By Peter Jeff
Leadership Mints Guy
Here’s an idea to help you keep pursing your goals despite setbacks. Reading time: 1:54.
LEADERS KEEP HOPE ALIVE
Mount Everest (20,029 feet) — tallest mountain in the world.
You failed. Again. Now what? Take heart Leaders assess the situation and see what most people don’t see.
That’s what hope is all about. Leaders keep hope alive no matter how dismal the immediate circumstances.
Consider this scenario the next time you find yourself on the short end of the stick, deep in the hole, behind the 8-ball, pick your cliché.
All you know is that you have failed and you’re hurting. But not for long.
Imagine that you try and fail to climb Mount Everest three times. On your third attempt an avalanche kills seven members of your mountain climbing team.
This was in 1922, more than three decades before the first explorers (Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay in 1953) would successfully scale the tallest mountain in the world.
You Can Not Grow Any Bigger And We Can
A few months later the dead mountain climbers were revered at a banquet. One of the survivors gave a speech in memory of their dead mountain climbing comrades. He finished the speech with a stirring call to action that rekindled the human spirit to once again burn with the flames of passion, pride and purpose.
On the far wall, there was a large photograph of Mount Everest.
During his speech he turned and looked directly at the photograph and said: “I speak to you Mount Everest in the name of all brave men and women. Mount Everest, you defeated us once. You defeated us twice. You defeated us three times. But Mount Everest, we shall someday defeat you because you can not grow any bigger and WE CAN.
That should be the mantra of every leader : You can not grow any bigger and we can. Leaders keep hope alive. Small wonder that leadership author John Gardner says the first and last at of a leaders is to “keep hope alive.”
Today’s ImproveMINT
Keep hope alive to keep your leadership thinking in mint condition.
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