As a child, I would travel at weekends by bus along meandering country lanes in rural Country Antrim to visit my grandfather. It was always a high point in my life. He was a truly remarkable man who had fed his family through the war years with his fishing rod and shotgun. A small holding at the front of his cottage also provided a remarkable quality of fresh vegetables. Twelve hens supplemented the diet of his family with eggs, and when celebrations came around, the inventory of chickens diminished one at a time.
My Granda was a font of knowledge about the environment. He taught me to smell the rain coming, how cloud structures alert the coming of winds, and other inclement weather. He possessed an encyclopaedic memory of plant life, animal care, and a pair of hands that could fix anything that was broken. He practiced up-cycling before the term was even invented.
One lesson above all the others has travelled with me across my life that I want to share with you now. My grandfather’s cottage had no running water. To get water required a walk of just under a mile carrying two tin buckets to a disused quarry. Hidden from the eye was a secluded cluster of trees and behind them was a small waterfall and a pond. It was here that the buckets were to be filled. I remember the first adventure to collect the water.
I was encouraged to make a cup with my two hands, and to scoop up the water, and drink it. To my abject surprise, this wasn’t just any old water; it was like nothing I had ever drunk before. Cold, sweet, and refreshing, I drank at least six full cups. My Granda laughed with delight as his grandson drank his full. Where had I been all my life? The water that flowed from our house tap bore no resemblance whatsoever to this elixir.
This was the real thing.
"There are no silver bullets. There are no easy paths to business success. There are no short cuts to being an authentic and genuine person."
Once upon a time when travelling to Hong Kong many years ago, you could travel to Kowloon by boat, where there were shops importing from China that produced high-end products which were unadulterated copies of the real thing. You could buy a P.Arker pen that looked just like a Parker but wasn’t, and cost 10% of the real price. R.olex watches were much in demand, but again cost a fraction of $2,500 that more accurately reflected the genuine cost of the real product. Both the pen and the watch functioned for seven days. I was enticed by something that looked like the real thing but obviously wasn’t.
In today’s world, it is all too easy to justify cutting corners, make rash decisions, invest in shallow relationships and be economical with the truth.
All these behaviours fall far short of the real thing.
The world of global politics, business leadership, and the moral underpinnings of today’s leaders has, in the last year alone, exposed a shallowness of integrity and character.
There are, of course, wonderful, if not spectacular, exceptions to that rule. An example?
They are the real deal.
Authentic leadership is a leadership style exhibited by individuals who have high ethical and moral standards of integrity, who take personal responsibility for their actions, and who make decisions based upon principles rather than short-term success.
There are no silver bullets. There are no easy paths to business success. There are no short cuts to being an authentic and genuine person.
The daily choices that we make, carefully considered, saturated in hard work, and built by a committed and dedicated team who commit to accountable relationships and who learn from their mistakes usually are in my estimation.
My Granda could have settled for the easy convenience of a utilitarian tap. He had tasted the real thing and wouldn’t settle for anything se real thing short of that.
Let’s set high standards for ourselves and be the very best version of ourselves. Maybe others will see that in us.
