What an awesome, amazing, exhausting semester!<\/p>\n
Thank you, my dear cohort friends, for the courage to wrestle with the texts and with one another, and for the \u00a0vulnerability of \u201cshowing up\u201d even when not everyone agreed.<\/p>\n
Thank you for your encouragement, prayers, and support.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m blessed to have been put in THIS cohort. Our time together brings me great joy.<\/p>\n
Our last book of this semester, Dare to Lead<\/em> by Brene Brown, was in my opinion a perfect bookend for our year.<\/p>\n The first book of last semester was Simon Walker\u2019s Leading with Nothing To Lose. <\/em>In their own ways, each book was about vulnerable, courageous leadership. But I didn\u2019t truly grasp Walker\u2019s definition of vulnerable (undefended<\/em>) leadership until I read Brown\u2019s explanation that vulnerability and disclosure are not the same thing.<\/p>\n She writes \u201cSome of the most daring leaders I know have incredible vulnerability…and yet disclose very little.\u201d \u00a0(Brown, 35). I have always thought of myself as a vulnerable leader, but I can also be a private person. I\u2019ve been wrestling lately with how to pull off both without seeming, or being, inauthentic.<\/p>\n So, her statement, found early in the first chapter, captured my attention, and hooked me for the rest of the book.<\/p>\n You see, I had NOT been a Brene Brown fan. I had started to read one of her books a few years ago and got about a chapter into it before I put it down with the too-quick assessment that she was a bit too \u201cnew-agey-touchy-feely-pop-psychology-feel-good\u201d <\/em>for me.<\/p>\n That was not only grossly unfair, but it was my loss.<\/p>\n This book was so helpful to me (and now I imagine her other books would be, too). The stated aspirational goal of her research, \u201cto live in a world with braver bolder leaders\u201d (Brown, 4) was like oxygen to my soul. It reminded me of something Loren Michaels, creator of Saturday Night Live and scores of other hit TV shows, once said \u201cRisk IS oxygen, If you\u2019re not on the edge, how are you supposed to feel alive?\u201d.<\/p>\n Brave leaders shouldn\u2019t be reckless<\/em>, but it can often seem like they are living on the edge. And courageous cultures help everyone live closer to the edge and feel more alive.<\/p>\n And the feeling of being fully alive when you have the courage to push through fear is what we experience in joy.<\/p>\n Joy is the feeling you get during the first drop of a roller coaster. Joy is what happens when you overcome incredible odds to land a job you fought for but didn\u2019t think you would get. And joy is present when the girl (or guy) you\u2019ve been wanting to ask out for so long says \u201cyes\u201d.<\/p>\n Courage is pressing through all the fear and resistance of two years of doctoral work.<\/p>\n Joy is walking across the stage in a funny hat to get your degree.<\/p>\n Courage isn\u2019t the absence of fear but almost always happens in the presence of it. And joy isn\u2019t the absence of pain but is often what happens when you push through that pain.<\/p>\n Like Forrest Gump and Jenny, or peas and carrots, or peanut butter and jelly (forgive me Jason, Marmite and toast?) courage and joy are meant for each other.<\/p>\n Another book we read this semester underscored this reality. Rare Leadership<\/em> challenged us to return to joy, and to endure hardship well. Those are two separate points, yet they are inextricable. If we don\u2019t know how to live through (or even lean into) pain well, or as Brown calls it \u201cembrace the suck\u201d (Brown, 10) we will have a hard time ever finding joy.<\/p>\n As we all reposition ourselves for next year\u2019s work on the projects we chose this semester, there will be more resistance, and fear, and pain, but let\u2019s look to the joy ahead of us. Like Jesus \u201cwho for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame\u201d (Heb 12:2) we can courageously take up our own (much smaller) crosses for the joy set before us.<\/p>\n I want to end with something Brene Brown quotes from Theodore Roosevelt:<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.\u201d<\/em> (Brown, xviii).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n We are the doers of deeds. We are in the arena. Let\u2019s keep daring greatly through the dust, sweat and blood, whether we come up short or succeed. And I\u2019ll joyfully see you all at graduation (but first in DC), next year!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What an awesome, amazing, exhausting semester! Thank you, my dear cohort friends, for the courage to wrestle with the texts and with one another, and for the \u00a0vulnerability of \u201cshowing up\u201d even when not everyone agreed. Thank you for your encouragement, prayers, and support. I\u2019m blessed to have been put in THIS cohort. 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