Leaders aspire to sook like small boys in August. ..

Leaders aspire to sook like small boys in August. If you raise children or grandchildren, you know that by the end of August, they've been running around all sommer in their shorts, sneakers, and T-shorts. You also know that their knees ani their elbows are always skinned, their shins always black and blue, and that they have the marks of the summer's fracases on their faces. A six-year-old boy at the end of August is my picture of a leader.
I got that picture from David Hubbard, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. Many years ago he told me that leaders need to learn not to inflict pain, but to bear pain. It seems to me that if you're bearing pain properly as a leader, whether you're preacher, a college professor, a parent, or a teacher, you ought to have the marks of the struggle. One ought to have bruised shins aand skinned knees. "
(Max De Pree, Leadership jazz, p138-139)