The Beauty in Potential

An excerpt from Chad’s book “Thinking Aloud: Reflections on Ethical Leadership”. We hope you enjoy the essay – and perhaps introduce the questions below as a way to start conversations with your teammates. – ELA Team

Get a free PDF version of Chad’s Book, “Thinking Aloud” now at https://ethinact.com/thinking-aloud/.

The Beauty in Potential

It is spring.  An enduring international symbol of this season of rebirth is the cherry blossom, revered in Japan as the sakura.  Picnicking under the sakura (and before that, the umi) tree is an annual celebration that dates back at least 1,500 years.  People of all ages pause to appreciate and to celebrate the blossoms and all that they represent.  Today, let us take a lesson from that practice and the beliefs that underlie it.

Our best American analog is probably the autumn leaves.  As our newscasters track the locations of “peak fall colors,” Japanese newscasters report the advance of the “sakura front.”  Both present beauty that is spectacular and ephemeral; incandescent leaves fade and fall, and the softly vibrant blossoms turn to fruit (whether we pause to appreciate them or not).  There is an important difference, too: while we treasure autumn woods at their peak of brilliance, the Japanese prize the sakura blossoms most highly before their peak, when they still have the inherent potential to become larger or more brilliant.  The most beautiful sakura blossoms are still becoming even fuller and more striking.

How might we respond to this aesthetic value?  Perhaps by celebrating a balance of the realized and the potential in us as individuals, and especially in teams and organizations.  Very often, our efforts to improve are delayed by a belief that we are “already good enough,” or thwarted by a deeper fear of criticism.  Or, perhaps we are simply too busy to reflect on how we might realize our potential.

In fact, we may choose both to take pride of our achievements, and to dedicate ourselves to improvement.  We can celebrate the beauty that we see, while we pursue that which we envision.  And we can remember that time is fleeting.  If not now, when?

Conversation Starters

Pause to appreciate both excellence and the potential for improvement.

• When do you find it difficult to acknowledge room for improvement?
• In the workplace, how do we cultivate the skill of recognizing and cultivating potential in colleagues, subordinates…and our leaders?
• Do you have examples of great potential fully realized, or not fully realized? What lessons did you learn from these situations?
• How could we shift our perception of value to be a little more Japanese? Should we?

At Ethical Leaders in Action we believe that most, if not all people, can develop themselves to play leadership roles in many different spheres both large and small. The foundation of this development process is a short but powerful list of virtues which can be developed and improved through conscious effort. For more information feel free to take the Virtues of Ethical Leadership Self Inventory (VELSI) which breaks these virtues down into features that can be individually developed. The results of the VELSI come with a quick reference guide to help you understand how the virtues and their individual features fit together. https://ethinact.com/velsi/

See a list of other posts in this series at Blog Post Series

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