Keynote
You lead by what you are willing to carry.
A keynote on leadership as service, told through a collection of soldiers' Bibles carried from the Revolutionary War to today.
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The talk
For years I have gathered pocket Bibles carried by American soldiers, from the Revolutionary War to the wars of our own time. More than two hundred of them now. Nearly every one has a name written inside, and verses underlined in the soldier's own hand. Each one belonged to a person who served, and carried it at the worst moment of his life.
I hold one up, and I tell the room whose it was. Then I ask the question the object forces. What are you willing to carry for the people beside you, and what would they find written in the margins if they ever opened your life the way I opened his?
This is not a history talk. It is the clearest way I know to make one idea land. A leader is not the person with the title. A leader is the person the others can count on to carry the weight, the values, and the faith when everything else is stripped away.
The collection is the whole argument, made in objects. Strip it down and it is one word. Leadership is service. You lead by what you are willing to carry.
What the room is buying
A room that stops thinking about leadership as a position and starts thinking about it as a weight they choose to pick up. The objects make it physical, and physical is what people remember.
45 to 60 minutes. For every audience, and especially powerful for faith-based and values-driven organizations.