Sublime

1. Think about people in your life you view as mentors, or role models, or whom you simply most admire. Which specific qualities of theirs come to mind? 2. Imagine one of your children—or a person to whom you are especially close—describing you to others. What are the qualities you’d hope he or she would cite?

In many settings, your judgment and learning are calibrated by working alongside a more experienced partner: airline first officers with captains, rookies with seasoned cops, residents with experienced surgeons.

As a workshop leader, how you teach is more valuable than what you teach. It’s not about charisma. It’s about being clear, consistent, appreciative, encouraging, caring, and optimistic. Real power comes from warmth, presence, and the ability to self-regulate and respond more naturally to whatever comes up in your group.

itself. Images used as metaphors help to hold complex and disparate elements. Conflict and chaos are clarified, simplified, and unified with fitting metaphors, and thus, we should expect to find a distillation of useful metaphors at the core of the practice of the art of adaptive leadership.