If you had the chance to meet anyone famous, who would you choose?
Would you pick a professional athlete, a politician, a celebrity, or a CEO?
Why would you choose this specific man or woman?
What would you ask them?
This last week in ELP, we were asked to compile a list of 10 leaders we’d like to interview and what we would ask them if the opportunity ever arose.
Who do we choose? Donald Trump or Donald Miller? Bono or Jeff Bezos?
As we sat deliberating which names made the cut and which didn’t, I realized that it doesn’t truly matter who ends up making the list and who we get to speak with, if any. There are literally hundreds of leaders that are full of knowledge and insight that could benefit us as we began our forays into leadership.
Yes, Gary C. Kelly created a unique culture that made Southwest highly successful. And Howard Schultz reinvented the coffee shop. Even look at Amazon, where Jeff Bezos took the online shopping world by storm.
Yet there are leaders like Bob Goff, who is fairly unknown yet has sat down for dinner with tens of foreign leaders. Or Seth Godin, who has without a doubt influenced thousands of Christians around the world.
See, the leadership spectrum is massive, yet there is one unifying factor: they are all human. They were all kids, just like you and me. They all started at the bottom and had to work their way up.
This got me thinking. They had to learn how to lead as well. These men and women tried, toiled, and even sometimes failed.
There’s more though.
While it’s wise for us to seek guidance from those who have gone before, as leaders we need to recognize that the next Jeff Bezos or Charles Lee may be in our midst. This world is full of untapped potential, and if we are not careful, it will slip through our fingers.
As an emerging leader, we must filter the wisdom of past leaders, lead the current generation, and seek out the next class of potential leaders.
If you had the chance to meet a current leader, what would you ask him or her?
