Simon Mainwaring Interviews Merrill MacDonald

SM: What would your definition of a leader be?

MM: My definition [of a leader is] simply someone who has followers. It could be an assembly man on a plant floor, it could be the CEO, head of marketing, someone trying to drive innovation in an R&D land. They are people with a mission, vision, passion and cause, and who want to engage others behind them.

SM: So this Let Go and Lead project is really for any one of those types of people?

MM: Absolutely.

SM: So who are some of the people that you’ve spoken to in this project?

MM: What I was really interested in is getting out of breathing my own air and stewing in my own soup, so to speak. So I thought it would be fun to tap into people from different walks of life, and who were doing a lot of work in the areas that most interested me. For example, storytelling, we talked with Mitch Elbom, the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. We talked with Bruce Mau, who started in Toronto as a designer. First he was in the world of design, now he wants to design the world. He’s been engaging people all around the world through a process called Massive Change, bringing together leaders to make the world a better place. Julio Patino, who is the dean of engineering at Northwestern University, and who’s passion is the intersection of art, technology and science. Stephanie Pace Marshall, who is one of the leading thinkers on education reform. She founded the Institute of Math and Science. There have been very different kinds of people who have been bringing unique perspectives and thoughts so that we can take them and share with one another to create something new.

SM: With the intersection of all these types of leaders, have you discovered things that have resonated with you that you didn’t expect, or are there any commonalities between what they’re saying?

MM: One of the key commonalities is the general acceptance that we have a lot to let go of. That each of us as individuals have a lot of stuff, and a lot of that stuff comes to us honestly because many of us were brought up through a very strict management discipline, which is all about control, it’s about maintaining, harmony and it’s about stability. That’s not the world we’re in now. We’re in a world that’s rapidly changing.  It’s beyond us, it’s bigger than us, and so many of us get stuck because we try to keep the opportunity to a size that we can manage it, rather than growing by busting it open and going with it.

[Go to letgoandlead.com and join the conversation.]

In the liquid world, a leader is anyone who has a following, at least the sort of following that can be influenced to take action.