26 Leadership Course: the simplest format, (1)

Ad Kokke died some 16 months ago. He used to be President of our Board and I miss him,
we alle miss him. At this very moment our leadership courses start in Beijing I think of him and his views on leadership and I mix his views with mine.

Its 21.24 and dark outside, the Lake is like an impressionistic painting. Turner?

Can we lead people?

There is a preliminary question: who is "we"?

But first one must admit that many leadershiptasks in many companies are taken out of the hands of that glorified species called"manager"and/or "leader". People in many organizations are led by many substitutes of leadership, like mechanical devices, procedures, all sublimations of the running belts of olden times.
So far on the relevance of "leadership".

But if this competence is asked for, as it is on many occasions: who is "we"the leaders?
Here I must state this: people can not be led, they only can lead them selves.
So the often heralded leader, so proud of his job, has only one task: to elicit or trigger the
leadershippotentialities in the men he is supposed to lead.

So a leadership course can be simple: define the one condition that seduces the men to grant
the "manager" succes in his triggering task.
That is integrity.
This quality is not to be defined by management but by the clients of management: The Men. The Women. And only them.

Integrity is a bunch of actions displayed by the actor called "manager"in front of the spectators
he depends. They feed the answer to that all important question: Can I trust him or her, Can I depend on him.

Leadershiptraining as directed at changing your habits gets its most direct format by asking your clients (your men) for feedback on this issue. By accepting it. By acting accordingly. And also by accepting that your men and women in this respect lead you, act as your boss.

I remember an old french defintion of "Manager" : traiteur d'un champion...(caretaker of a
champion horse)

And I remember my own definition: de leider is de knecht van zijn zijn mensen. The leader is the servant of his men and women.

I am not an experienced China watcher but I must declare that as far as my observations go, as to this definition I can not see any need for adaptations in my and our approach in China.

But is the hierachical leadership- the bossy boss-style not the most
dominant style in the PRC.
Could be.
But if so, its the style of the past.

25 News from Beijing

The sun sets over the Lake, littered with all kind of craft, heading to a meeting point I can not
discern. Its 20.34 dutch time and a naval review has been organized this night. The ships will be
all in full light and will pass my window in the first darkness.
I am on my own and thinking of Beijing where everybody important (a few) and non important( 17 million) are sleeping now, most of them I mean. But the city will be be fully lighted I know, till the sun will rise in the morning.
Tankers will start to spray the roads against the dust. Groups of people practising Tai Chi and Yoga in the parks or on the grassy sides of the streets. The majority of the 1.5 milion cars start hitting the traffic jams. Bicycles and carrierbikes. On the pavements the pretty pretty ladies of all ages unfold their parasols. Soon the offices will be filled and inside temperature will rise up to
27 degrees- nearly every office obeys the order that the airco sticks at that point. Not lower! But
27 degrees C always is better than the 35 or so outside.
Or is it raining? And is a thunderstorm passing by, cleaning the air and making mirrors out of the otherwise dusty surface of the tarmac.
Or did it rain yesterday and is the air transparant like glass?
I wonder. I will ask Tonio asap as soon I get him on the phone. Or Dong Yan or Chris Jiang the
freshly engaged CEO of SchoutenChina. The last two last week were our guest in Holland: getting to know Schouten&Nelissen, together refining the businessplan for the coming period, famiiliarize with the Dutch colleagues. Yesterday we waved them goodbye from Schiphol. It
felt and feels like a farewell, even if thats not reality.
But my thougths are with them and shifting my mind to Beijing seems the only way to cope with the nasty feeling associated with separation.

July 15 I left Riversides. 1100 hs. Hot. But I felt good and so I strolled to the tabacconist
called Juan Yan Chao Shi. I like the owner, an elegant 40+ woman, always smiling with gleaming eyes whenever I enter her shop. In moments of solitude I even think she is beautiful. But not today. She seems to hide and does not offer me the gift of her smile. Her face worn. What does
she hide for? Not for me of course (sorry) but what else? What sadness is overwhelming her? Or
did she get ill because of the heat? Or tired of nasty discussions with a husband I never saw?
I paid my cigars and left before I could answer those questions. Maybe I have to learn Chinese
so I can ask her.
Fully loaded with 10 cigars I crosses the road untill I reached the corner of Hong Yan Lu and
Nan Xinyan Zhong Lu. On the pavement there is a small platform surrounding a huge
leaning tree. Shadow.
A small man greeted me.
I said" Hallo, may I sit down?"
He nodded. I sat on the concrete edge.
I lit a cigar.
He offered me a small plastic baby stool.
"Thank you," I said. In Chinese I think.
I offered him a cigar.
"Thank you," he said and I said Buketsji meaning "My pleasure".
He studied at my gorgeous body and smiled. From behind his back he produced a bigger chair.
I set fire into his cigar.
And so we sat along side each other, peacefully smoking, observing the traffic. Taming time
and chasing it into the Corral called the "here-and-now".

Outside on the Lake the parade of boats advances. I am in Beijijng.

24 smoking healthy

So I stopped smoking cigars, an important step in anybody's life, also in mine, though I must add
that I easily can stop. I did it many times. So from this statemement you rightly may infer I started smoking one time less than the many times I stopped: up to this moment I mean. Not easy to understand?
"Think! " ,my Chinese Colleague would say.
"Its easy!" She would add.
And she is right because she gave me a more difficult riddle, far more difficult: she went to the dentist for cleaning her teeth. She has all her teeth. In good condition. She had the company of two friends and the condition of their teeth was very bad, they even missed some! Question: After the treatment the dentist ordered my Colleague to pay far more for his job than the two friends had to pay. Why?

But about my smoking: stopping feels as bad as just going on. But I will prevail this time.
The house of the Lake is full of halffull cigarboxes. When I see them I immediately hear that
loud cry from the virginal brown monsters:.
"I am delicious, please smoke me!"
"No,"I say.
Good, isntit?

The last stay In Beijing was succesfull. also in the business sense of the word.
My Colleague made the new picture.
"Why?"
"To prove you really worked here in Beijing."
In the background the lush gardens of ShanShui were I live, when in Beijing.

Faits divers:....the book I wrote on Assertiviness will come out in Chinese Translation and formally handed to the Ambassador of the Netherlands on Beijing on october 24....On the same
date we will have the big opening reception of SchoutenChina....7 days ago SchoutenChina started its campaign dor the first open softskillcourses....We found a candidate for the COO function...He (Chris Jiang) will next week our guest in Holland together with MT member ms
DongYan...We will be present at the big conferences of HRM China and ASTD China in Shanghai and Beijing (september/oktober)....We intensified our investment in the coming years for SchoutenChina...The staff will grow, Dongyan already looking for a new location....We found a
partner for the Chinawide distribution of opencourses....on the move..


In the mean time The Schouten&Nelissen Group is full of life, more than ever. New endeaviors
are in the make.

And Argentina? The Shangri La of the lost souls? Its in the small moments of profound content
that hit me and flare up from under the layers of everyday routine.
...the evening sun goldening the birchleaves..
...the smile of the person presenting me the the Chinese translation of the flute
player
...the naugthy running away of Jonas, my grandson,
...the voice of the persons I love,
...the rain pouring over my body while I worked like a horse to navigate my sailing boat through a thunderstorm....,
...the pureness beaming from a photograph I unexpectedly received
... the very nice crepes susettes I spoiled myself with this evening in Veenhoeve,
that sweet restaurant, in the mean time allowing my self to be moved by the tender way the owner/mother hugged her 16 year old son.

Alone is good, Colour: cobalt blue, red. Loneliness is grey, a haze that hides the horizon. Absent
shoulder. So, when in that gloomy predicament, I pray to all those I love, please keep welcoming
me as a guest in your life.
But my colour is blue.