Each Monday I write an email for leaders in Reno County. Here’s the one I wrote on Monday, 9/24/12 entitled “Building Bridges”.
Well, it’s nearly done. Every day on my morning commute through Hutch Rush Hour, I glance at that interchange at 30th and K-61 and it even got a nice write up in Monday’s paper. The Pedestrian Bridge is nearly done. Bridges are important. They connect things. They bring two opposing sides together in a safe way. Bridges help us get across obstacles. They encourage our overcoming impasse. They are certainly needed in our physical world.
This is also true in our acts of leadership. On the one hand, leadership takes courage. It’s risky. Leadership means we sometimes have to push out into hard and uncharted territory. But, on the other hand, we have to opportunity to diagnose situations and, in purposeful engagement, see progress at any time and in any place. One question in the KLC Quick Guide encouraging us to energize others asks, “How do we build bridges between the factions?” Great question indeed. We often look at factions very differently. A question I’ve asked in my mind before is, “How can I work around the faction without a bridge?” But, like we’ve seen, bridges are important. Bridges will help us make more progress. Bridges will give us a bigger and often better result in the long run.
So, as our community prepares to open another physical bridge, let it be a reminder that we have the opportunity to lead and energize others, building bridges not walls. Let’s step into this kind of leadership, then, and see if it doesn’t help us make progress on the issues we care about the most.