Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast- Shorts.
There’s no co-host on shorts.

These are six-to-eight-minute observations, ideas, thoughts, or rants, about the literature, philosophy, psychology, and theology of leadership.

Because listening to me talk about leadership for, now six to eight minutes, is better than reading and trying to understand yet another business book.

From President John F. Kennedy’s First Inaugural Address come these words:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
Let every nation know…
Leaders must have the confidence to step forward into the large and the small things for, it is in those things that the work of developing as a leader, leaps forward, in small steps.
There are ideas that float beneath the substrate of leadership that are unquestioned and unexamined and one of the biggest ideas—that floats beneath leaders’ mindsets like a submerged submarine—is the idea that bold statements must be qualified and tempered.
This is due to the fact that the future is inherently unpredictable, people act autonomously, and circumstances can change on a dime.
But, there’s also the idea that being bold—or at least putting on the show of being bold—rubs against the principle of humility.
Leaders worry quite a bit about how they are perceived by others. As do many other people.
But timidity is not often mistaken for humility, particularly in environments where followers’ expectations of leadership realities are often not fulfilled.
What does this have to do with tyranny and totalitarianism, then?
Well, tyrants have no problem being bold. They have no problem making large plans, driving the unwilling to change, and employing coercion, threats, abuse, and violence in order to make their bold assertions come to life.
Morality and timidity are not the same, and moral and ethical leaders must speak—and act—boldly and with as much confidence as terrible, tyrannical leaders do.
Having a vision, an idea of what the future could look like and shaping that narrative for followers is critical to the success of moral and ethical leaders.
And, of course, lurking at the bottom of all of that is the courage to say the words, and do the acts, that move the culture of a team, in a positive direction without timidity, a lack of confidence, or just straight up fear.
Leaders, let every nation know…

And that’s it for me.