kohlberg also says, in the last stage of moral
development, most people don’t reach other than a few
exceptions (such as Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther
King, Mother Theresa, Ghandi, the Dali Lama, for
example). However, we can aspire to and be inspired by
such people to do the right thing, live with integrity
and conscience no matter what the world thinks or does
or says we should all do.

We can begin to treat one another with dignity and
respect and live and work by a higher moral
development, if we so choose to. Change is coming, and
the world is beginning to realize this — no matter
what name you give it” the Rapture, Armageddon, the
Hopi or Mayan calendar or just universal change or
enlightenment.

I saw Warren Buffet and Bill Gates being interviewed
recently and both said that it’s not how many things
you have or how much money or what your status is in
life that defines success in this world. It’s what you
do with what you have — doing your work (whatever it
is) with passion and with thought about someone else
besides yourself.

If two of the most successful men in society today get
it and are talking about it to business majors and
business people and non-profits , hopefully this moral
mentality will start to trickle down to smaller
businesses, to religion, to politics, to society.

As individuals and as a society, we need to evolve
further moral development.

See my new article, “Characteristics of Leadership:
Moral Development.”

With those thoughts in mind, here is this week’s discussion
question on the eSight Leadership Forum:

Which moral development stage outlined
by Dr. Laurence Kohlberg resonates with you
in terms of your own leadership approach?

Liz Seger
Leadership Forum Facilitator
eSight Careers Network(tm)

We’re coming up to one of busiest times of our
year, the month before Christmas/Hanukah/Winter
Solstice/Kwanza. We’re in a rush to get it all done,
making lists of gifts, cards, parties and events we
must attend, going to church or temple or mosque
services, buying groceries, doing year-end reviews,
completing the year’s financial statements. So, this
week’s leadership reading, “Begin With the End in
Mind,” is really appropriate.

Think about your life, your work, your school, your
family, your friends, your colleagues and your other
relationships. What are the ends you have in mind
when it comes to them? Or, would you rather not
because you don’t want to think about all those
obligations you have?

Is it going to be the ’same ole, same ole’ — you
rushing around like a lab rat in a maze going
nowhere fast and doing the same things over and over
again and getting the same results and wondering
why? Is your life going like it’s at warp speed and
spinning out of control? Are you dreading the New
Year, even though it’s a chance to begin again? Do
you realize you won’t keep your resolutions, so you
don’t even bother making them anymore?

Or, have you prepared ahead of time this year? Did
you make your plan months ago? Are you currently
working through it? Have you looked at your life and
decided how you want to live it this month, next
year, five years from now? That’s what it means to
start with an end in mind.

You look at what you’ve done this past year,
analyze what went well, what didn’t and start to
plan from there.

Businesses do this in small ways every quarter as
well as at the end of each month and then at the
end of the year. They must make their end-of-the-
year reports to their boards or to their
shareholders. They may do it at annual general
meetings or at quarterly meetings.

Most of us are somewhere in the middle of the
extremes. We try to schedule our time and sometimes
over schedule. We procrastinate. Then we’re forced
to do it in a rush, and we punish not only
ourselves but everyone around us because we’ve not
left enough time for them and for us.

My friend, Linda, says she uses the KIS principle.
Keep It Simple. She’s happy to help when and where
she can, but she also is able to say “no” firmly
without feeling guilty. She regularly takes time for
herself, but she also manages to make time for her
family, her friends, her community and her spiritual
needs. No, she’s not wonder woman, but she manages
to keep her life authentic and real.

One year, because my funds were low, instead of
buying gifts I kept Christmas simple. I wrote my
friends and family letters of gratitude and
appreciation. I cited specific incidents during the
year where they’d been especially kind or listened
or helped or even bawled me out when I needed it. I
told them how much I valued their love and
friendship.

Acknowledge friends and family for what they mean
to you. You can say it or you can write it, but just
do it. It may be better than all the gifts you buy
them, and it’ll be something they’ll remember all of
their lives.

As a business owner, a non-profit executive
director or an employee, you can do the same
thing. Acknowledge your colleagues and tell them
how valuable they are to you and the company or
agency — how much they contribute, especially now
when workers are feeling like they’re just not that
important or valued. People need to be
acknowledged.

And, one other tip during this time of celebration:
Think of those outside your immediate circle, those
who might not have a celebration. It doesn’t take a
lot to donate to a food drive (non-perishable goods,
toiletries, a package of diapers). Or, if that
doesn’t appeal to you, adopt a family –
particularly if you’ve done well this year. Your
church or social service agency will have names. You
can buy kids gifts; they don’t have to be really
expensive. You can maybe give a pensioner without
family a happy holiday by bringing him or her a holiday
dinner or some holiday goodies or just by visiting
and saying, ‘Hello.’

Suspend your judgments, if you have some, about
others not like you and treat everyone with dignity,
kindness, compassion and empathy.

Do something different this holiday season. Plan
now to keep it simple. It’s up to you.

When have you imagined a new course of action and
taken steps to make it come true?

Liz Seger
Leadership Forum Facilitator
eSight Careers Network(tm)

As I write this it’s the week for remembering that
horrible day five years ago, September 11, 2001,
when the world changed forever not just for those
in the US but for all of us all over the globe.

I also want to remember the late Steve Irwin, the
Crocodile Hunter who passed tragically last week.
Actually, I dedicate this leadership chapter in his
memory because if anyone looked at life as an
adventure it was the Crocodile Hunter.

Last week I gave you a scenario, well actually it
was an encapsulation of a few scenarios, of which I
knew about or had been directly involved in. The
responses were quite interesting. Thank you Karen,
Ivis, Rachel and Todd for sharing your management
thinking with us.

I was kind of surprised that nobody took a stand
from the whole person paradigm which we’ve been
discussing this summer. So let me quote something
from Steven Covey’s the 8th Habit that perhaps
will help you rethink that scenario.

“Successful empowerment rests in a commitment to
work with team members by ‘win-win’ agreement.” In
an organization, ‘win-win’ means that there is an
explicit overlapping of the four needs of the
organization with the four needs of the
individual. The four needs of an organization are:
financial health; growth and development;
synergistic relationships with key stakeholders;
and meaning contributions. The four needs of
individuals are: physical - economic security;
mental growth and development; social and
emotional relationships; and spiritual - meaning
and contribution.

If someone violates the spirit of the agreement
and continues to do so in spite of sincere efforts
to heal the breach, then the individuals may
simply go for no deal. That means you don’t deal
at all. There is no agreement and you agree to
disagree agreeably. People leave. Hires aren’t
made. New assignments may be made.

There is a really interesting approach to no-deal
that is promulgated by the armed services. It’s
called the Doctrine of Stubborn Refusal. I learned
the doctrine of stubborn refusal from interacting
with naval officers. It means when you know
something is wrong and that it would result in
serious consequences to the overall mission and
the values of the organization, then you should
respectfully push back, no matter what your
position or rank. You should declare yourself in
opposition to the momentum of a growing decision
that you are absolutely convinced is dead wrong.
That’s essentially living from your conscience -
allowing your inner voice or light to guide your
actions rather than giving in to the sway of peer
pressure.

It is important for people in high positions to
officially endorse the doctrine of stubborn
refusal. This legitimizes the right to push back,
the right to right wrongs and to call stupid,
“stupid.”

If you’ve ever seen the movie Mr. Roberts, Henry
Fonda’s role of Mr. Roberts is a perfect example
of that.

In my scenario I saw the longtime volunteer’s
right to express his opinions as an example of the
doctrine of stubborn refusal. The organization
lost quite a few good people over that incident
when management chose to go with no-deal
rather than attempt to even try a win-win solution.

I’m from the baby boom generation - those of born
between 1946 and 1964. This generation used the
doctrine of stubborn refusal a lot over the last
sixty years. We said we were going to change the
world and in many aspects we’ve done just that. We
don’t look at aging the same way as we used to.
For many generations, once you turned 50 they were
shepherding you out to the pasture. Now many
people begin entirely new careers in their forties
and fifties and sixties. We look at menopause
differently than our mothers or grandmothers did.
Some of us are even choosing to have children in
our late forties and fifties and even sixties with
the help of technology.

Read more about Sixth Characteristic of
Leadership: Approaching Life as an Adventure at
http://www.esight.org/View.cfm?x=1589

We’re still going to change a lot of things as we
mature, life has always been an adventure to the
great majority of us, disabled or able-bodied.

This week’s leadership characteristic is dealing
with making life as well as your work an
adventure. What have you done to be more
adventuresome?

Share with us your stories.

Liz Seger
Leadership Forum Facilitator
eSight Careers Network(tm)

Quite a lively discussion last week in discussing
balanced lives, Betty B, Lynne and Ivis offered some
great suggestions on de-stressing. All three
emphasized having outside interests, reflection,
exercise and having confidantes, friends or family to
talk with. This is not only true for harried workers
and parents but young people as well.

Ivis stated that “Through my many years of work in a
large Social Security office I had to find ways to
relieve stress. One of the most important was to
leave the job behind as soon as I walked out the
door… Also take a few deep breaths through your
nose and then let the air out through your mouth.”

While Lynne said that friends and family were her
main stress busters. “A caring friend or relative
means more to me than anything else. I also listen to
music to ‘let the spirit’ out.”

Betty B. posted she “used to live a very 90’s life
style, until I sat back and reflected on what I was
doing… Those were the years of my building up! I
looked at what I could do with all that training,
experience and knowledge. That’s how I started my
business…”

Read more about “Fifth Characteristic of Leadership:
Leading Balanced Lives (2)” at
http://www.esight.org/View.cfm?x=1578

This week, as we continue to examine balanced lives,
I have a scenario for you to think about. What would
you have done in the following situation?

A longtime volunteer with an organization had some
thoughts on what might improve the organization. He’d
been there awhile and could see trends developing he
wasn’t sure were helpful to the organization’s
progress. In talking with some of the other
volunteers he mentioned his thoughts.

Within a few weeks the manager and chairperson of the
board were quite angry with him and accused him of
trying to ruin the organization’s reputation. The
other volunteers had gone to the manager and created
“a he said, I said” kind of scenario and accused the
volunteer of being negative about the organization.

Eventually the longtime volunteer left the
organization feeling angry. Others who had heard both
sides also left or took up sides. A few months later
the branch manager was moved and the chair stepped
down due to all the hard feelings.

What would you have done in this situation? How would
you have handled this from the longtime volunteer’s
perspective? The branch manager’s? The chairperson of
the board?

When do you look at comments as constructive
criticism or just negativity?

Remember Ward Cleaver, Uncle Bill Davis, Mike Brady
or Dr Cliff Huxtable? TV fathers who were professionals
but always kept regular work hours and was home in
time for supper and had time to throw the ball around
with the kids? Remember June Cleaver or Carol Brady?
Even Claire Huxtable, elegant coifed and dressed TV
stay at home moms or in Claire’s case a working mom,
who might have had help from Alice or Mr. French but
always seemed to look great and be there for their
children and making it all look easy?

That was then and this is now and our lives are light
years away from those times. Moms, dads, kids are
lucky if they sit down to have a meal together, let
alone have play time? Parents today and their kids
are overscheduled, overworked. Parents may both work
in excess of 60 hours per week plus whatever needs to
be done at home with no Alice or French to pick up
the slack. Today, despite supposed saving devices
like email, Blackberries, PDAs, demanding workaholic
bosses, moms and dads are on call 24/7 it seems.

Fifty years ago we‘d never heard of things like road
rage or fight or flight response? People weren’t
always so angry, so in a hurry. Have we really
progressed in the last fifty some years? People are
run off their feet, not just at work but taking the
kids to the various classes or team sports they’ve
been enrolled in. Even little babies can’t escape.
Parents expect babies not even a year old to learn
sign language, know their numbers, be potty trained
and have a large vocabulary all before they can crawl
let alone walk! Time to talk to neighbors or friends
or family? They’ll pencil them in, in between
everything else. Most people don’t even know their
neighbors’ names, let alone them personally.

Right now many of us are coiled tightly, hissing like
snakes. At the slightest provocation, we’ll strike
and bite to either maim or kill without a second
thought. Someone cuts you off in traffic, well hey he
deserved to be shot, he got in my way. Like our cave
man ancestors our fight or flight response kicks in
and our reptilian brains go into action.

Doctors are prescribing more and more
anti-depressants, and they’re even advertising them
on TV. Mood disorders, attention deficit
hyperactivity disorders, obsessive compulsive
disorders, Type A personalities, workaholism, all
kinds of syndromes our parents and grandparents may
have experienced but nobody had a diagnosis for it,
let alone medications. I just had a friend diagnosed
with fight or flight disorder and neither she or her
doctor could find an identifiable cause. She’s on
anti-depressants for it and is somewhat calmer.
However, all this can have a deadly toll on our
bodies and our mental health. Her family GP is seeing
more and more of this, even in young children. Is
this symptomatic of our world going at super speed,
trying to not only keep up with the Jones but exceed
them. While others are just trying to stay afloat to
survive.

Read “How to Thrive in a Larger Corporate
Environment: Managing Stress” where Curt Woolford
talks about fight or flight response at
http://www.esight.org/view_search.cfm?x=1453

Then tell us how unbalanced your life has become and
why. Or if you‘re able to stop and smell the roses
share with us your strategies for doing that.

It’s Labor Day in North America this weekend so take
time to relax, honor our nations’ workers and make a
promise to yourself to get your life in balance
again.

Congratulations, Ivis on your new job starting in September. We wish you the very best.

Liz Seger
Leadership Forum Facilitator
eSight Careers Network(tm)

The summer heat is finally abating thank goodness and pretty soon it’ll be back to the rhythm of fall and school.

Here are some of the comments from last week’s discussion about the “Third Characteristic of Leadership: Radiate Positive Energy.”

Natalie on the blog says “Caesar Chavez radiates positive energy advocating for the Hispanic community.”

My friend Mary Ellen who wrote me privately said this:

“Liz, I would have to say you radiate positive
energy even when life throws you curves. My Mom.
My friend Beth. And many of the people I work with
as clients and co-workers do as well. I have
seen through both your and their actions that this
ability is based simply on the choice to BE
POSITIVE and to ACT on that choice — to choose to
make a difference and to put the effort into
achieving the result. It all comes down to either
an individual’s or group’s will to make their
choice a reality. Analogous to, ‘In order to
have a friend you have to be one’ or ‘in order to
achieve your goal you must act on it’…”

In this week’s leadership characteristic “Believing in People” Covey talks about the two different types of people who either believe in people or who have a negative outlook on people (and are generally in it for themselves).

See Leadership Characteristic: http://www.eSightCareers.net/index.cfm?x=1574

On our morning news they featured a 8 year old boy, Jake Stern, who had cancer when he was 5 but its now in remission. While he was in Montreal he noticed that the other children undergoing treatment were not as fortunate as he was, having parents and siblings visit him, being able to use a lap top or have a GameBoy in the hospital with him. So two years ago, with his parents and three siblings, he created an organization “Comfy and Cozy.” It raises money for children in hospital cancer care units or who are undergoing other medical treatment in Montreal to have GameBoys and laptops at their disposal to help pass the time with their treatment. So far they’ve raised close to $150,000 Canadian and are holding another larger carnival this weekend in Montreal. This little guy personifies all of Covey’s leadership qualities. His mother said on TV she’s so proud of him and his three siblings for the people they have become and are growing into.I also have an example of people still believing in people and causes despite being fired from their organizations for no apparent reason other than their usefulness ran out. This has happened to two of my friends in the past few months, both long time employees and volunteers. Yet despite being fired by their “leaders” and bosses they were loyal to, for decades in both cases, they still believe in the organizations and many of the people still involved. They continue to believe that people can make the world work.

My final example of people believing in people comes from Charles Gibson of World News Tonight, previously of Good Morning America, being interviewed on the Charlie Rose Program on PBS this week. Gibson said that both his late father and his late brother disliked their jobs but he on the other hand felt lucky and blessed to be in his. If he was fired tomorrow from ABC News, Gibson said he’d still write them a thank you note for allowing him the privilege of working for ABC News these past 30 some years and telling them how grateful he was for the experiences he had there, and for the people he got to meet and know. He said he was both arrogant and self confident enough to know if it all ended tomorrow he’d been most fortunate to follow in the late Peter Jennings shoes but if it all ended tomorrow he’d be fine with it all.

Gibson is also a prime example of believing in people and not holding grudges and going with the flow no matter what happens.

Tell me your experiences, good and or bad, with believing in others. Why you can or why you can’t.

Have a good week, summers nearly over, make the most of it while you can.

Liz Seger
Leadership Forum Facilitator
eSight Careers Network(tm)

Some very enlightening posts this week. Barney writes “the way in which I have continued to expand is through joining Toastmasters and learning to become a public speaker… Life is a wondrous journey and during the journey we’re either growing or dying. No in between or treading water.”

While Ivis states “I believe there are two essentials to life-long learning way of being. First and foremost an open-minded stance. This is followed by an endless curiosity and hunger for learning. Learning for its own sake.”

And Suzi concludes with “Life is a continual learning process… I worked as a geriatric social worker for a number of years and saw first hand the number of people who would just give up. They quit living and learning. They chose to sit and wait for death. … It’s all about the quality of life you wished to have.”

This week’s reading is Stewardship and Service Orientation. Everyone, everywhere wants to know ‘he /she matters’, that he/she is contributing and can contribute to making the world a better place in his/her own small way. Or as my friend Harlean says, making the world work.

Last week on our CBC “National” news one of the correspondent visited a kibbutz near the border with Lebanon, filled with mentally handicapped and physically disabled teens and adults, who like most of those in the region were trying to keep out of harm’s way.

One young woman who has cerebral palsy told the correspondent she went around trying to make the others feel safe and comfortable so that in turn she herself would feel safe and comfortable during the latest bombing incidents. A social worker who is staying on the kibbutz said he couldn’t leave them even if he wanted to, because the people here genuinely care for and care about people - any people. Although he knew that most abled bodied non intellectually impaired people would probably leave. As evidence at that point a severely mentally handicapped young man came and took the correspondent’s hand and gestured for the cameraperson to come with him saying we’ll share with you and take care of you so won’t be scared out here.

The normally objective female’s reporter’s eyes filled with tears at that moment and it took her a few seconds to compose herself. Such a small act of service, of kindness, of caring about someone else besides yourself in a war zone is a perfect example of stewardship, of being service orientated. It may not be the grand gesture. But it is truly you and me working together to make the world work in each of our own ways. And it’s definitely not you versus me.

How do you or will you show stewardship / service to your fellow human being?

Liz Seger
Leadership Forum Facilitator