LEADERS IN WAITING.

Impatience kills. It is both personally and institutionally detrimental. So, every leader must master waiting. In leadership and in life, we can have everything, but we can’t have everything - ‘right now.’ In fact, most of life and leadership is made up of waiting. So, the qualitative difference in effective leadership isn’t that some leaders wait while others do not - it’s in what some leaders do while they wait that others do not. In short, it’s what leaders do ‘in waiting’ that prepares and distinguishes them. Two important lessons in waiting can be gleaned from presidents Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela: (1) Leaders must focus on and use what they have while they wait. Young Abe Lincoln longed to rise but he had little formal education and few resources. However, he was renowned for his voracious reading habits and devoured every book he could get his hands on. Ultimately, he was admitted to the practice of law in Illinois after having studied with borrowed law books; (2) Leaders must contribute what they can while they wait. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned during the ‘prime of his life,’ from age 45-72 (1964-1990), and eighteen of those years were hard labor on the brutal Robben Island prison. Nevertheless, during that time he wrote prolifically, authoring multiple letters, statements and eventually a 500 page biography. He was 76 years old when he was elected as the first black president of South Africa. #LeadThroughWaiting

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