I don’t care who you are or how great your store of wisdom, there are times in your life when you are clueless about how you represent yourself. And those times of befuddlement occur at a frequency rate directly correlated to your estimation of your own self-knowledge. The more you think you know, the higher the likelihood that you know yourself less.
Several months ago in this column, I wrote about the value of a recession and how a leader truly learns leadership when times are bad, not when they are good. That topic came up again at a Corporate Directors Forum monthly educational program. The title of the program was “Leading in Times of Fear”. The panelists represented disparate backgrounds, with a common theme that resonated. Each was uniquely qualified to participate as an expert on the subject.
How often do we ask this question, when we open our mouth to say something? What is our intention? Most of the time, we just start talking.
I couldn’t help chuckling to myself. Well, maybe it wasn’t so much to myself, because Helen saw my stifled laughter, smiled and asked, “What’s funny?”
