Leading from Within E-Book

Sam M. Intrator

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 309

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2007

Beschreibung

Leading from Within is a wonderful collection of ninety-three poems from well-loved poets, each of which is accompanied by a brief personal commentary from a leader explaining the significance and meaning of the poem in his or her life and work. The contributors represent a wide range of professions including Vanguard Group founder John Bogle, MoveOn.org cofounder Joan Blades, several members of Congress, Christian activist Brian McLaren, business guru Peter Senge, and many other leaders from business, medicine, education, nonprofits, law, politics and government, and religion. In their reflections, these leaders explore how they have been inspired by poets such as T.S. Eliot, Mary Oliver, William Stafford, Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda, Robert Frost, Rumi, May Sarton, Wallace Stevens, Wendell Berry, and Rainer Maria Rilke. "Leading from Within is perhaps the most soulful treatment of leadership ever composed. Leadership is first an inner quest, and there is absolutely no better place to explore your inner territory than in the pages of this book. This is an evocative work of art; do yourself an immense favor, and engage with these amazing and diverse leaders and their poems." --Jim Kouzes, coauthor of the bestselling The Leadership Challenge and A Leader's Legacy "Leading from Within makes brilliant use of the world's great poets to inspire us to lead with our hearts as well as our heads. It calls to the deeper purpose and meaning within all of us to use our gifts to serve others." --Bill George, author, True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership "This is a superb collection of poems and deeply personal reflections from a wide range of real leaders. It is a gift to all of us who believe in bringing our hearts to our work." --Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) "The entries in this wonderful anthology are a joy to read and all the more interesting because of their special meaning to the leaders who recommended them. It is a book that every nonprofit leader should place among those they draw upon for inspiration every day." --Diana Aviv, president and CEO, Independent Sector "Leading from Within offers a candid view straight into the heart and soul of leaders striving to do good and effective work in the world. The poems and commentaries remind us that leadership is always deeply personal and chock-full of dilemmas that must be addressed by creativity, passion, imagination, and courage." --Jeff Swartz, president and CEO, Timberland

Leseprobe

Contents

Foreword

A Note to Our Readers

Introduction

Called

Ulysses

From “‘Hope’ is the Thing with Feathers”

Madam’s Calling Card

The Way it is

From “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”

From the Irony of American History

From Songs of Innocence

For the Children

Cuttings

From Little Gidding

To Be of Use

Ares

Defining Moments

In Those Years

A Vision

Sonnet 29

The Avowal

The Seven of Pentacles

The Art of Disappearing

From “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

The Contract

Courage

Listening

Adios

Sometimes it Aches

For the Raindrop, Joy is in Entering the River

Spring Azures

From “Auguries of Innocence”

Trough

From “Childhood Friends”

Mother to Son

End of Elul

When You Get Lost

Work Around Your Abyss

Amanecer

Accepting This

Pay Attention

Lost

From “I am Too Alone in the World, and Not Alone Enough”

Fluent

Tao Ching #33

The Opening of Eyes

Invictus

I’m Tired, I’m Whipped

The Diameter of the Bomb

The Panther

With Kit, Age 7, At the Beach

XXXI

The Lover pleads with his Friend for Old Friends

Mending Wall

The Real Bottom Line

The Ponds

The Pleasures of Merely Circulating

The Road Not Taken

Stone

Sabbaths

After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics

The Peaceable Kingdom

The Truly Great

The Grasp of Your Hand

What I Have Learned So Far

The Night House

Dare to Endure

From “Andrea Del Sarto”

Oh, my friend

The Abnormal is Not Courage

There was a time I would reject those

Let me remember

From “What is this Fragrance”

The Entire World is a Very Narrow Bridge

From “The Cure at Troy”

In Order to

From Earth, Fire and Water

From “The Rock Will Wear Away”

Leading Together

The Warning

From “Let America Be America Again”

From “Song of the Open Road”

Snow

I dwell in Possibility

A Note

Replenish

In the End We Are All Light

All Souls

How Do I listen?

Tell All the Truth But Tell it Slant

From “The Spell of the Yukon”

From “The Drum Major Instinct”

Back At It

For Warmth

Directive

Fire

Song of Hope

The Uses of Not

Kindness

Those Winter Sundays

The Peace of Wild Things

Silver Star

From “Ulysses”

Leading with Fire

Afterword

Gratitudes

Center for Courage & Renewal

The Editors

Credits

Other Books

Teaching with Fire, Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner, Editors

Stories of the Courage to Teach, Sam M. Intrator

Tuned In and Fired Up, Sam M. Intrator

Living the Questions, Sam M. Intrator

The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal, Parker J. Palmer with Megan Scribner

Copyright © 2007 by the Center for Courage & Renewal. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass

A Wiley Imprint

989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741 www.josseybass.com

Wiley Bicentennial logo: Richard J. Pacifico

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax [phone], or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.&

Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax [phone].

Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Credits begin on p. 249.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Leading from within : poetry that sustains the courage to lead / Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner, editors ; foreword by Madeleine K. Albright ; introduction by Parker J. Palmer ; afterword by David Whyte. – 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-7879-8869-2 (cloth)

1. Leadership—Poetry. 2. Poetry—Collections. I. Intrator, Sam M. II. Scribner, Megan.

PN6110.L34L43 2007

808.81’9--dc22

2007021352

Foreword

by Madeleine K. Albright

One of the most moving stories to come out of September 11, 2001, involved a passenger on United Flight 93, which went down in Pennsylvania. The passenger, Tom Burnett, called his wife from the hijacked plane, realizing by then that two other planes had crashed into the World Trade Center.

“I know we’re going to die,” he said. “But some of us are going to do something about it.” And because they did, many other lives were saved. Since that awful morning, the memory of their heroism has inspired us. It should also instruct us.

The reason is that when you think about it, “I know we’re going to die,” is a wholly unremarkable statement. Each of us could on any day say the same. It is Burnett’s next words that were both matter-of-fact and electrifying. “Some of us are going to do something about it.”

Those words convey the fundamental challenge put to us by life. We are all mortal. What divides us is the use we make of the time and opportunities we have.

Another way of thinking about the same question is to consider the recent discovery of similarities between the genetic code of a human being and that of a mouse. We are 95 percent the same. Perhaps each night we should ask ourselves what we have done to prove there is a difference. After all, mice eat and drink, groom themselves, chase each other’s tails, and try to avoid danger. How does our idea of “have a nice day” depart from that?

It is possible, of course, that we are all so busy using time-saving devices that we don’t have time to do anything meaningful. Or we may have the right intentions, but instead of acting, we decide to wait—until we are out of school, until we can afford a down payment on a home, until we can finance college for our own children, or until we can free up time in retirement. We keep waiting until we run out of “untils.” Then it is too late. Our plane has crashed and we haven’t done anything about it. We have lived our lives, but we have not led.

As the poems and commentaries in this volume attest, leadership is a concept with as many facets as life itself. The book’s thesis, though, is that true leadership comes not from the sound of a commanding voice but from the nudging of an inner voice—from our own realization that the time has come to go beyond dreaming to doing.

The question of course is, What to do? The answer must be determined by each of us in accordance with our own circumstances and values, but the past has given us clues.

Leadership is found most often in simple acts of self-expression, when conscience overcomes reticence and we make our presence known by challenging a falsehood that has been advertised as truth, calling injustice by its name, stopping to help another, or on one memorable occasion, daring to take a seat at the front of a bus.

We think of great leaders as famous, and some of them are, inspiring others to follow: Gandhi kept on his desk a bronze casting of Abraham Lincoln’s hand; Martin Luther King Jr. carried in his heart Gandhi’s doctrine of creative nonviolence; generations of community activists have found their calling in response to the summons of Martin Luther King Jr.

There are, however, many more models created by people whose names will never be etched in marble or memorialized in a book. Leadership can be found in the reliable presence of a parent, the outstretched hand of a friend, the extra effort of a teacher, and the determination by any of us not only to ask the best of ourselves but also to encourage others to live lives rich in accomplishment and love.

Not every leader marches at the head of a band.

As America’s secretary of state, I was privileged to represent my country in nations across the globe. I had many meetings with high officials in fancy offices, but these were not the meetings—or the leaders—I remember the most.

The people I will not forget are those I encountered in refugee camps and rehabilitation centers, in health clinics and safe havens for trafficked women and girls. These are the places where human character undergoes its toughest tests and where most people live on less money each day than many of us spend for a cup of coffee.

Among those I visited were women in Africa infected with HIV/AIDS. Because of the infection, they were shunned by their families. Other women refused to be tested to avoid being shunned, while many of the men refused to believe anything they were told about the disease or how it could be prevented. I held in my arms the children of such parents—children born with HIV and already dying from it. Some say the struggle against this disease is hopeless, but it is not.

For I also saw educators and health care workers fighting to stop the disease through truth-telling campaigns that were unafraid to shock. We know that such efforts make a difference, for they have already reduced infection rates and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

While in office, I visited with children in Sierra Leone who had lost limbs in that country’s bloody civil war. Some of the children were too young even to know what they were missing. I remember especially a little girl named Mamuna who wore a red jumper and who—while we talked—used her one arm to play with a toy car. Mamuna was three years old. I could not help but ask how anyone could have used a machete against that girl. After all, whom did she threaten? Whose enemy was she? Mamuna was not alone in the camp where we met. There were many others, of all ages, waiting for prosthetics to replace the limbs they had lost.

Yet, if there was self-pity in that camp, I did not see it. If there was anger and bitterness, I did not feel it. What I saw instead were teams of dedicated doctors and volunteers doing all they could to celebrate the gift of life.

I also visited poor neighborhoods and talked to families in impoverished regions from Haiti and Honduras to Burundi and Bangladesh. I saw people who lived a dozen to a room, or half a dozen to a cardboard box; people struggling to survive in crowded neighborhoods where nothing grows except the appetites of small children.

There are those among us who romanticize poverty; others just try not to think about it. But make no mistake, extreme poverty is a jail in which all too many of our fellow human beings are sentenced for life. Helping them to escape is not simple, but we have learned that progress can be made through a combination of giving more, teaching more, expecting more, empowering women, and developing more equitable rules for labor, investment, and trade. Above all, we need leaders who will not accept that misery and deprivation are inevitable, for failure to act to ease suffering is a choice, and what we have the ability to choose, we have the power to change.

We have learned that leadership on behalf of right can achieve miracles, or at least bring the impossible within reach.

Opportunities for leadership are all around us.

The capacity for leadership is deep within us.

Matching the two is this book’s purpose—and all the world’s hope.

A Note to Our Readers

by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner

This book brings together leaders from virtually every sector of society: corporate executives, surgeons, community activists, clergy, politicians, educators, lawyers, journalists, coaches, and more. These are tough and tested men and women whose daily work life is chock full of problem solving, relationship building, and make-or-break challenges.

Our invitation to these leaders was simple: take a moment away from the sharp-elbowed context in which you do your work, step outside the cycle of pressure and demand, put aside your role and title, and speak to us about who you are, why you do what you do, and how you keep your heart and commitment alive in your work and leadership. In short, our interest was not in documenting the latest process for organizational growth or in describing techniques for optimizing effectiveness but in helping leaders tell the story of what is authentic and genuine in their efforts to serve. To tell these stories—stories of leading from within—we enlisted help in the form of poetry. We asked each leader to reflect on a poem that mattered to him or her. These reflections address what is personal and human in leadership. They offer snapshots of leaders encountering themselves and thus provide glimpses of the complex geography of the leader’s heart: what motivates, what inspires, what hurts, what enthralls, and more.