Message of the Day - Are our needs really OUR needs?

Good Morning,

 

My current read is Warren Bennis’ “Why Leaders Can’t Lead” (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Leaders-Cant-Lead-Unconscious/dp/0787909432). It is very eye opening and unlike any other leadership book I have ever read. While I am not totally sold with all the concepts, it does bring up some interesting issues.

 

The profound lesson I have taken away so far is that we have built up a fake world around us. This faux world has walls, floors, ceilings and items which have been put in place due to constructs from Hollywood, marketing genius and driven by ‘keeping up with the Jones’.’  We know all about marketing and the endless commercials, infomercials and media hype everywhere. That is nothing new, but what struck me was this next thought.

 

After fifty years of seeing movies and television shows depicting great leaders, ones who do everything that we see on the big and small screens, these have become the role models for the leaders we strive to be. That is, leaders strive to fill these dramatized molds of great leaders, which often have nothing to do with being a great leader. This is corroborated by Jim Collin’s findings in ‘Good to Great’ about Level 5 leaders not being the larger than life, movie star leaders. Yet, we look for the stars because it is what our culture has been steered toward wanting and needing.

 

What we need, and what we really need is sometimes hard to discern. Over the last few years I have tried to stop running off and making impulse purchases and signing up for the latest course, for which my wife and checkbook are grateful. The impulses are still there to fill these ‘needs’, but my willpower to not get them is growing. A lot of what we think we want, we really don’t, we are often victims of the hype.

 

I will continue to explore more ways to find my true needs over those that others try to sell me as my needs. I hope you can and will do the same.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/

502-533-9336

 

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