The greatest leaders move through the dips in life (See Seth Godin's book, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
). The greatest leaders often make things appear seamless. But we all know that everyone faces challenges in life, even ones that appear insurmountable at the moment. The way that the greatest leaders differ from most is the way in which they respond to the problems and challenges they are facing.
Similarly, we see the results of a project, and everything works like clockwork, but what we do not know about is all the things that went wrong behind the scenes. Wouldn’t it be great if we could be taken behind the scenes to observe the creating of a product or service? That would be a surefire way to teach us how to move through the dips expertly like a great leader.
Last week, I had a panic attack when I realized how close I am to launching the first Virtual Literary World Tour on May 2nd, and I am nowhere close to where I need to be to achieve success. I have changed the deadline twice, and I refuse to do it again. It’s now or never. In my panic, I called a friend, and the response I received was very unhelpful. Fortunately, I didn’t allow the response to make me panic further, I took control of the situation.
Whenever I have been the most successful on projects, I broke things down into manageable bite-size pieces, and this is what I have decided to do. My goal is to visit 30 countries on the tour, but is that realistic? I have covered 18 countries already. A friend who has traveled around the world helped me to map out my tour. The problem with the plan is that most of the books I have read so far are from the middle and last part of the tour. See my dilemma? The books I read first are the books that I was interested in reading first.
In my mind, I wanted to read 70 books for the tour, so far I have read close to 50. Before I started preparing for the tour, I spent time deciding on which books to read for the tour. As some of you already know, when it comes to a reading list, I seldom stick to the plan. I am constantly taking detours, and some of them are major ones. The interesting thing is that the greatest leaders are flexible, and they know how to roll with it when plans change. There are many things we can learn from the greatest leaders.
Another friend who has worked in several countries, and who is also a voracious reader, advised me that I do not have to clearly map out the tour route. She also says that in real life, we make a lot of mistakes and constantly have to backtrack, and that it shouldn’t matter if I decide to visit a country several times, return home a few times between trips. I do not have to start out in Canada where I live, go from one country to another, and then finally return home. I can start in Iceland, go to Austria, return to Canada, spend some time there, and off to Australia and so forth. The truth is, until a day or two before the trip starts, I have no idea where I will be starting. But one thing I can tell you is that I am having fun. The greatest leaders know how to have fun. I contacted Chris Guillebeau from The Art of Non-Conformity for advice on how I should conduct the tour, and his response was, anyway you want. For those of you who may not know, Chris’ is traveling the world.
Perhaps the greatest leaders would have been able to stick to the reading plan, but in our lives, we do the best we can every day, and that’s all that we can hope for. I promise you that whichever way I go with the first Virtual Literary World Tour, it’s going to be an amazing experience. The greatest leaders move through the dips in life, they are masters at it. I am learning to move through the dips, but I have yet to master the process, how about you? How do you move through the dips in life? Let us know by writing your comments in the box below.
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