Barefoot

Running in Another’s Shoes

It is Graham’s purpose for tackling 87 kilometres of tar, barefooted, that captured my attention:

An opportunity to make a change [in people’s lived lives].

Graham Wells has already run two Comrades Marathons barefoot. He was not the first and will not be the last in 2023.

It is the why that is captivating.

The Leadership Weekly Notes (LWN) are currently covering the eight influential leadership behavioural attributes. We have completed four so far (self-aware, principled, questioning and strategic). The second set (courageous, hopeful, purposeful and thoughtful) will resume next week.

Mr Wells’ story offers a timely and dramatic real-world example of the behavioural attributes, so I thought we could enjoy a diversion this week.

Let us take a journey through Graham’s story to experience influential leadership in practice.

While we focus on influential leadership’s behavioural attributes, they do not exist in a vacuum. Here is their context.

A philosophy. The influential leadership philosophy—which holds that our lives are inextricably connected to others’ lives, so we live and lead for the betterment of ourselves and others—shines through Graham’s barefoot purpose.
Principles. Our principles are the link between our philosophy and our behavioural attributes. Once again, I see a consistent pattern in Graham’s values and his behaviours.

For the purpose of our LWN I highlight four behavioural attributes evidenced in Graham’s story.

Self-aware. Can there be a more apt example of knowing oneself and others? He sees others who walk in very different shoes, takes off his own and steps out. How many of us see other’s circumstances and imagine what it must be like, and then do something about it?
Courageous. I have run the Comrades Marathon twice; in the best shoes my money could buy. Pain. Blisters. But it is not just the event that is demanding, it takes many hundreds of hours and kilometres to train, to get those feet tough enough to endure the unyielding and sandpaper-like tar surface.Have you tried to walk just one kilometre on tar with your shoe-accustomed feet? I managed eighty meters once.And, of course, influential leadership goes beyond physical courage. Leadership is also as concerned with moral courage; the courage of doing right.
Purposeful. Here we see a man with the ambition to do a big thing—for himself and others. He is committed, dedicated, enthusiastic and tenacious. He has a value-laden reason for doing this thing—to make other’s lives better.This is the purpose of influential leadership: To change things for the better—to make people’s lived lives better!
Thoughtful. It is apparent to me that Graham has been reflective, has exercised critical thinking and been guided by reason. He has seen the conditions and consequences of homelessness, in his city and elsewhere. He recognises that we stumble in our lives—that it could be any of us—and he reaches out to make peoples’ lived lives better.

NOTE: See if you can identify the other four behavioural attributes in Graham’s story.

Before I close off, let me mention another key element of influential leadership that Graham’s story also uncovers, namely, opportunity.

A leadership moment is a social circumstance (an opportunity) that activates us to practice influential leadership. Graham says, ‘we have an opportunity to make a difference’. He sees a situation, thinks it through, then turns it into a leadership moment to change things for the better.

Opportunities will have no productive outcome if we are either unsighted or unmoved when a leadership moment arises.

We must be sighted (i.e., see the opportunity), then think, choose and act to achieve productive outcomes.\