Just a thought.
How different is your behaviour when no-one is looking or listening?
I heard a scientist this morning talking about how in quantum theory the very act of observing can change the thing being observed.
The cliched thoughts that brings crowding into your head include the obvious one: “If a tree falls in the forest and no-one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?” (The answer of course is that the fall makes vibrations in the air, but the very definition of a ‘noise’, as with a ‘sound’ is when those vibrations are received by an eardrum that resonates with them, so no there is no sound if there is nothing or no-one to hear it).
Or, as the educationalist Sir Ken Robinson puts it “If a man says something in a forest and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?”
But it also made me think that one definition of authentic leadership is that the people we respect and trust most as leaders are those whom we assume have the least ‘side’ as they say in political circles – who are when alone most like they are in public.
So, what are you like when no-one’s watching?
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