Tag Archives: Max De Pree

Investing In Your Leadership Trust Fund

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to build trust through long-term relationships. Reading time: 3:31

You’re a General leading in battle when you’re forced to surrender to a fever-maddening illness that threatens your life.

Artist Taras Shevchenko's 1836 depiction of Alexander the Great and his doctor

Artist Taras Shevchenko’s 1836 depiction of Alexander the Great and his doctor

You are so sick that even your official physicians refuse to treat you, fearing they would be cited for negligence or even murder.

Compounding your predicament is a rumor that your rival is offering a reward to assassinate you.

Finally you solicit a doctor willing to treat you against the odds.

But then- just as you begin to take the medicine this doctor just prepared for you- you are presented an urgent note. The note says the medicine you are about to drink is poison. The note also warns that this doctor had been paid off by a rival General to assassinate you.

What do you do? You do what Alexander the Great did.

He scanned the note and immediately swallowed the medicine as cavalierly as if he were downing a drink in bar and while drinking handed the note to the doctor. The doctor also read the inflammatory note and hardly reacted to being called an ASSASSIN. He knew better.

And so did Alexander The Great, who would go on to conquer half the known world some 2,346 years ago.

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Leadership is R-Rated

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you deal more effectively with people. Reading time: 4:34

The rancher carefully displayed a lizard for the general public at a zoo. A woman in the crowd backed away. “I don’t like reptiles,” she demurred.

“It’s not a reptile. It’s a lizard,” the rancher said. The woman winced at the implied distinction.

The rancher lifted his lizard high for all to see. And then in a soft, comforting voice that seemed to caress the on-lookers, he said: “His name is Sam. “Lizards aren’t so bad when you get to know their names ? He looked at the same woman in the audience and said: Do you want to pet Sam now? She smiled.

The rancher and Sam the Lizard demonstrated how getting to know someone more personally can break down the barriers of diversity and shine a more inviting light that seeks to leverage differences for mutual growth. That’s what leaders do. They build relationships.

No wonder leadership is R-rated —R for Relationships.

Leaders realize that relationships can begin only after you first let go of all your personal baggage, let go so that your hands are free to lift others up. Let go so that you can can listen and learn for more than the name of another; so that you can listen more significantly to where the other is coming more than merely where they are from. Then they find common grounder together.

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