Leadership is Like Christmas Morning

Leadership is like Christmas morning.

A great deal depends on what happens in a short time on Christmas morning. Tremendous anticipation and speculation build for months, until the seals are broken and everything is revealed.

I understand that Christmas is about much more than just giving and receiving presents. We give each other gifts to show our love and celebrate the holiday’s deeper truths. There is still something very important about that moment when the wrappings come off and the potential is transformed into reality.

Leadership has a lot in common with those moments of transformation.

Leadership is an exchange, a relationship, that reflects deeper truths. We decide to trust our leaders. We decide whether they appreciate our potential, whether they can help us bring out the best in ourselves. We give them the best we think we have, and they help us find our even greater potential.

You can tell a lot about people by the way they approach those moments of transformation. Some people are meticulously careful. They work very hard to preserve the wrappings, as if they plan to put the presents back into them. Some people treat the wrappings as an obstacle they need to overcome; they tear the paper and throw it into the air.

We look for leaders who are patient with us, but who help make discovering our gifts part of the celebration.

After the exciting moment of discovery, leadership helps us put our gifts to work. Once the unwrapping is finished, we continue exploring the gifts we have unwrapped.

Leaders help us put things together, understand the instructions, find the batteries we need to keep going.

Leadership is like Christmas morning, every day.

What are your gifts that you need help unwrapping?

Who has helped you discover some of your deeper gifts?

[Image by Lisa Jacobs]