Three Minute Leadership: Optimism
To: The Great Leaders Who Have a Passion for Continuous Learning
In their book, The Truth About Leadership, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner suggest that forward-looking ranks second only to honesty as the most admired characteristic of great leaders. They write: “The capacity to imagine and articulate exciting future possibilities is the defining competence of leaders.” It is they who look at current trends and look for the paths to the future. It is their beautiful optimism that opens their eyes, minds and hearts to possibilities. They paint a future vision that excites and engages people taking them from the ‘what is’ to ‘what can be.’
Helen Keller tells great leaders: “Optimism is that which leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” May your joy and optimism for life and all its possibilities be a defining competence in your professional and personal life. May a forward-looking mindset take you off the well-trodden path. May you joyously wander and explore new wonders and bring the once unimaginable to life-changing realities.
May you always remember the gentle counsel of Albert Schweitzer: “The joy of life comes with our encounters with new experiences and, hence, there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” May you fill your days with the excitement and beauty of endless suns, finding in each a new and wondrous miracle in which you will find another experience of joy in your life.
Have a beautiful day and a magnificent week!!!
Mike
___________
_