Leaders want you to be chicken.

 

Leaders want you to be chicken.

That makes it easier to control you.

Un-conditioning is a must for both your health and wellbeing.


A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.

All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would trash his wings and fly a few feet into the air. 

Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“That’s the eagle, the king of birds,” his neighbor said. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth-we’re chickens.” So, the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.

~ Anthony de Mello

Popular posts from this blog

10 most common leadership shortcomings and how to resolve them

After scrutinizing 360-degree feedback data on over 11,000 leaders and evaluating the 10% considered the least effective, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman found the 10 most common leadership shortcomings . These are ranked according to the size of the difference between successful and unsuccessful leaders' scores; successful and failed leaders differed most significantly in their energy and enthusiasm.  Please find the listing below as well my suggestions on how to change them.   1.     Lack of energy and enthusiasm If you do your job just because you have to, if it feels like it is something you should do (rather than would like to do), then it drains your energy. If you are a leader mainly because you are attracted to the status, the power and the money, then you will lack the necessary enthusiasm. Your heart is not connected, so it just is an economic and rational activity. This activity is not fuelled by your enthusiasm. If you do work, which you love to do, if you foll...
Read more

Actively look for inspiration

Image
It is easy to pick up the negativity, which all the current challenges (financial, jobs, weather, ethics, crime etc.) are spreading. If you read the newspapers and watch the news, it is hard not to be influenced. Of course the level of dissatisfaction with the current situation is a great source for innovation. But innovation will only be successful if you have a positive, creative and constructive mindset. That mindset needs to be fed with regular inspiration. Therefor you need to make sure that you receive your daily doses of inspiration. You can set up a system to assure that you will be receiving that positive, inspiring news regularly. Here are some suggestions:         Books (use Amazon Wishlist to keep track)         Podcasts (subscribe via iTunes)         Google alerts (email when your interests are mentioned)         Blogs (use Google Reader)     ...
Read more

Work and Wellbeing

Image
  There is a lot of dissatisfaction and lack of wellbeing in the world and in the world of work.   These are not exceptions to the rule. No, the rule itself is under pressure. What is the rule as it relates to work? In many organizations the rule is that you have to put work at the top of your priorities. Work is supposed to be more important than your life, your family, and your health & wellbeing. Wellbeing is something that you need to pursue outside of work.   Today’s workers are no longer accepting this rule. Work is part of life, not life itself. Workers are responding to this gap (the gap between the view of employees as resources versus the view of employees as human beings) in different ways.     Quiet quitting When someone is quiet quitting, they are actually not leaving their job. Instead, they are choosing to stay in their role, but saying goodbye to the unnecessary stress that has been added to their lives from consistently going above and beyon...
Read more