The collector of paintings

On January 04, 2012, in Leadership that lasts, by Neculai Fantanaru

Integrate into your leadership a plus of greatness, reinforcing everything that it is essential at you.

Towards the end of the movie "Pretty Woman (1990,)" the multimillionaire, Edward Lewis, whose only "gift" were the impossible relations, proposes to Vivian Ward (the lady companion that he had paid to spend the week with him) to stay one more night. But, why would she accept this proposal? Why to continue making illusions? Anyway, they must separate forever. So, she rejects his proposal:

- Look Edward, you've made to me a very good offer. And, a few months ago I would have accepted it, no problem. But, now everything is different and you have changed that. And you cannot change it back. I want more...

While making her luggage, Vivian seemed to say in her mind: "Yes, I want more! Because I love you! Because you are to me more beautiful, better and greater than all human beings! I would like to share all my life the happiness with you. Only with you. I do not want to lose you, but I know that I have to destroy the supreme moments of happiness that you have offered me, that God gave me in the exchange for my endless prayers.

But, it was just a moment. I must be strong and to make this step. And, to forget about you, your generosity and your good taste - that flooded my whole being; to forget all the anger, to forget myself, to forget all that life has allowed me while I was yours - yes, yours and only yours; do not longer tie my heart of any hope, to forget that for a moment I felt myself as the most beautiful and the most admired woman in the world, to forget that you were everything to me, and to permanently delete yourself from my wish list. And, to turn again to what I was before, a poor prostitute, and to return to a life without emotions, without feelings, without content."

Are you giving yourself the necessary time in order toconsolidate your own"home"?

A leader manifests all his interest towards leadership if his achievements and successes reflect the more comprehensively his own competencies. In the light of what he really is and what he will become, he puts all qualities, all resources, all knowledge in the service of a type of leadership that promote his welfare first.

The multimillionaire Edward Lewis was such a leader. He practiced a realistic leadership based on prudent policies, on efficiency, on leadership principles, and on strategies, on pragmatic approaches and forecasts - on the way he actually was, typical to a true businessman. However, for this no one has ever awarded his values!

For, when it comes to values, Lewis was alike an excellent builder, which builds up a lot of buildings, but who never finds time to consolidate his own house. He integrated in his leadership only those values that supported his optimal management performance, but these values did not have the right vibration in order to respond to certain circumstances by emotions. In simple words, he had no sentimental ideal.

The action of investigating your own nature and its result

As a leader, Lewis would have to put the foundation to his emotional structure, to reestablish properly his own spiritual experiences, emphasizing his own characteristic feelings. This investigation and gradual evaluation of his nature would have helped him to approach closely the leadership of quality - which incorporates some emotional elements with an especial potential.

Does your values ​​worth getting the prize? Are you capable, through your leadership, to comprise the human intensity and dimension? Can you perceive the other people's inner impulse - just as a doctor perceives, by tactile sensations, the blood or the muscular pressure of the patients?

I do not think you will be able to establish and maintain relations with other people unless you will not gather together all your inner emotional forces that can act positively on them. If you isolate them, if you ignore them, you will not be able to lay bridges between your aspirations and theirs – you will remain only an avaricious collector among his paintings, looking straight at them with an insatiable lust all the time. In this way, it will open in your own destiny that threatening abyss that will separate you from all that is really essential in a leader: strength of mind.

The collector of paintings highlights your strong points and your weak points. It depends on how much you attach to the "art" that you admire and where you invest your values. Does the art that defines you, reflects more your managerial or emotional qualities?

Are you treating people as if they were paintings with different value? Or, as if they were some very valuable paintings that enchant and warm your soul? Or, you intended to be so avaricious that to treat them as if they were some pictures that do not express anything?

The soul’s guiding mark of the "collector" Edward Lewis was Vivian. Do you need a "guiding mark" that would cultivate respect for your moral values, ​​on which is supported the leadership of quality?

Conclusion: A leader should harmoniously combine "the technical elements" of his leadership with elements related to emotional issues that arise as a result of human relationships. A leader who lacks greatness is nothing but a collector of "selves" whose value he does not know and does not put them in value. By thinking purely technically, do not bring any benefit to you, but valuing human resources you can continue what you have started, and success will be by your side.