The poet David Whyte – from Yorkshire in England … trained as a marine zoologist and working in the Galapagos, pursuing every marine zoologist’s dream in that ecological paradise…
While by all measures, he should have been thrilled about being there… yet he wasn’t. While he enjoyed studying the stuff, somehow counting turtles and other sea creatures wasn’t doing it for him…
What to do – all this investment, all of the dreams… now don’t mean anything anymore. He felt a call, an inner call, an impulse he couldn’t ignore. In some way, he noticed that he wasn’t engaged in his own life in some important way … and he set out on a journey from that moment to seek to understand that which drove him from within – which has led him, 20-30 years later, to the place of being a world renowned poet.
When we think about leadership it’s fitting to begin by asking who is it that’s doing the leading? How engaged is this person in his/her own life and leadership? Would I want to follow that person? Our British colleague asks himself as he looks himself in the mirror each morning, “Would I follow me today?” If yes, he’s off to the races… and if no, then he begins reflecting upon what it would take for him to answer yes. In the language of Alcoholics Anonymous this would be called taking “a fearless moral inventory of our character” and seeing what needs changing for us to be in integrity…
What needs changing for you to be in integrity?
