Nelson Mandela's 8 Lessons of Leadership
by Miki SaxonPost from Leadership Turn Image credit: Frames-of-Mind CC license
Leadership is an industry. In the name of leadership over the last 4000 years at least a million trees have gone to make the leadership library’s books and magazines; more recently thousands of computers serve up terabytes of digital commentary, discussion and rants about leadership; and the thousands of people in the leadership industry pay mortgages, raise families and send their kids to college.
I’m not saying it’s all bad. Industries have coalesced around stranger, more ephemeral, more esoteric topics and people have benefited—or not.
But I often wonder if there is truly anything new under the leadership sun or if it’s all been said already, and with more beauty, by the earliest pundits, such as my own favorite Lao Tzu.
That’s not to say we can’t learn from more recent writings.
To learn, we each must find that which resonates best within us—not in someone else, but in our own most vulnerable self. That’s the most fertile soil—where seeds planted can truly flourish.
Richard Stengel has written another thoughtful and moving article about Mandela and leadership, “I’ve always thought of what you are about to read as Madiba’s Rules (Madiba, his clan name, is what everyone close to him calls him), and they are cobbled together from our conversations old and new and from observing him up close and from afar. They are mostly practical. Many of them stem directly from his personal experience. All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of trouble: the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.”
- Courage is not the absence of fear—it’s inspiring others to move beyond it
- Lead from the front—but don’t leave your base behind
- Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front
- Know your enemy—and learn about his favorite sport
- Keep your friends close—and your rivals even closer
- Appearances matter—and remember to smile
- Nothing is black or white
- Quitting is leading too
I’ve listed just the headings and although you may think that it’s the same stuff you’ve seen before if you don’t take time to click and read the entire text you’ll be doing yourself and those around you a major disservice.
This may be the one—the one that resonates, takes root and changes your life.
What resonates most for you?
Your comments—priceless
July 19th, 2008 at 3:05 am
[…] Miki Saxon wrote a post on Richard Stengel’s article on Mandela’s 8 Lessons of Leadership. Miki stated: if you don’t take time to click and read the entire text you’ll be doing yourself and those around you a major disservice. I believe in service so I was challenged to read the detailed article and very happy that I did. […]