Leadership as Making Opportunities
One more note on the TED Talk from yesterday about Nancy Frates’ story about the ALS Ice-Bucket Challenge.
A few weeks ago I defined leadership as using the gifts God has given you to bring out the gifts of others in order to accomplish great things in and for the world God loves so much. And I stand by that. 🙂 But as I listened to Nancy Frates, I was also struck by the determination of her son to seize the opportunity in his ALS to make a difference.
We don’t often think of tragedy as presenting opportunity of course, but Pete Frates did. In fact, he refused not to see an opportunity. And I think that’s part of being a leader as well. It’s going beyond seizing opportunities – which is important – to actually refusing not to see opportunities, even and especially when most people don’t sense them.
I often describe as an “affliction” the compulsion to dig through a pile of manure looking for the pony.