Everyday leadership Drew Dudley
how many of you are completely
comfortable with calling yourselves a
leader see I’ve asked that question all
the way across the country and
everywhere I ask it no matter where
there’s always a huge portion of the
audience that won’t put up their hand
and I’ve come to realize that we have
made leadership into something bigger
than us we made it into something beyond
us we made it about changing the world
and we’ve taken this title of leader and
we treat it as if it’s something that
one day we’re going to deserve but to
give it to ourselves right now means a
level of arrogance or cockiness that
we’re not comfortable with and I worry
sometimes that we spend so much time
celebrating amazing things that hardly
anybody can do that we’ve convinced
ourselves that those are the only things
we’re celebrating and we start to
devalue the things that we can do every
day and we start to take moments where
we truly are a leader and we don’t let
ourselves take credit for and we don’t
let ourselves feel good about it and
I’ve been lucky enough over the last ten
years to work with some amazing people
who have helped me redefine leadership
in a way that I think has made me
happier and with my short time today I
just want to share with you the one
story that is probably most responsible
for that redefinition I went to a school
in a little school called Mount Allison
University in Sackville New Brunswick
and on my last day there a girl came up
to me and she said I remember the first
time that I met you and then she told me
a story that happened four years earlier
she said on my day before I started
University I was in the hotel room with
my mom and my dad and I was so scared
and so convinced that I couldn’t do this
that I wasn’t ready for university that
I just burst into tears and my mom and
my dad were amazing they were like look
we know you’re scared
but let’s just go to more let’s go to
the first day and if at any point you
feel as if you can’t do this that’s fine
just tell us we will take you home we
love you no matter what and she said so
I would the next day and I was standing
in line getting ready for registration
and I looked around and I just knew I
couldn’t do it I knew I wasn’t ready I
knew I had to quit and she says I made
that decision and as soon as I made it
there was this incredible feeling of
peace that came over me and I turned to
my mom and my dad to tell them that we
needed to go home and just at that
moment you came out of the Student Union
Building wearing the stupidest hat I
have ever seen in my life
it was awesome and you had a big sign
promoting Shina ramen which is students
fighting cystic fibrosis the charity
I’ve worked with for years and you had a
bucket full of lollipops and you were
walking along and you were handing the
lollipops out to people in line and
talking about shina Rama and all of a
sudden you got to me and you just
stopped and you stared it was creepy
this girl right here knows exactly what
I’m talking about and then you look at
the guy next to me and you smiled and he
reached in your bucket you pulled out a
lollipop and you held it out to him and
you said you need to give a lollypop to
the beautiful woman standing next to you
and she said I have never seen anyone
get more embarrassed faster in my life
he turned beet red and he wouldn’t even
look at me he just kind of held a
lollipop out like this and I felt so bad
for this dude that I took the lollipop
and as soon as I did you got this
incredibly severe look on your face and
you looked at my mom and my dad and you
said look at that look at that first day
away from home and already she’s taking
candy from a stranger
and she said everybody lost it 20 feet
in every direction everyone started to
howl and I know this is cheesy and I
don’t know why I’m telling you this but
in that moment when everyone was
laughing I knew that I shouldn’t quit I
knew that I was where I was supposed to
be and I knew that I was home and I
haven’t spoken to you once in the four
years since that day but I heard that
you were leaving and I had to come up
and tell you that you’ve been an
incredibly important person in my life
and I’m gonna miss you
good luck and she walks away and I’m
flattened and she gets about 6 feet away
she turns around and smiles and goes you
should probably know this too I’m still
dating that guy 4 years later a year and
a half after I moved to Toronto I got an
invitation to their wedding here’s the
kicker I don’t remember that I have no
recollection of that moment and I’ve
searched my memory banks because that is
funny
and I should remember doing it and I
don’t remember it and that was such an
eye-opening transformative moment for me
to think that the maybe the biggest
impact I’d ever had on anyone’s life a
moment that had a woman walk up to a
stranger four years later and say you’ve
been an incredibly important person in
my life was a moment that I didn’t even
remember how many of you guys have a
lollipop moment a moment where someone
said something or did something that you
feel fundamentally made your life better
alright how many of you have told that
person they did it see why not we
celebrate birthdays where all you have
to do is not die for 365 days
and yet we let people who have made our
lives better walk around without knowing
it and every single one of you every
single one of you has been the catalyst
for a lollipop moment you have made
someone’s life better by something that
you said or that you did and if you
think you have it think about all the
hands that didn’t go back up when I
asked that question you’re just one of
the people who hasn’t been told but it
is so scary to think of ourselves as
that powerful it can be frightening to
think that we can matter that much to
other people because as long as we make
leadership something bigger than us as
long as we keep leadership something
beyond us as long as we make it about
changing the world we give ourselves an
excuse not to expect it every day from
ourselves and from each other Marianne
Williamson said our greatest fear is not
that we are inadequate our greatest fear
is that we are powerful beyond measure
it is our light and not our darkness
that frightens us and my call to action
today is that we need to get over that
we need to get over our fear of how
extraordinarily powerful we can be at
each other’s lives we need to get over
it so we can move beyond it and our
little brothers and our little sisters
and one day our kids or our kids right
now can watch a start to value the
impact we can have on each other’s lives
more than money and power and titles and
influence we need to redefine leadership
as being about lollipop moments how many
of them we create how many then we
acknowledge how many of them we pay
forward and how many of them we say
thank you for because we’ve made
leadership about changing the world and
there is no world there’s only six
billion understandings of it and if you
change one person’s understanding of it
one person’s understanding of what
they’re capable of
one person’s understanding of how much
people care about them one person’s
understanding of how powerful an agent
for change they can be in this world you
change the whole thing and if we can
chain understand leadership like that I
think if we can redefine leadership like
that I think we can change everything
and it’s a simple idea but I don’t think
it’s a small one and I want to thank you
all so much for letting me share