This is the third of ten columns published by Walter C. Wright, Jr., summarizing the message of
Max De Pree’s
Leadership Jazz

"The recipe for stone soup is all about potential"

Column 3 on Max De Pree's Leadership Jazz
October

The recipe for stone soup is all about potential.

For years a children’s story has been told and retold in various geographic settings around the world.  The book my grandsons have sets the story in rural China many years ago.  As the story goes the villagers are extremely poor and very hungry.  Powerless to feed their hunger they retreat selfishly into their own homes hoarding whatever food supplies they have been able to obtain.  One day a stranger walks into town and asks for something to eat.  He is immediately scorned as the villagers tell him about their lack of food.  So the stranger offers to make stone soup.  He has a large pot and a stone.  And he starts cooking.  He offers to share the soup but notes how much better it would taste with cabbage.  And that begins the building of community as the villagers one by one bring a hoarded food item to add to the soup in growing anticipation of how good it will taste.  The stranger had only a stone and a vision, but the community together prepared a wonderful stew, which they ate with celebration.

Leadership is a recipe for human potential.

If our organizations are like large pots, the leader of course is the stranger with a stone – a person with a vision of potential. By itself a stone in the pot does not make soup.  The wonderful aromatic and delicious cuisine results from the contributions each person makes to the soup envisioned by the leader.  Each person – each ingredient – adds flavor -- bitter, sweet, sour – and texture – hard, soft, liquid.  For that reason each soup – each community – is unique, drawing its own distinctive taste and spice from the particular mix of people who participate.  Leadership stirs individual contributions into nourishing feasts, creating a banquet from human potential.

Leadership is fragile. 

The most fragile aspect of leadership is also the most resilient – the human spirit.  In Leadership Jazz, Max De Pree lifts up the unique worth of the individual human spirit with words like vulnerability, potential, hope.  Leadership is a relationship – a relationship of influence in which we seek to release the spirits of those who choose to follow.  Every individual is unique – a person with mysterious potential.  In stone soup or jazz music every taste or tune contributes to the harmony that pleasures the senses – integrity, trust, character.  Human potential is fragile and deserves the leader’s attention.

The leaven of leadership is vulnerability. 

From Max De Pree’s perspective leaders are a gift to the spirit.  They take every person seriously and serve the people who choose to follow.  Leaders care about people and make their visions vulnerable to the potential of those around them.  Buried in the third chapter of Leadership Jazz is the oxymoronic question:  “Is there such a thing as safe vulnerability?”  Max does not bother to give the obvious answer.  He simply reminds us of one of the vulnerabilities of leadership.  Leaders make themselves vulnerable to the strengths and weaknesses of those who choose to follow.  That is one of the risks of leadership.  Another risk of course is that we are vulnerable to the weaknesses that shadow our own strengths.

Relationships are vulnerable. 

As Max observes people with vision embrace risk and uncertainty in life.  Out of the strength of their vulnerability, leaders enable others to do their best.  Leadership is fragile.  Character is fragile.  The health and future of our organizations are fragile.  Beliefs and values are fragile.  What matters and who matters are foundational to the work of leadership.  Integrity, trust and relationships are fragile.  Yet as Max says, the vulnerability of the leader to fragility leads to stronger relationships.  And that of course is the heartbeat of leadership – the relationship between leader and follower – the reciprocal relationship of influence in which each person seeks to influence the vision, values, attitudes and behaviors of the other.  It is the relationship of leadership that opens the space for both leader and follower to release their spirits and reach for their potential.

Integrity is fragile. 

The alignment of voice and touch brings heart into action.  Max recognizes that we only see rightly with the heart.  Research into the role of emotional intelligence in leadership supports this.  Effective leadership is grounded in accurate self-assessment and the management of emotions.  Understanding ourselves and protecting the integrity of character and behavior is the foundation for trust in relationships.  Leaders are the most watched people in any group.  If anyone looks to you for leadership they are listening to your words and watching your behavior.  People listen to words; they copy behavior.  Without integrity leaders leave followers vulnerable.

Leadership is healing.

A stranger walked into a divisive and wounded community with nothing but hope and a recipe for stone soup.  Yet that vision, that potential for collaboration, for contribution, for participation created a compelling aroma that revived the senses and restored the relationships.  Leadership creates community.  It embraces belonging and removes barriers to potential.  Effective leadership is a gift to the human spirit and a tribute to the awesome power of human potential.

“A good family, a good institution, or a good corporation can be a place of healing.  It can be a place where work becomes redemptive, where every person is included on her own terms.  We know in our hearts that to be included is both beautiful and right.  Leaders have to find a way to work that out, to contribute toward that vision.” – Max De Pree

Questions for reflection:

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