Red, blue, yellow, green, blurple.
Blurple?
I was sitting knee to knee with a friend and colleague, and we were doing an exercise about being present. This involved me saying colors, and her repeating them as I said them.
The thing is, it doesn’t take very long before you both start saying the colors at the same time. When you are present, your brains entrain to each other and it gets a little freaky when you can’t tell who is actually leading. It’s very cool.
Anyway, I was saying colors and was going to say blue, but then at the last second said purple. In unison, we said blurple. It was her first experience of entrainment to another person, and profoundly affected her.
And I had no recollection of this specific event.
We were talking about it after a conference in which we (among other wonderful things) had just watched Drew Dudley’s Tedx Talk about his lollipop moment–where he had completely changed someone’s life, and had no recollection of the event. Watch the video to find out more about what a lollipop moment is (don’t worry, it is only about 6 minutes long.)
This really drove home for me that leadership isn’t just about when we want to lead; leadership is about everything we do. Leadership is about how we’re being. Leadership happens when we aren’t looking.
Where are you leading? What’s YOUR lollipop moment?