I have discovered how powerful it is to stop the barreling bullet train of thoughts that rip through my mind and just FEEL. In fact, switching from thinking to feeling is an addiction I do not fight, but feed. Like all addictions, it feels like I cannot LIVE without it. It is a difficult habit to maintain because most people find thinking so much more comfortable and normal, but it’s worth it and I’ll show you why.
Leaders Who Feel
Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next. ~ Jonas Salk
What if we replaced big thinking leaders with deep feeling leaders? According to Mitch Ditkoff of The Heart of Innovation and Idea Champions, this is the way things are moving. Mitch attended the 2011 World Innovation Forum in New York. What he came home with is a sense that thinking leaders will be replaced by individuals who have traveled an arduous journey from head to heart and have ideas and passion because of it.
Most leaders are thoughtful and ponder, but is there emotion and feeling behind the thinking?
…the greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to the humans in the marketplace. ~ Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indespensable?
Seth Godin is an entrepreneur and leader in the marketing and writing world. His 13 bestselling books, outrageously popular blog and founding interest in Squidoo (charitable website that declares passions), give him much street cred, but even more important, Seth feels. He is moved 
to share ideas. Seth’s advice to his audience; Do something that matters. His daily blogs are short but full of messages about living an aware existence, be it in the business world or just day-to-day. The insights may take a few days or a week to hit you, but they will hit you.
According to Seth, there are two kinds of marketing: 1. The kind that consistently executes standardized objectives to maximize returns on investment and 2. The kind that is art. According to him art is, The transfer of emotion from one human being to another. Doing something new in a way that touches other people. Seth Godin is an artist.
What we are about is not making boxes for people to get their jobs done. Although we do that very well. Apple is about more than that. We believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. ~ Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs is an easy choice for the passion behind the work award. He was fired from Apple, a company he co-founded, in 1985. Nothing like a loss of employment to help you rethink your identity. According to Forbes Magazine contributor Rob Enderle in his article Steve Jobs’ Greatest Product, Importance of Passion and Other Tech Secrets, Steve is not an IT technology guy, he is a personal technology guy. In other words, he did not love what he was doing for Apple the first time 
around. But he came back to Apple in 1997 with the iPod concept and well, you know the rest. His internal passion synced up with the company’s products and magic happened. Steve created techno-art that was simple and felt right to him, Apple’s employees and its customers. It didn’t hurt that Gil Amelio (the guy who presided over Apple before Jobs’s return)had the pizzazz of a balance sheet. Watch this video to see what too much thinking looks like. Make sure there is someone around to wake you up when it’s over.
I am not saying Seth Godin and Steve Jobs are without thoughts and reason. Of course, they have left brain hemispheres too. I just have a feeling they use rationale to support what they were going to do anyway.
So what do we get from leaders who dare to feel? Inspiration and amazing innovation. The motivation to get off our duffs and do something meaningful. Something that touches other people and changes the world for the better.
Do you know someone who leads without being all up in their head? Who follows their heart for universal good?
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Good point about Obama. Compassionate, feeling leaders make thoughtful decisions and are not afraid to ask for help. The problem with being a leader of a country is you are put directly in the spotlight. Those who like the spotlight are not always the most introspective people. Leaders must have a personal code that doesn’t need glory just a sense of doing what’s right to the benefit of others and themselves. They have to feel something then have the guts to act, and not in a shoot from the hip (G. Bush) mannner either. I could never be a politician. I don’t envy their lot.
I swear I just read an article regarding Obama on this subject. I will say, whether you/I like him or not, I find myself cringing at the politicians walking up to the podium to run to be the Republican Presidential Candidate. I’m realizing that its because they are stiff as boards. There’s no compassion compared to Obama. Compassion and heart alone can’t run the country, but it shouldn’t be run without it either.