Introducing The Leadership Chronicles

When I first moved to America, it took me a long time to understand and accept certain aspects of American, um, culture and lifestyle choices. Like their fascination with cheese, particularly the melted kind (I call it edible glue), and that they put it on EVERYTHING. And how they elected two Bushes (although that one might be trumped (ha!) in November (but for the love of all things holy please don’t let that be the case)). Or all the commercial breaks on television shows. Or how a sport that features only two countries has a finale called the World Series. But the one uniquely American thing I have never been able to embrace is that positive thinking, cheerleading, you can achieve anything if you put your mind to it, Kumbaya stuff. I hate it. But you Yanks love that stuff. It’s a billion dollar industry. There would be no Oprah Winfrey without it. But I think it is BS.

So imagine my utter discomfort when in the middle of September my company sent me on a three-day leadership retreat. It was three days of positive affirmations and voice projection and team-building exercises and identifying the golden characteristics of a leader (that is a direct quote from the handbook). It was three days of hell. The only positive that came from it is that it provided fodder for this blog. So much so, in fact, that instead of one humongous post, I am going to split it up into several small posts. Stay tuned!