Doug Cartland's Four-Minute Leadership Advisory
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by Doug Cartland
Doug Cartland, Inc.
07/01/2014

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Leaders don't have to be poets, but...

 

My daughter has been on my back...again.

 

She's told me for a long time that I don't read enough fiction, that I tend to read a lot of stuff that could relate to what I do-history, biographies, memoirs-but that I don't read enough for the pure enjoyment of reading.

 

Sigh.

 

What I tell her is that I really enjoy history, biographies and memoirs and I get a certain thrill discovering little stories and anecdotes that shed further light on and add depth to the leadership stuff that I teach.

 

(In my defense, there is fiction that I love. It's the type that is really hard to put down and is always calling me back to itself. If it's not, then I find it tedious. There are few things as futile as wasting time with a bad book.)

 

Last year we agreed that she would pick out a fiction book for me that she thought I might like. I didn't.

 

She tried again, and I didn't like that one either.

 

Understand, I wanted to like them, read all of one and half of the other...but alas.

 

(Now, in her defense, these were very good, well respected books and I can see why she liked them. They just weren't for me. Maybe I'm too picky, I don't know.)

 

I insisted to her that I do read Grisham's new book each year, he writes fiction, but she said Grisham doesn't count. That's a little snooty if you ask me.

 

And then last week I had a few vacation days so I picked up The Temporary Gentleman by Irish author Sebastian Barry. I was taking another swing at fiction.

 

When I next saw Susannah I figured she'd be proud of me that I picked up a fiction book all by myself. Instead, she read the short description inside the dust jacket that tells us that the book is about a guy in the 1950s who is looking back over his life-World War I, World War II etc.

 

She rolled her eyes. "It's history in a fiction disguise," she said (or something close to that).

 

Ugh!

 

I read it anyway. And I was mesmerized with the delicacy of Barry's pen and the transcendent power of his language.

 

For example, the main character's ship was going down with hundreds of his fellow soldiers on board:

 

...and then, precipitatively, a silence reigned, the shortest reign of silence in the empires of silence, the whole vista, the far-off coast, the deck, the sea, was as still for a moment as a painting, as if someone had painted it all in his studio, and was gazing at it, contemplating it, reaching out to put a finishing touch on it, of smoke, of fire, of blood, of water, and then I felt the whole ship leave me, sink under my boots so suddenly that there was for a second a gap between me and it, so that wasn't I like an angel, a winged man suspended.

 

Later in the book this:

 

...but I can also see him, standing on the sand in the black suit, frowning down at the viewer, and yet smiling, being a somewhat contradictory person sometimes, like a sun-shower.

 

At another juncture he writes that love found doesn't change us completely:

 

The wolf is always in the dog, and the briar in the rose...

 

No, leaders don't need to be poets, but there is something to be learned from great writers.

 

To wit: How to use the power of language to convey thoughts; clear, concise, creative thoughts. How to inspire with the word, how to give people a crackling crisp vision of exactly where you want to take them and how you're going to get them there. Knowing language and using language to reach into another's soul and cause it to shine.

 

I've often said, and all of us have heard, that it's not what you say it's how you say it. That is true.

 

But that doesn't negate the fact that sometimes it is what you say, when it is said so well.

 

Come to think of it, maybe my daughter is right. Maybe Grisham doesn't count.

 

Oh, and by the way, I've picked up two more of Sebastian Barry's books.

 

There won't be an Advisory next week because of the holiday. See you in two weeks! Have a safe and enjoyable Fourth everyone!  

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Sincerely,  

Doug

 

Doug Cartland, President
Doug Cartland, Inc.

 

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