Every person who intends to exert leadership in his personal life, in business or any other vocation—and even in the family--will intentionally focus on personal growth. Research has shown us that effective business leadership growth inevitably requires mentors. Though true, that notion is plainly inadequate. The fact is that all living and all development takes place only with relationships. To put it still more directly, we experience growth because of our connections to other people. I can go through my years since grade school and well into my sixties, and still point to people that changed my life, impacts that would have to be considered as turning points and often milestones. Change that would never have happened without those connections.
The underpinnings of growth are inevitably acts of creativity built on relationships. Virginia Woolf puts it this way: Masterpieces (turning points and milestones) are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of thinking in common, of thinking by a body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.
I still have a lot of memory about my first real growth experience, a phenomenally unique milestone while only in the 7th grade. I’ll explain later why the experience was so important, why I remember so many details, and what it did for me. To begin, the experience was initiated by a civics teacher, Mr. Fickes, a teacher whom I thought was pretty dumb. I opened my mouth too often and after one episode he chewed me out, telling me I’d be in the “insane asylum by the time I finished high school.” Shortly after that experience, the chair of the social science department, Dr. Arthur, a very impressive intellect, and a delightful woman with sparkling eyes and a Michigan PhD, took seven top students out of the class and created a seminar group on civics for us. Fickes did not return the following year.
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