2 Leading with NLP
early afternoon, they found themselves lost. The sky clouded
over, the wind whipped the leaves around their feet and the
first spots of warm rain began to fall on their faces. They de-
cided to make for Roundmarsh, which, according to the
map, was the nearest town. After an hour, unable to see
through the curtain of rain, they decided to ask for direc-
tions. Walking on for half a mile, the rain eased off and they
met a local man walking his dog in the opposite direction.
‘Excuse me,’ said the tourist leader, ‘we are a little lost.
Can you tell us how to get to Roundmarsh?’
The man stared into the distance at nothing in particular
and considered the question very seriously.
‘Roundmarsh?’ he muttered. ‘Roundmarsh? Hmm. That’s
a problem. If I wanted to get to Roundmarsh, I wouldn’t
start from here.’
It is always easier to get to where you are going when you
know where you are. In the words of Max de Pree, the re-
tired CEO of Herman Miller, ‘A leader’s task is to define
reality.’ The leader puts a stake in the ground and says,
‘Here we are, what is possible?’ Two thousand years ago, a
Chinese proverb gave much the same soundbite: ‘Gain
power by accepting reality.’ The ancients steal all our best
ideas. But accepting reality by knowing where you are is the
first step of every journey.
We need to ask three basic questions:
Where are we going?
Why are we going there at all?
How do we want to get there?
Then, as this is a leadership journey, we need to ask more
questions:
What resources do we have to help us?
What are our limits and our strengths?
What traps do we need to avoid?
What do we know about leaders?
Who are they and what do they do?