A Bridge to Leadership
The Lake from the Bridge, Public Garden, Boston, Mass., postcard, 1885 (public domain)
“We are all part of a larger stream of events. We are all the beneficiaries of those who have gone before us.”
To the uninitiated, leadership can seem like a reward for a lifetime of hard work. Once you’ve reached the proverbial top, you can kick back and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
On the contrary: leadership is a journey, not a destination. And when you reach certain milestones, the most important thing a leader can do is to bring others along.
Some of the best leaders I know spend their time helping new leaders find their way. That is, they’re mentors. Notice I didn’t say “younger,” because mentorship can come from any direction and at any stage in your career.
You’ve heard the advice to “send the elevator back down” after you’ve had success? That’s exactly what we’re talking about here.
It doesn’t matter how much luck or privilege you’ve had in your leadership journey; others may not be so fortunate. In fact, if you’ve been blessed with success, I would argue that it’s your duty to help educate, train, and prepare the next wave of leaders.
There’s a perfect analogy for this in the poem “The Bridge Builder” by Will Allen Dromgoole:
An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”
Analogies like this abound. Paving the road behind you, not pulling up the ladder, sending the elevator back down, etc., etc.
Whatever your preferred saying is, they all embrace the same philosophy: your success did not happen in isolation; others supported you and gave you the ability to achieve what you did. The best way to repay that is to provide the same kind of opportunity for others.
In his 1997 Lifetime Achievement Award speech, Mister Rogers reminded us of the importance of acknowledging that we’ve been helped along the way:
“It is the historian’s function not to make us clever for the next time, but to make us wise forever.” — Jakob Burkhardt
At its core, leadership of any kind — management, parenting, volunteering — is about service to others. Leaders teach, provide vision, and encourage others to achieve more.
Or, as I say at the close of every episode of Timeless Leadership: “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”
Who are you building bridges for?
There’s so much to learn,
