Breathing on the Coals of the Heart

From my book, Leadership as a Lifestyle

It is said that human capacity is a state of mind. Although this may be true, the heart most often controls the expansion of one’s capacity. Moving to a higher level of performance usually requires a person to face and choose against an area of fear in the heart. This concept has immense value to leadership in today’s organizations.

Current corporate trends move toward either smaller organizations whose future existence is often uncertain or behemoth mergers whose profitability is often uncertain. In either of these scenarios, there is increased pressure upon employees to stretch their capacities to higher levels. In organizations where people are genuinely valued and developed, this pressure can have a very positive effect on those involved. In organizations that do not value and develop their people, the effect is usually demeaning and demoralizing.

Leaders who are committed to the people they lead can play a key role in the positive expansion of their constituents’ capacities. One of the ways a leader can do this is by understanding the relationship between fear and capacity. A leader’s constituents must wrestle with the fears that hold them back in order to make the breakthroughs that are needed for the team’s success. Wise leaders learn to recognize the fears that limit the capacity and performance of their immediate followers. Often times, leaders learn to identify these fears in others by first identifying them in their own hearts.

As they come to understand the fears that control the human heart, leaders are able to communicate to their people the need for courageous choices in the midst of gripping fear. In so doing, the leader breathes on the coals of the follower’s heart to re-ignite the courage that fear has chilled. As the fire of these coals brings warmth again, an increased willingness to believe that one’s capacities can expand to meet new challenges grows. An understanding of the true nature of courage—voiced by Mark Twain as, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear”—also develops in the heart of the follower.

Leaders breathe on the coals of the heart by positively encouraging their followers to make the following choices:

• Risk over stability
• Collaboration over isolation
• Growth over comfort
• A noble effort over a routine performance