Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

My misperceptions of strong leaders of large and successful organizations included being a hard ass, subscribing to command and control tactics, all stick, no carrot, fire branded by all the stressful situations they encounter on a daily basis.

Those situations may exist in pockets of the workforce but are probably not associated with successful companies you’d want to be part of today.

It was nine years ago, late October in New York where, at a CEO roundtable, I heard leaders sharing information on their successes and failures. Making themselves vulnerable, passing on stories of incredible endurance, passion and love. Yes, old men in suits and ties, in a theater setting, talking to a nearly all male audience about love. Was this the twilight zone?

Nope, just a tectonic shift in my beliefs. Nearly a decade later, I recall the moment but I still didn’t anticipate that would begin the melting process.

Scientists say we are made of mostly water. If so, perhaps the hardening of the heart is actually more freezing than hardening. If, over time, we begin to realize that our perceptions were inaccurate, inappropriate and misapplied, what would YOU call the change in thought? Softening, thawing, melting…how else would you explain the relative ease at which I start leaking out of my eye sockets?

The human condition is a confounding proposition. You enter into this world fragile, screaming in pain, covered in vernix and amniotic fluid and we immediately begin to form a thicker skin; cry ourselves to sleep, demonstrate our ability to take a joke, a skinned knee, a disappointment at the school dance, perceived failures in life that harden our hearts. If we try to stay tender, we hurt more.

Then, one day, the process starts to reverse…if you’re lucky. The birth of your own child or grandchild. Milestone accomplishments from first step to first word, to first date to first job. God gifted you with a blessing: innocence, new beginnings, watching the same process you went through but filled with joy rather than pain…and you start to melt, from the inside outward.

Youngsters with your elastic, supple, ivory soap like skin…you will grow calloused over time … until you don’t. You have the ability to expedite the human condition by acknowledging this process and consciously electing to bypass it.

No freezing, no melting, just love.

Have a blessed weekend