Furthermore, it is more than being patient about our own emerging generative style of leadership. It is also about patience in observing and supporting the growth and maturation of other people with whom we interact as mentor, mediator, monitor, motivator, and mobilizer. It means thoughtfully awaiting the achievements we hope to gain in collaboration with other people and in our five generative M roles:
We have concluded from the wisdom offered by our Sage leaders that effective Generative Two engagement is aligned with a particularly challenging stance: being quiet:
I have tended to do things quietly. I live quietly and when I act, I act quietly. I like being in the background, working behind the scenes, rather than being up front. I am not a joiner and don’t belong to a lot of organizations. So I do things without other people knowing. People don’t have to know the good things one does. The Good Lord knows, and that’s all that is important.
To be quiet is not to be mute, nor to stand by idly as bad decisions are being made. Our Sage leaders repeatedly talk about stepping in and providing both direction and energy when a problem emerges in their organization. To be quiet is to step away from taking credit for everything. It is about letting other people speak. It concerns the acknowledgement that you might not be the custodian of all truth. It is not always about being in the formal leadership role. Perhaps in the end, we should turn to the wisdom offered by one of the Sage leaders we quoted earlier. Generativity Two is about gentle fierceness.
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