Here Be Dragons

It's said that often -- on the edges of medieval maps -- was penciled the warning: "Here be dragons." Do the edges of your "maps" hold the fear of dragons?

Probably. If we're honest, most of us will admit that the fear of stepping beyond the boundaries of the known -- our comfort zone -- can be pretty frightening sometimes. We come by it honestly. The primitive part of our brain, the amygdala, equates change with the unknown. And then it reacts to the unknown with caution and fear. That's not all bad. It's helped us survive for eons.

However, as leaders, we have to be willing to step into uncharted waters, scared or not. To take risks. Even great leaders feel fear. Some are even brave enough to admit it.

Like Andy Grove, admired executive at Intel. When told, in the early lean and mean days of Intel, that he'd have to become director of operations when all he knew was engineering, he admitted, "I was scared to death. It was terrifying. I literally had nightmares."  Yikes! Sounds like "here be dragons" to me. By stepping off the edges of his engineer-map into the unknown realm of leadership, Grove faced the waiting dragons. And the rest is history.

A few of us were lucky enough to have early successes in finding our way into the unknown. It was thrust upon us and we became early believers. Richard Branson, for example, of Virgin Airlines. When he was four years old, his mom stopped the car a few miles from their house and told him to find his way home across the fields. He did. She made it a fun adventure and he relished the role of dragon-slayer.

Most of us have to be convinced, as leaders, that we can slay dragons. Consider Christopher Logue's poem. A dialogue between a leader and those being led:

    Come to the edge.

    We might fall.

    Come to the edge.

    It is too high.

    Come to the edge.

    And they came,

    and he pushed,

    and they flew.