Leaders and Crises – ElPropósito3 min de lectura

How much of a leader are you being in this crisis?

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

How much of a leader have I been in each situation of my life? I ask myself that all the time. Insecurity, fear and even anxiety often get the better of me, especially when things overwhelm me. I think I’ve improved, thanks to constant effort, real self-awareness, my habits and a thousand other things I’ve put in place. Today, in this crisis, I ask again: how much of a leader am I being? Read on, and by the end I hope you’ll have your own answer.

Crises are when we’re most vulnerable. The COVID-19 pandemic has outrun any reality we knew, and fiction has become fact. It has precedents, yet it’s completely new for our era, at least the most recent one.

In under three months, everything changed across the world, and we find ourselves needing answers, direction, new horizons. Suddenly we were thrown overboard, the sky went dark and a storm broke that has us drifting in the roughest seas we ever imagined. Fear grips us, and hopelessness floods our thoughts.

And yet, whether we believe it or not, we carry the spirit and conviction that a better tomorrow is coming. Even in the storm and the brutal waves, with no life jacket or lifeboat, just swimming, our hearts hold on to the hope of seeing the light and the sun again, feeling the calm after the storm and touching solid ground once more.

Anyone who, despite their own fears, feels that flame right now has a responsibility to pass its light and warmth on to the people around them. That’s what leadership is: trusting our own abilities and helping others believe in and trust theirs. It means conveying genuine confidence, full of encouragement and grounded in pragmatism.

Today more than ever, the world, our society and our inner circle need every leader we carry inside. We badly need to trust ourselves so we can start rebuilding the future we long for.

Tomorrow we’ll surely look back and remember little of all this. The ones who truly remember will be those who changed their lives to inspire others, steady them through the turbulence and, above all, walk beside them as they find the meaning of all this in their own lives. How much of a leader are you being right now?

The best is yet to come.

Warm regards,

Rodrigo Baccaro

P.S. This week’s VELA:

• What I’ve been Viewing: Coronavirus Resource Center. A dashboard with every COVID-19 indicator, built by Johns Hopkins University & Medicine.
• What I’ve been Listening to: Responsibility in the face of the coronavirus. From the great Mario Alonso Puig. I’d been eagerly waiting for this video, and here it is. Dr. Puig is one of my favorites.
• What I’ve been Reading: La columna de hierro. I’m still on this great book about Marcus Tullius Cicero, which reached me at the best possible moment, especially in this crisis. Every time I open it I ask, "What will this book teach me today, in this crisis?" The answers surprise me more each time, and I’m writing them down in my journal.
• What I’ve been Learning: How To Speed Read. Reading has defined me since I was a kid, and I’ve taken all kinds of courses to read faster. In this video the great Tim Ferriss explains his speed-reading techniques. I’ve been developing my own and hope to make a video about them soon.

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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