Of Leadership, Reliability, Responsibility — and Preparedness

Real­i­ty check: Some peo­ple are just more pre­pared for events of life than oth­ers.

“Events” can be any­thing from a per­son­al emer­gency to an unex­pect­ed home expense to a fam­i­ly emer­gency to a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter to some­thing good like a great job or invest­ment or trip oppor­tu­ni­ty when it presents itself.

“Pre­pared” can be any­thing from hav­ing your per­son­al (and per­haps busi­ness) finances in order to hav­ing tools and sup­plies on hand to hav­ing the skills and edu­ca­tion and expe­ri­ence and insight to seize an oppor­tu­ni­ty.

For some peo­ple it is a con­scious effort. And yes, some peo­ple do take it to great extremes (but who knows, they may yet be right). But for most being pre­pared is just in their nature. It isn’t a cer­tain­ty. No one can pre­pare for the unknown. All you can do is con­sid­er sce­nar­ios, decide the like­li­hood of them hap­pen­ing, then prepar­ing as best you can accord­ing­ly.

Peo­ple who live their lives pre­pared are nat­ur­al lead­ers by exam­ple. Even if they don’t see them­selves as lead­ers just the way they live shows lead­er­ship by (hope­ful­ly) set­ting the tone for oth­ers to emu­late and be inspired by. Or per­haps giv­ing ideas to oth­ers to fol­low.

Peo­ple who are pre­pared are seen as reli­able peo­ple in life. That is, those around them know they can be relied upon. Even if they try to hide their prepa­ra­tions just the way a pre­pared per­son con­ducts their lives – the things they buy and how they buy them, the places they go, the enter­tain­ments they choose, etc. – all form a big­ger pic­ture of some­one who is cau­tious, ana­lyt­ic, not prone to flights of fan­cy (usu­al­ly), sta­ble and reli­able. You just can’t hide your nature.

There is the dark side to being reli­able: Peo­ple will take advan­tage of you!

Peo­ple will see that you are reli­able and sta­ble and pre­pared – so why should they be?

You’ll be there to bail them out, right?
After all, you’re a good per­son. You’re a good friend.
You won’t let them suf­fer and sink, right?

This is where respon­si­bil­i­ty comes in. But unfor­tu­nate­ly, respon­si­bil­i­ty is a dirty word in today’s soci­ety. Maybe even an obso­lete con­cept for too many peo­ple. You see it all the time. Peo­ple just go some­where or do some­thing and expect that the invis­i­ble amor­phous “some­body” will take care of them and resolve all prob­lems.

Leader can lead but as the say­ing goes you can only lead a horse to water.