One builds a building from a strong foundation, an excellent plan and daily devotion, until the vision becomes real. Same for a leader.
I’m on the magical island of Ibiza. I’ve landed here to do my art, take long walks, finish Of Mice and Men, and rest a lot after greenlighting my new book The Robot and The Gardener: Being Fully Human in an Artificial World for the printer last week. [If you want an early copy, you can pre-order it here.]
And on this morning, as I stare out at the cliffs that reach for the sky and a sea that is the color of joy, I reflect on leadership, the subject I’ve given so many of the best years of my life to.
Yes, the machines are coming.
Yes, AI will change everything.
So what? It won’t be the end of the world, no matter what the doomsayers wish to tell you. Fear sells. Courage doesn’t.
The future is built for humans who go deeper on developing the core gifts that make us most human. If I were you, I’d think about these gifts and create a blueprint to make them shinier over the next 90 days.
To do this is to show leadership. Because leadership is simply the opposite of victimhood. Victims wish there was no change and complain it’s all so hard and blame conditions, giving away their power to make the future as they want in the process.
Do not do this. Do not be like this. Don’t be around people, news, conversations, and mentalities like this.
Step up. Now. Into. Your. LEADERSHIP.
I’ll send you another message sometime soon on the mechanics of how to do this, but here are a few of the ideas I’ve been sharing with organizations around the world at their conferences (it seems businesses want to build leaders at all levels as never before):
…lead where you’re planted! Never say, “I’ll show more care, mastery, responsibility and resilience when I have a higher title.” Start now.
…thinking like a victim is a program you’ve learned and practiced so often it may have become your unconscious operating system. Step outside it and see what you’re doing. Then each day catch yourself and begin inscribing the habit of thinking like a leader.
…being helpful to a teammate or a customer or a person on the street makes you larger.
…read history and the classics a few nights a week because a smart way to predict the future is to understand the past. The world works in cycles and human nature hasn’t changed for centuries.
…dial in your mental fitness, emotional highness and physical vitality. All you touch on the outside reflects the way things are working on the inside.
…find your spirituality. I don’t speak much about spirituality but my connection with my higher power is deeply important to all I do. It provides me with an organizing power to stay true to the North Star that is my mission. And gives me the strength to get up when I’ve been knocked down (and the wind taken out of my lungs).
“In the midst of winter, I learned there was within me an invincible summer,” wrote Albert Camus.
If you’d like some clear guidance for leading and prospering in the “machine future” that is coming, go ahead and order my new parable The Robot and The Gardener here. It’s unlike any book I’ve ever written.
And if you’d like to be a part of a movement of leaders, founders and human beings from across the planet who wish to use the change ahead for craftsmanship, happiness and helpfulness, have a look at my new platform Humanitara here.
Hope this helps and all my best,
Robin
