Years ago, my wife and I had a couple of hours to kill between meetings in a large city, so we decided to visit a famous nearby shopping mall.<\/p>\n
This mall was massive, and we entered it through a huge store called The Burlington Coat Factory. Then we started to meander down the main central corridor that American malls are known for.<\/p>\n
As we walked for what felt like a mile, we passed all the stores and restaurants you can imagine. I was surprised to find everything from boutique retailers (a store with only<\/em> pens) to big-box stores (like Best Buy), and from fast-food, to fast-casual, to several full-service-sit-down restaurants.<\/p>\n But when we started walking by the SECOND huge Burlington Coat Factory, I was stunned. I turned to my wife and said, \u201cDeborah, this mall is so big that it has two full sized Burlington Coat Factories\u2026we better start walking back to the one we came in through or we\u2019ll never get to our meeting\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n She looked at me like I was stupid (I\u2019m not stupid), waited a beat, then burst out laughing. She then informed me that this was the SAME store we\u2019d entered through, and that we had strolled in a long, almost imperceptible circle to get back to it.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t believe her. I argued that we had walked an extended slightly curved\u2014but linear\u2014path. \u00a0Instead of trying to fight with me she wisely dragged me to a kiosk that had a map of the mall, laid out in a long oblong pattern, and she pointed at a little red dot that said:<\/p>\n \u201cYOU ARE HERE\u201d<\/p>\n As soon as I had context to where I was and saw how it related to the rest of the mall, I figured out that I was totally lost, and not for the first (or last) time, grateful for an understanding and wise partner.<\/p>\n I know that\u2019s a very long story to open up this blog post (and semester) but I want to share something that\u2019s been important to me ever since that incident: it\u2019s the power of finding the \u201cYOU ARE HERE\u201d dot.<\/p>\n Whether we\u2019re in a new mall, a new city, a new semester, or a new stage of life, our context can become rather disorienting and so much \u201cnew\u201d coming at us all at once can prove to be distracting. In those moments, it\u2019s incredibly helpful to discover where we are in relationship to everything else.<\/p>\n Sometimes that discovery about where we are is emotional. Sometimes it\u2019s spiritual. Sometimes it\u2019s historical. And, as I often find myself wandering around cities I\u2019ve never been in, sometimes it\u2019s geographical.<\/p>\n In any case, to know where we are starting provides considerable help in determining how we can get to where we\u2019re trying to go.<\/p>\n Even in\u2014maybe especially in\u2014the task of leadership.<\/p>\n As Max Dupree, the CEO of Herman Miller, famously said in his book, Leadership is an Art<\/em>, \u201cThe first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.\u201d[1]<\/a> Or, to put it a different way, one of a leader\u2019s primary tasks is to help everyone on the team know where the red \u201cYOU ARE HERE\u201d dot is in the context of where that team is attempting to go.<\/p>\n As we prepare to \u201cconquer\u201d Oxford in a few weeks, Paul Sullivan\u2019s The Secret History of Oxford[2]<\/strong><\/a><\/em> has been useful to me as it\u2019s helped me know a little bit (but thankfully not too much) about the History of the city and the University, some of the key facts about each college in the University, and about some of the important people, places, and unique things to be looking for in Oxford.<\/p>\n A few examples: I\u2019m perhaps most anticipating about anything having to do with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (131) and I can\u2019t wait to have a pint at The Eagle and the Child (131)<\/span> The Lamb and Flag, where The Inklings frequently gathered. I want to stop by Lincoln College as I find it fascinating that the King James Bible was translated there, John Wesley formulated Methodism there, and Ted Geisel (Dr. Suess) was educated there (67). And I won\u2019t leave without a selfie in front of Radcliffe Camera (144).<\/p>\n This book has helped me to know how to locate the YOU ARE HERE dot when I get there.<\/p>\n I\u2019m taking notes and drawing my own mental map, based on what I read in the book and what I\u2019m finding online. Of course, much of the joy of a new place (and even familiar places) is discovering what you didn\u2019t even know was there. At the very least I won\u2019t find myself in a totally strange city but I can hit the ground with a general sense of where I am, and where I\u2019d like to start on my adventure.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Max Dupree (1989). Leadership is an Art<\/em>, Doubleday, page 11.<\/p>\n