Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life: Introduction
Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply.
The idea behind this came when I was sitting in my car at a stoplight in traffic, and something happened that initially caused me a little frustration. But then I realized in the moment that there was a lesson I could learn that was being illustrated by the circumstances. That prompted further realization that this was not the first time that had happened, that I had learned a lesson about something from the example of a circumstance I was experiencing. It may have been a lesson about life, or parenting, or relationships, or leadership, but regardless, it was a valuable lesson being illustrated.
If you believe, as I do, that all things are created with design and purpose by God, which implies intentional interactions and relationship between things, it should come as no surprise that we can learn lessons from the examples of those interactions and circumstances. The reason I can say that is because our universe is created with design, and is not random. That design means that there are processes and patterns that are consistent and knowable, and that are representative of similar patterns, processes, and ideas in other circumstances. God himself demonstrates this frequently in the Bible, when he uses examples of stories from characters to teach a lesson, or even uses examples from creation to teach a lesson. For example, Jesus frequently referenced Old Testament stories and passages when he was teaching a lesson, and used living creatures (like the sparrow) and plants (like flowers or a fig tree) to illustrate something important.
In a similar way, this series will be about using examples of experiences and circumstances to identify a comparable lesson that can be used in life and in leadership. I hope you can learn from these examples, but more than that, I hope that you can begin to see examples of lessons in your own life circumstances and events. Because there are lots of lessons that we can learn from the little things in life.
