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The makeshift of a leader

Vanessa Couturier

Updated: Oct 24, 2021



A leader brings courage out of people- he has a transformative impact, not over skills or knowledge but over personal maturation and understanding. He helps us define the very few things in life that should be rigid, our core values, and teaches us that the rest should be flexible. He stands up for what’s non-negotiable and can change the rest. He knows how and when to bend. Becoming more rigid on a few things while growing more flexible on all the rest - that’s the teaching of leadership.


A leader must think about what’s flexible and what’s not, because he must be very clear on when to stand up for what he believes. Small demonstrations of courage and the absence of compromise on minute deviations to his standards matter -because significance is utterly tied to consistency. And therefore, leadership can, and should, transpire is small daily occurrences. Although a leader shines through what he makes visible to others, he makes it visible to himself first and foremost. He builds influence organically, no matter his number of direct reports.


Build and grow team of leaders.

Teach others to stand up for what’s non-negotiable (the core) and to be open to change all the rest. Teach the young humility and the elder questioning. Youth is malleable, but youth is stubborn and impatient. Acceptance comes with age, but so do certainties. There is no place for stubborness or unquestionable certainties. Stubbormess is arrogance of the heart; certitude is arrogance of the mind.


Our core beliefs should be very few but very strong. The more we age, the strongest the core because we learn that bad things happen when we deviate. But we must be very cautious about what you choose to solidify – we have to make sure the core reflects who we are – not what life has made of us. Our core has no connection with our financial, personal or professional situation. Our core shouldn’t be rooted in fears, especially the fear of change. Holding to certainties can become a fallback position: it is the arrogance of the expert, the shrinking world of the conservative. When we stop opening ourselves to failure and doubt, a strange thing happens: we only find strength in our ability to control the world around us, and it makes us very vulnerable. We become the undisputed king of a tiny castle.

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