Leadership takes courage, tons of resilience and deep love
Posted on May 16, 2019 by Amaia Sotes Linares-Rivas, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
We can all be inspiring leaders. We can all be extraordinary. We just need to be willing to endure all the hardships and raise above them!
We often hear about the importance of mentors in business. In the InsideOut Adventure (IOA) we also believe that mentors are essential for leadership, and that is why we like to invite our IOA Mentors to share what they have learnt on the journey with others.
There is nothing that sets our IOA Mentors apart from other people, except for the fact that in certain moments and situations in their lives, they have managed to lead and shine in extraordinary ways, which have made them achieve incredible things. Some people get recognised for their achievements. Others don’t. And at the same time, all these people who have managed to reach out to the stars, have also failed and continue to fail in hundred other attempts and behaviours. These are not semi-gods that we are talking about. They are leaders.
We are all ordinary beings and sometimes, we can all be extraordinary. The more we work on ourselves and our aware leadership, the more often we will display such behaviour. I have the feeling that we too often have the temptations to make semi-gods out of people, and believe that they can do something we cannot… Only to feel extremely disappointed to find out that Steve Jobs, Rosa Luxembourg, Einstein, or Marie Curie were not perfect. Neither is Oprah, Zuckerberg, or Obama.
What I see these people do is that they fall a lot. Fail a lot. But they try again and again. They don’t stop. They don’t complain. They don’t think it’s somebody else’s fault. They don’t wait for miracles to happen. They go outside their comfort zone every single day. They know they are normal. Nothing out of the ordinary. But the muscle they exercise everyday is their attitude, their persevere… And guess what? We can all do that. Mental strength gets trained. Our IOA Mentors are a brilliant example: Oscar Cadiach failed 10 years in a row in his attempt to claim the next highest peak in the world, but he never gave up and eventually made the 14 eight-thousanders. But he did endure 10 years of not achieving his goals, and he persevered. He is like you and me. But in the mountain he focuses. He doesn’t take it personal. He falls and stands up again. And again and again. But he does fall. Like we all do. And he keeps on trying. They all have such stories to tell: Juan Dual, Alex Feretos, Enrica Arena -the CEO of Orangefiber, Iruri… They all have tons of failure stories to tell us. From yesterday. From today.
We can all be inspiring leaders. We can all be extraordinary. We just need to be willing to endure all those failures, hardships, disappointments, and raise above them. Because what we are trying to bring to the world is bigger than our egos, than our falls and failures. Extraordinary leaders are all about love: to their teams, their companies, their societies and after all, to themselves! They are just trying to make their small contribution to the world…
I want to leave you with the final message Nicolas Alcala, another IOA Mentor, gave during one of our events.
“My biggest lesson has been to learn that the most important and intense force in the world is love and compassion. Those are two things that even though they seem far away from business, it’s actually the best business and leadership lesson that you can learn. Those are the forces that move the word in many different ways. Some people are lucky enough to learn them when they are little, being surrounded by love and compassion, and for some others it takes a little longer … but that would be my best advice, to learn to love unconditionally and to have compassion for others”.
These are his words. And you? Are you ready to lead?
