Well, for those who have read the previous posts on the Willow Creek Leadership Summit, I’m still mediating on the content and this is part of process for me – so thanks for coming back. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the line about leadership and optimism that Condoleezza Rice said:

“The single greatest need of a leader is irrepressible optimism.”

It’s a great sound byte. Instantly, all the note-takers dove their heads to write it down and so many on Twitter said, “Yes a great line under 140 characters!” – hashtag #wcals

Then this was reiterated later when Condi sarcastically said, “No one wants to follow a sour puss.”

All true, no one likes to follow a cranky pessimist. Optimism is important. “Irrepressible” is a great adjective for it and of all the presenters to articulate this, Condi was the perfect one. That said, in thinking about it, I think it comes up a little short and I’d like to point out a few things from my Gen-X perspective.

First, contrary to popular belief, Gen-Xers & Millennials understand optimism. In fact, many have stocked up on it only to have it [Read more…]