INTRODUCTION HARNESSING THE POWER OF LIFT

On August 18, 1941, officer John Gillespie Magee Jr. of the Royal Canadian Air Force took a new airplane, the Spitfire Mk I, on a test flight. Magee had just received his wings as a pilot. As he flew the Spitfire to new heights he felt inspired to write a poem that is now the official poem of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the British Royal Air Force. The poem has inspired short films, songs, inscriptions on headstones, presidential addresses, museum displays, and eulogies. Some have even used this poem as a prayer.

High Flight

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things

You have not done—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious blue

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew.

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

It is hard to read this poem without feeling at least a bit of the exhilaration that Magee must have felt. His momentary thoughts and feelings inspired words that continue to move others generations after his death. Magee's experience, and the poem it generated, have "slipped the surly bonds of earth" and "done a hundred things" because Magee "trod the high, untrespassed sanctity of space" with a "lifting mind." If Magee's experience had this kind of impact, what impact might we have if we slip the surly bonds of earth with a lifting mind?

This is a book about how we can do just that: slip the surly bonds of earth by lifting our hearts and minds, and in the process lift other people as well. Like Orville and Wilbur Wright, who used physical science and practical experience to build the first airplane, thus making it possible later for Magee to rise above the bonds of earth, we can use social science and practical experience to learn to rise above the constraints of life and lift others around us. The tool that the Wright brothers developed to help people harness the aerodynamic force of lift was the airplane; the tool that we have developed to help people harness the social and psychological forces that "lift"—or exert a positive influence upon—themselves and others is called the fundamental state of leadership.

The fundamental state of leadership is a psychological state: a temporary pattern of thoughts and feelings in which we are (1) purpose-centered (the results we want are not weighed down by needless expectations); (2) internally directed (our personal values guide our actions); (3) other-focused (we feel empathy for the feelings and needs of others); and (4) externally open (we believe that we can improve at whatever it is we are trying to do). When we experience these thoughts and feelings, we feel uplifted and, consequently, lift others around us.

In aerodynamics, lift is the name for the force that pushes an airplane (or a boat, or any object traveling in a liquid or a gas) upward. We use the metaphor of lift, and of heavier-than-air flight, to frame our discussion of the fundamental state of leadership. There are many parallels between how airplanes harness "lift" and how the fundamental state of leadership helps people to harness their potential to lift themselves and others to greater heights of achievement, integrity, learning, and love.

The fundamental state of leadership lifts us and others, but daily living often drags us into more normal states. In normal states we (1) seek comfort, (2) react to situations automatically, (3) focus on our own wants, and (4) believe that there is little we can do to improve. In a normal state, our leadership is less positive and it can be hard to change.

We offer four questions that anyone can use to experience the fundamental state of leadership, and we use scientific research to explain how people who ask themselves these questions tend to lift themselves and the people around them:

1. What result do I want to create?

2. What would my story be if I were living the values I expect of others?

3. How do others feel about this situation?

4. What are three or more strategies I could try in learning how to achieve my purpose?

These questions are simple, but their power is in their simplicity. We considered each word carefully, comparing it against scientific research. For example, the question "How do others feel about this situation?" may seem like it is simply repeating the old adage, "Walk a mile in another person's shoes," which encourages people to consider other people's perspectives. As we will discuss in chapter 8, however, simply considering others' perspectives is often not enough; we must understand the feelings behind those perspectives. And research suggests that including such words as others and leaving out such questions as "How would I feel?" are also important for different reasons.

Scientific research gives us insight into why the fundamental state of leadership is important, what its characteristics are, how it influences others, and how to formulate questions that can help us experience it. These questions are, however, not the only means for experiencing the fundamental state of leadership. When we teach people about the fundamental state of leadership, most people can remember times when they have experienced it, often in moments of crisis. Questions derived from science enable us to experience the fundamental state of leadership intentionally, and we offer other potential questions as well.

This book is rich in scientific detail, but it is not possible to include every detail. We try to make the research that we share as practical and as engaging as possible. Therefore, in addition to using science to explain the fundamental state of leadership, we provide practical illustrations: stories from our own lives and from the lives of people we know. We take you into corporate offices where executives make decisions that affect the lives of thousands of people, and into our living rooms where we make decisions that affect our families. We take you into community organizations where people work to help others, and into the library where we study alone. We take you onto the basketball court and into neighborhoods; on television shows and into classrooms; into the marketplace and onto the front lawn. We take you to all of these places to illustrate how leadership matters in most situations. We have also included exercises for personal application at the end of chapters 1, 4, 6, 8, and 10; these exercises contain lists of practical ideas. We want the book to be interesting and useful to people who want to lead, whatever their circumstances may be.