Effective Leadership

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work but rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The summer I graduated from high school, I worked in small company as a Girl Friday. A classmate and dear friend of mine, Marianne, was also hired by the same company, which was much fun for both of us. Our assignment was catching up on a huge backlog of filing, which looked like than enough to keep us busy way beyond the summer months. In other words, what awaited us each morning was, on the surface, sheer drudgery and utter boredom. Yet I went at it with gusto, in no small part thanks to the president of the company. Every Friday morning, he gathered his staff together for a brief meeting. All of us were required to attend, from the lowest on the totem pole (that was Marianne and me!) to the top brass. I don't recall exactly what the president would say, but I do remember that he would sum up the week's accomplishments and thank us for our hard work, praising us for our loyalty and dedication. He would encourage us to carry on in the week ahead, to labor together in pursuit of the company's goals, and to continue to do the best we could. I would walk away from those meetings feeling like the luckiest girl in the world to work for such a good man and a great company -- and I would happily attack that filing more vigorously than ever. Reading the above quote that appeared in my email this morning from Gratefulness.org brought to mind those Friday morning pep talks from the summer of 1966. The president of this company was an effective leader. He was teaching us "to long for the endless immensity of the sea" within the narrow confines of our offices and duties. We weren't just shuffling papers and crunching numbers. We were bound together in the exciting job of serving the public and our clients with integrity, excellence and enthusiasm.

P.S. Marianne and I found ourselves unemployed at the end of three weeks. By then, we had completed the filing along with all the other little tasks we were given to do!