Are you standing in someone’s light or lighting someone’s stand?

Leaders light someone’s stand. Leaders are like impresarios, those behind-the-scenes producers who organize and often finance concerts, plays, or operas, according to John Sculley, the former Chief Executive Officer at Apple writing in his book Odyssey.

Impresarios – supersized stagehands — ensure that the resources are available, and that the setting and stages are reviewed and updated regularly to enhance performance.

Consider the following ditty in THINKING Like a Leader by Peter Jeff to help you focus on your Impresario duties as a leader:

CLEARING THE WAY

A leader may use just the right words
to cage the brightest and best of birds.

Those birds may sing throughout the day,
creating greater productivity
 in every way.

But suddenly their creative spirit is no longer free
when the birds are caught in their own debris.

Then leaders step in to clear the way so the birds
 can again sing away.

For more ideas on spotlighting others to nurture a creative thinking culture, consider purchasing a copy of THINKING Like a Leader, a 296-page book filled with 77 examples from business, sports and politics from Amazon.com. THINKING Like a Leader is part of the Leadership Mints Series that also includes a 300-page book on empathy filled with 77 more Leadership Mints-LOVING Like a Leader- and a 300-page book filled with 52 more Leadership Mints on civility titled SPEAKING Like a Leader. All three books in The Leadership Mints Series are designed for busy leaders seeking to refresh their feeling for leading in 5-minutes or less — the average reading time of a Leadership Mint.

The 3-books
in The Leadership Mints Series
available on Amazon.com
in print and e-book

Consumed like a breath mint — quick and on-the-go — a Leadership Mint is a short story that energizes leadership behaviors and personalizes leadership principles so they are more easily remembered, more readily acted upon and more fully applied.