I’m not normally the type of person who go’s around quoting Latin. I’d like to say because I’m not egotistical and looking to impress with my knowledge of the classics, but the real reason is, I don’t know any.
Well that’s not exactly true, I remember one phrase vividly. Deo fidelis et patria. This was the motto of my school and was drilled into us every day. Those who went to a Catholic secondary in the 80’s will know exactly what I mean!
Well, to the point. I had a bit of an 80’s episode today and decided to watch the movie American Flyers. For those who don’t know it, shame on you! Only kidding, it’s about 2 brothers who haven’t seen each other for a while, who get together, as there is a medical history in the family which may effect them severely. One knows about, the other doesn’t. They both love to ride and race bikes and so they enter a race together, the Hell of the West, as this may be their last opportunity.
I’m getting to the point honestly.
So, the elder brother Marcus, played by a young Kevin Costner, works in a sports institute and their motto is Res firma mitescere nescit. What has this got to do with what we do here at Fabric Learning and what you do for a living I hear you sigh? Bear with me.
Well roughly translated it means, ‘When you get it up, keep it up.’
It made me think about leadership, particularly resilience, belief and stamina. We work with a real diverse mix of industries, at all levels of management and leadership. Not many have commonalities in the technical sense but all have the same challenge at the moment; the ability to be the person they want and that their people need them to be and then to keep going.
Many get to the point they want to be, dealing with challenges and weathering the storms to get there, but once there, we see many unable to maintain it. It’s as if the effort to reach the heights they set themselves, spends all of their energy, leaving little in the tank to stay there, let alone flex and adapt to the new challenges.
Many leadership and management programmes show people the way to get there, not necessarily what’s required to at least stay at that level and then move beyond.
It’s even made me look at what we do here at Fabric Learning. I look at our programmes and ask, ‘What’s next!?’ Do we have that in our programmes? I think to a certain degree yes, but maybe not deliberately and that needs to change. After all, what type of learning and development company would we be if we ourselves didn’t reflect on our programmes, adapt and flex to meet our clients needs!?
We need to design a programme that enables those with people responsibility to res firma mitescere nescit, so to speak.
Isn’t it great when you have those learning moments! I like to call them Aha moments. I’d like some more, so maybe I need to learn a few more Latin phrases? Or do I need to watch more 80’s movies? What do you think?