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January 10, 2007
Rafting, Guides, and Leadership
Over the holidays, we were looking at pictures. One of the pictures had Dave Coley, 30 principals, and I in a group photo before going on a rafting trip as part of the Principals Summer Institute.
One of the themes that Dave emphasized to the group was the location of the guide in a raft. The guide was always in the back of the boat, giving some small, seemingly insignificant moves of the paddle to move the boat to avoid the rocks.
Seems very similar to the best position from which a good leader leads. The leaders seemingly small moves have very high leverage to move the organization. The leaders also are "in the boat", rather than yelling from the shore. Finally, the leader has others with whom the leader works to move the boat downstream safely, where everybody at the end of the journey thinks they did the work themselves.
Posted by chitch at January 10, 2007 2:30 PM