I’m writing a book. For someone with my inclination towards right brain thinking about the big picture, it’s quite the exercise in alternate reality. Luckily I have an exceptional Book Dominatrix keeping me on track and whipping me into meeting deadlines she sets for me. But this is a story for another day.
The book is about Story…creating and using your story to guide your business to great success. As I’ve moved along I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the way we each have our own story built on the collection of things we’ve paid attention to…and how this story creates a reality unique to each of us.
The act of writing has a wonderful way of focusing your thoughts and a good Book Dominatrix eliminates all the fuzzy thinking and helps crystallize the critical ideas. As these forces have come together focused on my writing on Story and reality, I’ve realized how not only do Story and reality come together to lead to business success but also how their integration is critical to leadership success.
Of most importance for our purposes here is the issue of individual reality. We each really do create our own reality…and then view it as the reality of all. We tend to spend most of our time with others who share significant parts of our reality…think private clubs…which only reinforces that this is the true reality. Yet most people live in a reality so divergent from ours that it can be incomprehensible…think living on less than two dollars a day as in much of Africa.
Exceptional leadership is the ability to overcome the differences created by individual realities by creating a shared reality…by creating a story that all can share and live with great passion. The most difficult part is breaking free of your reality…and expanding it by including parts of the reality of everyone else. Imagine…a unified reality built on passion about a shared story. Think of the power it unleashes.
