Leaders: the tidal wave is navigated together

Months later, he was surfing calmly on a deserted beach, full of himself, thinking he was the most powerful of all ocean beings — when he came face to face with an immense white shark. The shark charged at him with its huge mouth open; with a swift move, the dolphin dodged the sharp teeth and escaped. He realized he had been thinking he knew everything and owned the ocean — but he saw how small he was, and how much he still had to learn.

Time passed, and the shark came back. Not with teeth: with promises. He said he had never seen a being with such agility, and proposed they join their powers, for together they would be unbeatable. They spent a good while delighting in grandiose plans — conquests, power, abundance. For them it was easy to dream that the world would be at the service of their most intimate desires. And yes: they had the power for that.

· · ·

Anyone who leads knows this encounter. It rarely wears the face of a monster; it wears the face of an offer you can’t refuse. The white shark’s bait — being the most feared, the most admired, the owner of the ocean — doesn’t bite from the outside; it freezes from within. The dolphin took the bait. And he drifted away from the equator, reaching very cold regions of the planet. Along with the cold came depression, exhaustion, the loss of will. He only rose to the surface when he truly needed air. He was hibernating: a zombie, the living dead. He thought he was everything — and now he felt he was no one.

There’s a modern name for those frozen seas. Executive life knows it well: it’s the burnout of those who traded meaning for admiration, the school of fish for the solitude of the top.

· · ·

But the great spirit of the oceans is wise, and blew a wind at an unusual time of year — and a chatty seagull, who had already flown over every continent, lost her way toward the dolphin. She told him of a paradise island where beings just like him lived in joy and peace. And he remembered the inner search that had been replaced by the shark’s temptations.

To cross the oceans to the island, he would have to learn to almost fly: to transform the energy of flowing, which he already mastered, into aerial acrobatics and maneuvers. He trained until it hurt. And when he finally spun above the waves, he understood the lesson that separates the boss from the leader: weaknesses exist to be transformed into virtues — and virtues only have value when we put them at the service of others, of a greater purpose.

Excerpt from the original legend written by Henrique Pistilli. Read the full extended legend · Continue the crossing: Children · Teens · Adults · Leaders · Wise Soul.