7 Lessons To Inspiring Leadership:
……Naked, cold, stammering before Millions of Eyes
By Teresa Spangler
We, the universe of people, at one time or another feel like we are naked, cold, shivering and stammering in our speech in front of millions of judgmental sets of eyes. The feeling is devastatingly embarrassing…a crush of the largest of egos. We never feel more human and venerable, without a friend or family connection in the world, than when our insufficiencies are laid out on the royal banquet table of life.
We live much of our lives struggling to prove ourselves (to who specifically I do not know), wanting deeply to do the right things, be valued, drive greatness in the world and ground our daily lives with our families, our beautiful children who show themselves as smarter than us parents, acting out scenes with all the answers; cleverly displayed in play and our business associates. We can stand tall in the most grandiose of cathedrals and feel like a single boring gray fleck of dust lying dormant on the universe. Engulfed in our own emotional instabilities, the voices in our head convince us of what we are not, what we can and cannot do and what people think of us. The strength to overcome our insecurities, our disadvantages and our disabilities is a war-like movement inside our bodies and minds. We are being attacked internally. All our demons begin bombing and bulldozing down any hopes of living our dreams or worse yet, the inability to live up to our responsibilities. Yet, the inner hidden strengths of our mind and our bodies secretly await their calling. So many of us go through our day-to-day lives completely unaware of this brave soldier that lies deep inside.
Tragedies yield the real hero’s in life. These heroes’s are the most unassuming, modest and self-aware people on earth living each day doing honest work for honest food on the table to feed the family. They live, act and die for others. They jump to the defense of ones battered human “psyche”, as much as one’s threat of human life. They may not have earned the credentials of the most educated but through the experiences, not through advanced classrooms of universities, these heroes often emerge from nowhere in brilliant displays. Judged as not capable by so many intelligent blokes only to be in so many cases the most capable and smartest people, quietly and modestly sitting on the sidelines.
With war planes over head, sirens calling out from the bomb shelters, King George VI is called to battle his most fierce demons; the fear that his mind would stop, his voice would choke, his words would stick, his face would drip in sweat, his heart would stop, his whole body would shiver, his eyes would close to block out all the facing fear and his people would be totally and completely left in the cold, silently let down by their country’s leader.
Leaders are not born they are made! The film (The King’s Speech) represents the emergence of a true leader in the making. We play witness to a “King in the Making” battling his insecurities, his greatest fears, his demonizing weaknesses while his cocooned leadership abilities begin to breakthrough. His right hand hero there by his side all the way… not an expert by education but through experiences and through dedication, passion for work and most of all a true evolving friendship that like heroes in all movies, stands quietly in the background so the leader can emerge to inspire people.
Leaders inspire! We wait to be inspired through every speech as we watch and listen for the words to not hiccup out of our leaders mouth. The world’s top leaders make their mark by allowing us to be at their sides as they work feverously to achieve and grow personally. These leaders also allow the brilliance of their team to grow around them and are keenly aware that sometimes the most unassuming quite members of the team are the brightest for the jobs at hand. The King’s Speech, the brilliance of emotionally relatable story telling with all its metaphors, captures a piece of insecurity in all of us so eloquently. You can see the film five times and still experience new emotions each time. But the lessons are expansive.
7 Lessons for Overcoming Challenge In Business and Life:
- The loudest voices in the room may overshadow the best ideas
- Talking for the sake of being heard rarely has value
- Experience is one of the great educators of all time
- Degrees are good but experience based expertise is also good; we should not judge one over the other but give both a fighting chance
- We all struggle with something, it is how we overcome our struggles, or our business barriers to success and fight these damned demons that make us stronger! The fight done well wins the hearts and minds of those we most want to touch. AUTHENTIC! It makes us real and human!
- Someone trying their hardest can yield better results than someone being so confident and knowing everything
- Our greatest weakness can be our greatest strength and, conversely, our greatest strength can be our greatest weakness!
