Now you’ve been offered a job that requires making regular
speeches to large groups. You want the job very much, but your
fear of public speaking prevents you from accepting it immedi-
ately. In other words, your feeling of fear overpowers your con-
fidence in your ability to do the job and prevents you from
acting. You have three choices:
- You can surrender to your fears and pass on the job.
- You can attempt to analyze your fear objectively (but as
analyst Roger Gould points out, that will probably not
result in any significant change). - You can reflect on your original experience in a concrete
way. You were, after all, a child. And you probably didn’t
like the poem very much, so it was hard to memorize. But
most important, although you got scolded and laughed at,
your life was not changed in any significant way by the
lapse. Neither your grades nor your standing with your
classmates suffered. Indeed, everyone forgot your lapse
immediately—except you. You have clung to that feeling
all these years, without ever thinking about it. Now is the
time to think about it.
REFLECTION AND RESOLUTION
Reflection is a major way in which leaders learn from the past.
Jim Burke told me, “At Holy Cross, studying with the Jesuits, I
had to take twenty-eight hours of scholastic philosophy, which
forces you through a logical, disciplined way of thinking. I’ve
often felt this was very important to my business success, be-
cause I was naturally intuitive and instinctive, so this overlay of
On Becoming a Leader