Friday Reflections

SILENT LEADERS

POINT TO PONDER

"The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see."

                            - Alexandra K. Trenfor

 

STORY LINE

During my days in theatre school, I was working as an actor on a scene that was giving me a particularly difficult time. The scene was a highly intense scene and I was having difficulty getting myself to meet the emotional demands of the piece. My teacher at the time was an old theatre veteran who would sit silently, letting the scene play out. After each take I would turn to him and ask what he thought. He would answer the question with, "well, what do you think?" 

It would frustrate me. But he would ask me to do the scene again. And again. And again... 

Each time I would get a little more frustrated, knowing that I wasn't serving the material in the way that was needed. And each time he would quietly say, "just do it again." For three weeks I did this, trying many different ways, feeling disconnected and lost.

Then a week before we were to perform the scene, I wanted to throw in the towel. I didn't think I had it in me. I went up to my teacher and said that I no longer wanted to perform and he asked why. When I told him he responded that I've been "trying" to do things, putting on what I thought would be right rather than listening to myself and expressing what I honestly thought about it. He told me to take a break, give it a couple of days and come back to it. 

After a couple of days I did. Before I began, he reminded me to do nothing, just listen and respond honestly. I did. And to my suprise, the scene worked. After the scene was over he had a big smile on his face. I did too. For a second, I was a little irritated that it had been so effortless. I asked him why when I was struggling he just kept telling me to do the scene again and didn't just tell me to what to do right from the beginning. 

He sighed and said that I needed to go through the process for myself. That I needed to be lost in order to find the answer. If he had given me direction and told me what to do, I wouldn't have understood why it worked when it did. He explained that he didn't give me any answers because I had come to it through trial and error. That way, I would be able to find the answer on my own when I was in a professional production and he would not be there to help me. 

 

REFLECTION

I understood then what every good parent does, that real leaders don't just provide answers, they prepare you to find them for yourself when they are no longer around. 

Get Rejected!

POINT TO PONDER

“If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.” 

                            - Thomas J. Watson Jr. 

 

STORY LINE by Rajiv Shah

So what is the secret of success? Failure. Don't believe me? Check out some of these photos of rejection letters that have been circulating around the internet recently. The recipients have bounced back from these different types of rejections to long and successful careers. 

 

1. The Standard Rejection...

RECIPIENT: U2

ACCOMPLISHMENTS: U2 have released 12 studio albums and are among the all-time best-selling music artists, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide. They have won 22 Grammy Awards, more than any other band, and in 2005, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. Rolling Stone ranked U2 at number 22 in its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" and has labelled them the "Biggest Band in the World". (From Wikipedia)

 

2. When You Can't Even Give It Away For Free Rejection... 

 RECIPIENT: ANDY WARHOL

ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame". Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$105 million for a 1963 canvas titled "Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)". A 2009 article in The Economistdescribed Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market". Warhol's works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold. (From Wikipedia)

 

3. The Feedback Rejection...

RECIPIENT: TIM BURTON

ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Timothy Walter "Tim" Burton is an American film director, producer, artist, writer, poet and stop motionartist. He is known for his dark, gothic, macabre and quirky horror and fantasy films such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie, and for blockbusters such as Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Batman, its first sequel Batman Returns, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland. Burton has directed 16 films and produced 12 as of 2012. (From Wikipedia)

 

4. The "You're Not Ready Yet" Rejection... 

 

RECIPIENT: MADONNA

ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Madonna has sold more than 300 million records worldwide and is recognized as the best-selling female recording artist of all time byGuinness World Records. Madonna is the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second best selling female artist in the United States, with 64.5 million certified albums. In 2008, Billboard ranked her at number two, behind only The Beatles, on the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists, making her the most successful solo artist in the history of the American singles chart. The publication also declared Madonna as the top-touring female artist of all time. Due to her major influence in contemporary music, Madonna has been included in the list of "25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century" by Time and was crowned the "Greatest Woman In Music" by VH1. She became one of the five founding members of the UK Music Hall of Fame and was inducted into theRock and Roll Hall of Fame in her first year of eligibility. (From Wikipedia)

 

5. The Humiliating Rejection...

RECIPIENT: GERTRUDE STEIN

ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Gertrude Stein was an American writer of novels, poetry and plays that eschewed the narrative, linear, and temporal conventions of 19th-century literature, and a fervent collector of Modernist art. In 1933, Stein published a kind of memoir of her Paris years, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written in the voice of Toklas, her life partner. The book became a literary bestseller and vaulted Stein from the relative obscurity of cult literary figure into the light of mainstream attention. (From Wikipedia)

 

 

Road Not Taken

 

 

POINT TO PONDER

 

"If you don’t know where you going, any road will take you there."

 

 

STORYLINE (Dialogue from Alice in Wonderland)

 

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

 

Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.

 

Alice: I don’t much care where.

 

Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go!

 

 

REFLECTION

 

In any relationship (business or personal) if you do not clearly capture the receiving party’s (customer, partner, supplier, mate) expectations, you can get engaged in almost any activity and be busy.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqoduxvOl7E