By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy
Here’s an idea to leverage history in solving today’s challenges. Reading time: 4:34
The old chicken-and-egg conundrum of leadership still stirs a discussion: Does history make great leaders or do great leaders make history?
Some may agree with the historian Thomas Carlyle who insisted that great people make history. On the other hand some may agree with author Leo Tolstoy and historian Arnold Tornbee who argued that history made great people.
No matter. One way or another, history plays a key role in shaping our lives as author Ralph Waldo Emerson observed: “man is explicable by nothing less than his history.”
As Abraham Maslow observed history is part and parcel of each of us just as a steak that you have eaten is now part of you not, fully assimilated. “The past is not something filed away but integrated into,” Maslow writes.
The most effective visionary leaders straddle the fence of time across the bridge of history–with one eye clearly anticipating the future and one eye clearly remembering the past.
They see history as a strategic tool where the past is a crucible filled with the potential of tomorrow — not a coffin filled with the decay of yesterday. They agree with philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s insight that “life must be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards.”
Maybe that’s why President Harry S. Truman spoke so memorably, so meaningful, Continue reading
Filed under: Thinking | Tagged: churchill and history, history and leaders, history and leadership, maslow on history, signficance of history | Leave a comment »
