Page 158 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

NOT EVERY BATTLE IS THE END OF THE WAR

At one point during the eighteen-hour South African Airways flight,
Mandela and Quincy were standing up talking with each other in the aisle
when one of the male flight attendants rudely told Mandela to sit down so
that they could serve dinner. “I was shocked. The attendant shouted at
Mandela in a loud, rude, and disrespectful manner. I was hardly able to
restrain my own anger because I’m a part of this humiliation,” recalled
Quincy. However, he decided to hold his tongue and see how Mandela
wanted to handle it. “Mandela then turns and points to me and says, ‘Actu-
ally, sir, I’m with him,’ shifting the blame to me as if I was the culprit, the
important American. He said it jokingly in a mischievous way, grinning
with a blink of the eye to me, and completely disarmed the situation and
quietly returned to his seat.”
Quincy reflected that in an era in which divas have to be escorted off
the plane for throwing temper tantrums when one of their bags is mis-
handled, here was a man of enormous international stature who chose to
sit down quietly without making a scene. Reflecting on the incident,
Mandela later told Quincy that when he was active in the African National
Congress (ANC) as a young man, “I learned that leaders who last are those
who understand that every battle is not the end of the war. That little inci-
dent was not the war. It was not important, absolutely of no consequence.”
Quincy learned that not only was Mandela not bitter, he did not have
an ego that required that he be treated as royalty. Mandela cautioned
Quincy to “never take your condition so seriously that it impedes you from
accomplishing your personal mission, which, in my case, is a free demo-
cratic election in South Africa.”
Less than a year later, in April 1994, the ANC won a landslide victory
and Nelson Mandela was elected the first black president of South Africa.
Effective leaders display the kind of grace and humility under pressure
that characterized Mandela and Weaver. Great leaders keep their eye on the
bold vision of their organization and focus on executing the objectives of
their mission, not allowing themselves to be distracted by other people’s prej-
udices. This applies to any broad personal attack on you by someone with
his or her own agenda. Too often leaders allow themselves to be sidetracked
by these minor irritants and then focus too much of their attention on coun-
terattacking those individuals and wasting precious energy and time on irrel-
evant issues. Leaders who demonstrate grace under fire with a laserlike focus
on their true mission are the ones who will achieve greatness one day.

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