I love taking the contrarian view, but truth be told, when it comes to patience, conventional wisdom has got it right: patience is a virtue. Not so much because it makes you a pleasure to be around, which it does, but because when your time horizon is long enough, problems dissolve. Life comes at you easily and stress free.
Now, there are times that you need to be aware that you are in a fist fight, when you need to race like hell to make your next punch count. When you’re in a fist fight, you’re next punch is the only thing that does count. In a fight, you fight to win. It’s the law of the jungle.
But fights are few and far between. They establish the pecking order, and then aren’t needed again until someone new comes along or until someone else decides to take a shot at the title.
In between, leaders don’t look for fights; they never *give* others a shot at the title. Just the opposite: leaders avoid fights because doing so avoids giving others the opportunity to usurp them. What leaders do, whenever they can, is direct their–and more importantly, their followers’–energies to productive activities. They build, rather than constantly defend themselves. Building and producing is also the law of the jungle.
Leaders are forever pushing forward… and when they hit a roadblock, before trying to run right through it (read: fighting against the resistance), they look for ways around it. Over it. Under it. They look out further into the future to see how this roadblock can be transformed into something to their advantage. They learn about the roadblock. They look at who is throwing the roadblock up, and why, to find the key to removing the roadblock without a struggle. They keep looking until they find an answer, and then they move forward.
Roadblocks don’t throw first punches, and neither do leaders. Leaders are patient. They find ways around roadblocks or wait for them to melt away. They never initiate fights… Fights are what happen when people who are behind roadblocks get frustrated that their roadblocks are being overrun. And when they get frustrated enough to start a fight, a leader will be there to end it.
