Beaten Down
Sometimes when you feel like you have been beaten down so much, all you need is for someone to show that they believe in you. - Drew Brees
"There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away."
— Winston Churchill (via jessekquotebook)
"Remember the difference between a boss and a leader; a boss says “Go!” - a leader says “Let’s go!"
— E.M. Kelly (via philosophisdom)
The End
After 6 grueling and challenging weeks, I came to the end of the road for my current Lab assignment.
(Well it’s not really the end of the road; there is still the work of preparing for the post-Lab cabinet workshop, and other ancillary work, but apart from these necessary final things, most of the work is done).
Labs are a funny thing. Lately there has been a minor craze in government for Labs to be arranged for issues as varied as illegal immigrants, youth development, and what-have-you.
Nothing wrong with this, of course. Labs are indeed a powerful mechanism to discover transformational solutions, create alignment around such ideas, and develop the delivery toolkits to ensure implementation happens. It can be an explosive technique when done well.
But what the politicians may not realise is that Labs are hard work. It can be a challenge to create alignment around ideas, while managing the needs and aspirations of various Lab members with their own individual idiosyncracies. And of course, the magnitude of the challenge multiplies when the Lab attempts to address a difficult topic such as affirmative action, or corruption.
The intensity of the Lab environment, for me, holds its own reward. The challenge of trying to grapple with a difficult and intractable topic, along with the need to manage the expectations of Lab members, creates its own dynamic leadership challenge.
Often, leaders are born in the crucible of great crises. The intensity of real problems, coupled with the urgency, hones leadership instincts and fashions those teachable moments which makes leaders who they are.
The Lab, true to its name, creates an artificial crucible in which problems of great magnitude are tackled within a short space of several weeks. Yes, it is a safe haven for experimentation with ideas, but the urgent timelines and frequent syndications with top-level decision makers creates a perpetual rush of urgency that can make or break potential leaders.
And so, as I reflect upon the six weeks that have just come and gone, I realise more than ever the adage that the best rewards for one’s toil is not what one gets out of it, but what one becomes as a result of it.
Fatherhood
Lately, the question of “bila nak dapat cahayamata?” has cropped up from predictable, as well as unexpected quarters. The most mundane conversations can take the surprising turn towards that existential question often asked of recently-wed couples.
For me, the question takes extra poignancy since I have grappled with the question of fatherhood for as long as I can remember. I have witnessed good and bad parenting, often at very close range, sometimes too close for comfort.
My own personal relations with my father and stepfather have taken the most unexpected rollercoaster rides, and I have come out of it determined, more than anything else in life, to become a better father when my own time comes.
Fatherhood, in a way, is a fundamental expression of leadership. I cannot begin to imagine the enormity and overwhelming responsibility that descends when a father first holds his own son or daughter in his hands. And that bond, once formed, is unbreakable, be it in this life or in that eternal afterlife that seems so close and yet so unimaginably far from the everyday twists and turns of modern life.
I would like to be able to say that I have resolved all the open loops of my own life; that I am ready to become a father someday, unencumbered by past baggage. Once, when I was younger, I believed that sheer sincerity and the force of personal persuasion are enough to surmount the mundane frictions of filial relationships. I now know better. And a part of me tries very hard to forgive and to move on, and in some ways, I have.
But I also recognise that some wounds were lanced open by primal forces and fateful decisions which are still playing themselves out, decades on after the events themselves. And so I strive, tentatively at first but determinedly so now, to await that moment when the heart has healed and the open loops can close of their own accord.
And if that never happens, at least I can console myself with the thought that I have, in my own hands, the opportunity to do better in my own time, God-Willing.
