that seem less than leaderish

Servant leaders also often do things that seem less than leaderish. Wolfskehl, for example, would clear the snow from employees' cars on wintry days. Other proponents step in for absent staff rather than expecting others to shoulder the burden. At the Ward Group, a $34 million advertising agency in Dallas, founder and CEO Shirley Ward filled a vacant media buyer position for several weeks; she and her son Rob Enright, the agency's president, have been known to man phones in the reception area to give a secretary a break. Similarly, Chris McKee, managing partner of Venturity, a $2 million accounting outsourcing firm in Dallas, has been performing some of the duties of an assistant controller who has been on extended sick leave. Although McKee has 25 employees he can call on, "I don't want the weight of the world on their shoulders during difficult times," he says. 

Leigh Buchanan

In Praise of Selflessness: Why the best leaders are servants. Inc. magazine. May 1, 2007. 

a hedge against emptiness

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. I once knew a woman who interned at a magazine where she wasn’t allowed to take lunch hours out, lest she be urgently needed for some reason. This was an entertainment magazine whose raison d’être was obviated when “menu” buttons appeared on remotes, so it’s hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion. More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter. 

Tim Kreider

"The ‘Busy’ Trap." The New York Times. June 30, 2012.

there is no indispensable man

Sometime when you're feeling important;

Sometime when your ego's in bloom

Sometime when you take it for granted

You're the best qualified in the room,

Sometime when you feel that your going

Would leave an unfillable hole,

Just follow these simple instructions

And see how they humble your soul;

Take a bucket and fill it with water,

Put your hand in it up to the wrist,

Pull it out and the hole that's remaining

Is a measure of how you will be missed.

You can splash all you wish when you enter,

You may stir up the water galore,

But stop and you'll find that in no time

It looks quite the same as before.

The moral of this quaint example

Is do just the best that you can,

Be proud of yourself but remember,

There's no indispensable man.

Saxon N. White Kessinger

Copyright 1959

"Indispensable Man" was originally published in "The Nutmegger Poetry Club under the name Saxon Uberuaga. It has also been published in "Boots" in Spring 1993, in "The Country Courier" 1996, "Rhyme Time" in Winter 2000, and in "Golden Times" in August 2003.

does this need to be said?

There is this idea that people are meaner than they used to be because of the internet... People are no meaner than they used to be - people have always been #@*%&! #@*%&!'s... What happens is that the technology is just faster.... You have this crazy idea, a crazy angry thought, "I've got a crazy angry thought!" and clickety click click click and boom! - it's out. And you don't have time to slow down and ask yourself the three things you must always ask yourself before you say anything, which is: 

1. Does this need to be said?

2. Does this need to be said by me?

3. Does this need to be said by me now?

Three #@*%&! marriages it took me to learn that.

Craig Ferguson

"Does This Need to Be Said?" 2011.

idle dreaming

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking. 

Tim Kreider

"The ‘Busy’ Trap." The New York Times. June 30, 2012.