This EXPERIENCE can change Leadership TRAJECTORY!

TRAJECTORY

Merriam-Webster - a path, progression, or line of development.

Wikipedia - A trajectory is a path that an object with mass in motion follows through space or as a function of time.

Simply put: a trajectory is a path of a moving object.

During our current hard game, what experiences are we intentionally utilizing to grow our people's leadership capacity and influence their leadership trajectory?

I really enjoyed the amazing professors and diverse cohort of fellow-students I studied with to complete my Master's Degree in Leadership/Business when I was in my mid-forties. That Trinity Western University experience, together with my other high-performance experiences of playing and coaching in the NHL, broadcasting, and business, highlight growth points in my life that forced me to get better. I realize that each time that I added skills, or developed my Inner Game as a leader, the development came about through having a specific experience.

In his great book Liminal Thinking, Dave Gray shares a simple fictional story that highlights the importance of experiences. Many years ago a king brought all of the blind people from his kingdom into a large castle and lined them up against one wall of a room. On the opposite wall, the king had placed an elephant. The king asked the blind people to walk across the room, experience what was at the other side, and then come back to discuss with him. As you might surmise, one person experienced the trunk of the elephant, another the tail or the side of the elephant. As the blind people returned to the king they began to argue... "that didn't feel like a rope (tail), that felt like a wall (side)."

Dave Gray is not telling this story to highlight kings, elephants, or blind people. He wants us to realize that as each person experienced the elephant differently; their experience impacted their version of their reality. Dave Gray nailed me at the end of the story when he said, "We are all blind."