sstojetz

You Are a Lion Who Was Never Shown the Water Vivekananda told a story a hundred years before your phone was built, and it is still the truest thing I know about you. A lion cub is orphaned young and raised in a flock of sheep. He grows up bleating. He grows up nibbling grass. He bolts when the flock bolts, certain to his bones that he is a sheep — because that is all he has ever been shown. Until one day an old lion comes down out of the hills, leads him to a still pool, and makes him look....

For almost thirty years I wore a jacket I never picked out. The ambitious one. The performer. The tough kid from the wrestling room who never lost the stance. It got me a career in medical devices, a reputation, a number to hit — and a version of me that walked through my own front door every night still wearing it. Nobody fitted me for it out of malice. I want to be careful with that, because it's true of your jacket too: it was handed down with love, by people who were never taught either....

Strip away the title, the org chart, and the noise, and leadership is defined by one thing: your ability to empower other people. Not to impress them. Not merely to direct them. To empower them. A leader is not measured by what they accomplish. A leader is measured by what their people become. That sounds simple until you watch how most leadership actually runs. Most of what runs downstream from a leader is control — pressure, scorekeeping, the searchlight hunting for the gap. It feels like...