ROSETTA

We have just watched history in the making. The Rosetta spacecraft  has just successfully landed a robot (Philae) on a comet 3.1 billion miles from my house. This spacecraft, launched by the European Space Agency 10 years ago, has travelled at 23,000 miles per hour and the landing is the first human object to be landed on a comet. The comet (P67) is 2.5 miles wide.

As we watched the control center for the ESA stare at their computers, waiting for news of the landing, we too were transfixed. It is incredible that humans have landed a robot on a small piece of rock some 3 billion miles away.

But, I am also fascinated at the vision, the tenacity, the cooperation and the patience this project has taken. The project was started 25 years ago. The spaceship was launched 10 years ago. During the10 year journey, the ship was put to sleep for 2.5 years to save it’s energy, only to be reawakened in January to continue it’s communication with the earth. During it’s absence from radio contact with the earth, it travelled some 2.5 billion miles.

And the project was accomplished by the cooperation of 20 different countries in Europe and support from the US, Canadian and Australian Space Agencies.

I was delighted to watch some good news. So much of what we see makes us worry about human nature. But this experience lifted my hopeful spirit. When humans care, when humans cooperate, when humans see possibilities and thousands of people cooperate to make something good happen, it is amazing what we can do. 

I know that it is naive to assume that such cooperation will happen in all areas of human concern, but this is a testimony to what humans can do if we put our minds to it.

LEADERS AND THE INVISIBLE

One very important gift of a person who is a leader is that of seeing the invisible. Leaders take what is visible, what exists in an organization, and then mixes it with what isn’t, with what is not yet, and comes up with a vision of what might be.

And then a good leader takes what is invisible and with the use of words and images, helps others get a glimpse of a new future.  This requires careful attention to the language and the symbols that are used to evoke vision where there is not one. It requires thoughtful conversation with those who are trying to see the invisible that the leader sees.

Now a leader does this visioning with the purpose of helping to draw people into a future that the leader thinks is good for the organization.

But, there are couple of things that I have seen leaders do that works against the goal of getting others to join in the journey toward something unseen.  One of them is the leader’s forgetting that others see invisible futures and they don’t always want to give those up. The leader fails to help the follower name the losses that will result in the leader’s vision developing.

And because the leader doesn’t help others see the losses, she might lack empathy with those who don’t have the same vision of the invisible. When a leader does not seem to care that others pay the price of a lost vision, the leader will run into resistance and be less able to bring those people along as the organization moves forward.  The loss of energy then reduces the chance of the leader’s vision becoming visible.

When a leader recognizes the losses that others suffer and attends to those with sensitivity, others might be able to grieve their losses and open up to the new future with hope and action. Grieving is central to followers being able to be freed to move into the invisible future.

WHEN VISION FAILS

There are times in our lives when we lose our way. The path we are walking becomes overgrown or we are dropped down in a wilderness of unknowing where the way forward is hard to see. Our vision dims and the future we once saw has evaporated. What do we do when we can't see a way forward?

I was once lost in a woods. I had decided to get off the path trampled by humans and follow deer tracks. Deer must be able to squeeze through more underbrush than I can and before long I didn't know which way I was going. I lost track of the deer path and eventually was just walking, one foot in front of the other. It was getting dark and I began to feel anxious. 

I could not see my way out of the woods. So, I started listening. I listened carefully to the sounds and I became aware of low rumbling (trucks passing on the road I had taken to get to the woods). That helped orient me as I knew that the road ran north and south. I listened more and became aware of faint music. Must be life in that direction. So, I followed the sound.

I think when we can't see a vision for our future, we might listen for a direction. Sighted people tend to trust our sight more than what we hear.  But, at times we can't see very far forward and we have to learn to develop other senses. We have heard that God speaks in a still small voice.  Maybe when we are scared and don't know which way to turn we can slow our panicked heart, close our eyes and listen for hints of the direction we might go. We may not know where we are going to come out, but at least we can take courage that there might be hints in what we hear. And if we walk forward with courage, our vision might clear and our future might become more vivid.