The Constellation Learning Newsletter
May 2010

I have returned from my winter wanderings in the sunny south to find that spring arrived early this year. Recently I spent a few weeks in the States visiting my sons. While there I tended to a few errands which gave me ample time to stand in various lines waiting for service. And those waits provided opportunities to practice patience, and surprisingly, leadership.

It’s a subtle science, leadership, and it takes lots of forms. Read on for one example.

Cynthia Barlow

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~ Monthly Message ~

"You don't have to hold a position in order to be a leader."
~ Anthony J. D'Angelo ~

It has been awhile since I wrote on the topic of leadership. I am reminded of the famous observation of the "it" factor of an actor/performer; we may not know how to define"it" but we know it when we see it. When it comes to our leaders - in business, in politics, in friendships - the same is true.  And the biggest "it" factor in business, in our world today, is trust.

In this sense, trust is a verb, not a noun.

From the dictionary: "Trust: v. to place confidence in somebody or in somebody's good qualities, especially fairness, truth, honor, or ability."

Those are small words - fairness, truth, honor - representing large concepts. So large, in fact, that when using small words to encapsulate them, their true meaning can be obfuscated by assumptions: doesn’t "honor"” or "fair" mean basically the same thing to everyone?

Hardly. How many times have you heard or muttered yourself, "it’s not fair," or "it’s the truth?" Them’s fighting words.

This week I went to a Post Office in the United States to retrieve a package and heard both those phrases while waiting outside for the doors to open with a growingly impatient crowd.

I arrived on foot, on a beautiful day, to find the post office was closed between 2:00 PM and 3:00 PM. Cutbacks, I assumed. Several people waited outside; they looked glum. It being 2:45 I thought I’d keep on walking and enjoy the day.

Returning twenty minutes later, the crowd outside the doors had tripled. People were griping and looking very put out. One woman rolled her eyes and sighed at me as I approached, her body language voicing her irritation. A couple of people added a phrase here and there, it was past 3:00 and the doors had not been unlocked! Oh, the inconvenience of it all!

I stood quietly, listening, noticing the group energy. When a man standing close to me began harping on President Obama and everything being the government’s problem, I’d had enough.

"Well," I said, "you can’t really expect to pay for a war and not cut back somewhere. This isn’t about Obama - he inherited a lot of problems - it’s about trimming in order to finance a previous administration’s military machinations." I paused as he looked at me, rather shocked. I drove the point home: "And you still get Saturday delivery here in the States. They don’t in Canada."

I noticed that everyone was now looking at me, parcels in hand. I’m a public speaker - I recognized the look in their eyes; they were listening, and not in a bad way.

I turned back to the man beside me, an angry man, or at least that day he was. Maybe it was just a  bad day for him. I continued, "Closed for one extra hour a day - not so large a price to pay for freedom, do ‘ya think?"

I gave him a small smile. He aw shucked himself into a muted "guess not," just as the doors opened and people began to go inside. I couldn’t help but notice that they walked through the doors, um, let’s call it more ‘softly’ than they would have two minutes earlier.

Later, replaying the moment, I felt proud of myself for defending Obama and risking standing in a long line with strangers who might shoot mental hate-darts in my direction. (I mean, how big a risk is that really? And they didn’t. On the contrary, several of them struck up conversations with me while we waited in line)  Mostly I thought the situation demanded someone speak up and course correct the current of frustration felt by a mob about to descend on unwitting civil servants. It was such a small thing, an easy thing. But the dividends for so small an investment are real, immediate, and cumulative.

I may not have won any friends that day in the Post Office, and really, what a small speck in the spectrum of life that particular moment was, but I left feeling good about myself, as though I’d made a positive difference in a tiny way in the small mosaic of life on a random street in Baltimore, Maryland.

And I can’t help but wonder about that man. I wonder if he'll wait in a different way the next time he has to wait for something.

Leadership: The way to develop "it" is one person at a time.

"Example is not the main thing in influencing others.
It is the only thing."
~ Albert Schweitzer ~

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