MORE ON LEADERSHIP - A Folk Tale

I go on about leadership because it is mostly evident by its absence in the Canadian polity.  We do not see it in business, political life or the media and we all suffer for its lack.  I wrote a book about it (MORAL LEADERSHIP:  Facing Canada's Leadership Crisis - McGraw-Hill Ryerson.)  I have lectured about it in the tradition of, "Them what can, does - Them what can't teaches".

There is an old Spanish folk tale that gets at the essence of leadership, which to my mind is simply the exercise of moral courage.  The tale goes as follows,

There was a little man and he led a little life.

One day, he began to pack his little bag.

They came and they asked, "What are you doing?  Where are you going?"

He replied, "I am packing my bag and going to Conamera."

They said, "You mean, you are going to Conamera God willing."

He replied, "No, I mean I am going to Conamera."

So God changed him into a frog, and placed him in the Frog Pond for seven years.

When God changed him back, what did he do?

Well, he began again to pack his little bag.

They came and they asked, "What are you doing?  Where are you going?".

He replied, "I am packing my bag and going to Conamera".

They said, "You mean you are going to Conamera, God willing".

He replied, "No, I mean I am going to Conamera...

Or back to the Frog Pond."

The Little Man reminds me of another Little Man I met only once, several years ago.  I was called in my role as a consultant to do damage control and trauma intervention at a necessary but lamentable firing of a long-serving Vice President of a major Canadian university.  The President - the Little Man I refer to - was on sick leave.  He was in the last stages of dying of ALS.  When I arrived, the executive who retained me and was to have delivered the bad news to the VP informed me that he received a note from the President which read as follows,

"I hired her.  I mentored her.  She reported always to me.  I will dismiss her - personally.  I owe her that respect."

An hour later the President was helped from the ambulance and for the last time into the big leather chair in his office.  He was given a pad and pen because he no longer had the ability to speak.  He wrote a while and handed to result to his distressed executive to read on his behalf.  The VP was invited in to the office.  The appointed executive read the words written to her while the President maintained unswerving eye contact.  He then held her hands for a moment, nodded farewell and went home to complete the process of dying.

Afterward, I glanced at the handwritten script.  At the top of the page the President had printed in caps,  

"DIGNITY".

This Little Man (he was tiny in stature) was one of the special people who enriched and informed my life.  He was a leader; an exemplar and a man of real courage.  I met few like him in my long business career.  I see none like him in the world of politics, the big bureaucracies and the importuning social service agencies.  To find his like I have to hark back to the gritty, raucous NCOs and officers in the military from whom I received my earliest training in being a leader and in just being a man.  They did the right thing, usually, these gutsy ruffians.  They did it sometimes in ways that would curl your hair and send smarmy, politically correct nice nellies to the fainting couch but dammit, the right thing.  Honouring dignity can come in interesting disguise.

I suspect that I wrote this to challenge myself.  I invite you to do likewise.  Our screwed up world needs all the help it can get.

PS:  The previous post below about Irshad Manji may be helpful.