Tiger Woods and Conversational Leadership

Dan,

I enjoyed David Whyte’s comments during your interview. It reminded me of something else William Wordsworth said: “Faith is a passionate intuition.” Perhaps, because he is a poet, I believe David Whyte may well understand passionate intuition — which also happens to be the poet’s spring board. A poet himself, Wordsworth wrote about poetry: “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: It takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

It is the emotional foundation and the power erupting from tranquil waters that gives poetry its energy and its majesty. Poetry touches that “dark invisible workmanship” within us.

Wordsworth also said something very applicable to today’s world of work: “In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn’t know what he is doing.” If that honest businessman has the courage to say, “I don’t know,” then perhaps, we have less to fear from him, and we can get back to concentrating on the crooks…

Mick

When I wrote the poem Flawed, a reader remarked that the story seemed incomplete and wondered how it ended. I thought about it, and pondered on the complex interaction between those we view as “perfect” and the ardent fans that help create that myth of perfection. Is there a price to be paid forprofiting from that perfection myth?

Although we have been told that those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, again and again, we build castles for those we consider perfect, and then we evict them when they prove to be just as human as the rest of us. There is, of course, a price to be paid, an often steep and unpleasant price for riding high on the expectations of fans and those who worship at the image of perfection. The higher one climbs the further one has to fall.

It’s more than Marley’s chains, for he did not understand until after he was buried by old Scrooge. The meteoric rise and sometimes cataclysmic crash and burn of so many celebrities, should teach us something about perfection: It is a marvelous motivator and a grand goal, but anyone who thinks he has achieved it is a fool; an anyone who trades on his perfection is merely polishing his fool’s gold.

Mick

Flawed, too

When a perfect man, on a perfect day,
Discovered his life had a tiny flaw,
He greeted the flaw in his perfect way,
Inviting his friends to see what he saw.
He capered about in a perfect dance,
And sang a glad song in his perfect voice.
He sang: “At last, I have a perfect chance,
To make a perfectly wonderful choice!”
He placed the small flaw on his mantelpiece,
In perfect balance with his grand decor.
“And, at last I shall know the perfect peace —
With joy I have never known before!”
For, although he could talk, cry, sing and shout,
He’d had nothing at all to talk about…

His attitude changed when his friends came by,
And they saw his tiny flaw on display.
Some screamed in outrage, and others did cry:
“Oh, how can you disappoint us this way?”
“You were our idol, our role-model king;
We held you up for our daughters and sons,
And now you display this imperfect thing —
A thing from which any perfect man runs!”
Some media pundits made it a joke,
And others called it a conspiracy.
Some assumed he must be perfectly broke,
And badly needed the publicity.
He looked sad at how his flaw was received,
But secretly, was perfectly relieved.

When that perfect man, on that perfect day,
Put his flaw on display for all to see,
He knew there were legends he would betray,
And myths he’d destroy almost perfectly.
Though the myths were not his, he’d let them grow,
And profited from perfection for sale;
But now he had let his ardent fans know,
Of the tiny flaw in his perfect tale.
Rich, lonely, and tired, he had given in
To impulse, and shared the truth of his lie;
For he had discovered to his chagrin,
That perfection’s price, was simply too high
To run away from, though he traveled far…
For the gravy train has a baggage car.

Mick McKellar
December 2009