Bill Mains: Self Awareness and Genuine Connection for Authentic Leadership

Arturo: Going off of Barry Posner’s 5 practices
of Exemplary Leadership, “effective leaders are to have an
understanding of their own values”. We would love to hear about
your values?


Bill: I'd have to talk a little bit first about
their origins. My mom was a homemaker, formerly a teacher and my
dad was a pastor in the Lutheran church. From early on, I
remember a great sense of responsibility and fidelity to one's
family, how to support one's family, how to encourage family
bonds, and also challenge in an appropriate way. Another is a
sense of responsibility to make things better than when you found
them, it's a sense that you're entrusted with a certain amount of
time, different people and different programs, and there's a
responsibility that goes along with trying to improve all those
things. Then maybe the third, fourth, and fifth that come from my
own faith as a Christian, are faith, hope, and love.


Armando: We know you’re grounded in your wife
and kids. What are the three most important lessons you want your
kids to know before leaving the nest.


Bill: I want my kids to have this understanding
of themselves as having the power and ability to create
environments that are not just conducive to their own flourishing
but to others in their community. Another lesson is to understand
that they are loved even when the world is a place that may not
feel like it's loving them back but it’s there if they create it.
And back to my values, to try to make things better than how they
found it. 


Arturo: In the previous interview, you mentioned
a quote from your parents, “be like a duck, smooth on the surface
but underneath, scurrying like crazy”. What tactics do you
recommend to students who are “scurrying like crazy” maybe
without direction.


Bill: I’d like to use a new metaphor. “To see
their life as a mountain with no top”. What I mean by that, is
that life can be really exciting and fun if you focus more on the
process and become less focused on specific outcomes. If there’s
that hope and faith that things will turn out the way they're
supposed to be. It's a lot of fun to be able to focus on what
you're doing at the moment and what you can do today to make
yourself the best possible version and what you can do tomorrow
to continue that growth. Along with that metaphor is the idea
that we need to rest, stop, and look around at what you've
accomplished so far. See who's accompanying you on that climb and
take a look at the beautiful scenery from different vantage
points in life. Maybe look up the mountain and see which routes
make the most sense to move forward to the next ledge.


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