Blair Singer delivers a motivational talk arguing that leadership is not about reaching a summit or goal but about who you become during the journey. He illustrates this through a recent example of a 22-year-old woman fleeing Kyiv to Poland and the rapid, multi-country response from individuals and networks who provided shelter, logistics, visas, and integration help. Singer extracts four leadership criteria from the responses: (1) step up instead of self-focus, (2) step up with solutions/actions, (3) high-tone/hopeful energy, and (4) willingness to sacrifice for the right reasons. He calls viewers to embody these traits and highlights his networks (BSTA, Mountain Leadership Network) and specific helpers (Dorota, Lucas, Lukas, Beata, Bartek, Yana).
Foreign. It's not about the summit. That's right. It's not about the summit. And if you're on a journey to reach the apex of your business, of your dreams, I'm going to give you a little clue. It's not about the summit. So if you really want to understand this, stay tuned because there are five leaders and I'm going to show you five different leaders who absolutely demonstrate this. Okay? So again, as normal, if you're interested in how we do that, formally go to blairsinger.com plan and we'll help you out with this. But this is critical in these crazy times. It's critical and it's not about the summit. Very recently, very recently I was notified actually a couple days ago of a young 22 year old girl trapped in Kiev, Ukraine. Trapped in Kiev, Ukraine. No family around. Bombard Russians bombarding her city. She slept in a bathtub sobbing every night, not knowing whether she was going to wake up in the morning. And she finally threw on a backpack and made her way out of Ukraine to Poland, spent 60 hours at the border and finally got into Poland and her family here in the United States trying desperately to get her visa to come back. And she requested some help. This person is a friend of a friend here, friend of, of ours here. And so really reached out to our network, to the BSTA network, to the Mountain Leadership Network. The people that I've worked with over the years and almost instantaneously got bombarded with offers to support and to help. These are leaders. See, it's not about, it's not about getting your, getting your business to a certain level. We can get you there. That's not it. The, the point. Why did I write the book Summit Leadership? Why am I why Is originally it was to teach people that the lessons are the same as lessons in business. Not even about that. It's about who you become on that climb, the top of that mountain. Who you become in your day to day work striving for whatever it is. It's the ripple effect of who you become is the reason I wrote the book. Look, we are all physical, mental, emotional, spiritual beings. And if you're going to reach any goal, any apex in any area of your life, it's going to require all four cylinders firing together. And so when you, and you never know when something's going to show up, you never know you're going to get a knock on the door, a phone call, a text message. The question is, how do you respond? Do you respond well? I got to be politically Correct. It's not my problem. It's a whirl away. Or do you step up instantaneously as some of these people did? And there's five of them, I'm going to shout out a little bit. I'm not going to give their full names because I don't know what happens on social media and I don't want them to get hurt in the process. But I'll just kind of give you their initials or their first names. And, and, and these people stepped up in such an amazing way. We're not out of it. We're not out of it yet. But hopefully she'll get her visa here soon and she'll be home and she'll be home with her family. Bucky Fuller once said that human beings emerge through emergency. In other words, we seem to wait until last minute to step up. The question is, when the call comes, do you step up? So what have we talked about so far? We've talked about the fact that the summit, it's not about the summit. It's who you become on the way to the summit. What kind of a leader, mountain leader, business leader, family leader. What kind of a leader do you become? And that's not determined by the goal at the end. It's determined by what you do along the way. The ripple effect, or as Dr. Fuller would call it, the processional effect, which is the real event. Some of these people, when I called, when I sent out the text, I hadn't talked to in three, four, five years, but they responded immediately. Why? Not because of me, because of who they are. Many of these people, the people that, that are actually helping, are from Poland. Over 2 million refugees. I'm not sure if that number is correct. Refugees have poured into their country and the Polish people have come together. They've all emerged as leaders. So what are their criteria? The criteria? Number one. There are, there are four criteria. Number one, do you step up or are you worried about yourself or. I got enough things to worry about. That's number one. Do you step up? Number two, do you step up with a solution? Do you slip up with an action or do you step up and hope for something better to happen? Now, now it's good to step up and support, but leaders take action. Leaders have a plan. Leaders have something that may or may not work, but they step up with a plan. Number three, in every case, high toned individuals. Now, what do I mean by high tone energy, high optimistic leaders? Listen. Listen. Leaders deliver hope. Hope. Hope for your employees, hope for your staff, hope for your Community, Hope for your kids, hope for the, for survival. This young lady is 22 year old who had never seen conflict, had never seen war, had never seen anything and had this beautiful optimistic view of life was shattered overnight as she laid in her bathtub with the thundering artillery in the background wondering whether she was ever going to be able to wake up the next day. Does it, does a person care enough to do something? I hope so. And number four, number four criteria. A great leader, a great summit leader or apex leader makes the decision regardless of the sacrifice. If it's for the right thing, for the right reasons, in the right situation, they make sacrifice. One of the women, Dorota, lives easily six hours away from where our, for our young friend is. And she volunteered numerous times. I will get in my car, I will drive there, I'll pick her up, I'll bring her to my home. I will take care of her, will take care of her. Seven out, six. Would you drive six or seven hours to a total stranger and this person's a stranger of, of a friend of a friend of mine. But it was the right thing. It's the right thing to do. And we're living in a time where leaders have to do the right things. Not the narratives, opinions, not all the other crap that goes on with all the things that are happening. What's the right freaking thing to do for a 22 year old young woman by herself anywhere in the world? Anywhere in the world. We even had calls from Malaysia willing to support. Calls from Czech Republic willing to support. That's leadership. That's leadership. Another fellow, another person set up. A fellow by name of Lucas. Lucas who lived, who lives in a town who will use his connections to help with the embassy to interact with, help integrate her into a local Ukrainian community. Another Lucas in Warsaw who's created a foundation to, to, to, to integrate these refugees and, and not looking for any publicity for himself. Somebody like Beata, who also lives four, four hours away, willing to provide housing, take a couple, her and another fellow by the name of Bartek willing to take their rental units that he used for passive income and be able to donate to be able to support this young woman to get her to her family again. These are amazing people, you guys. They set us an example. As, as, as Bucky Fuller always said, there's, there's two sides to a coin. Actually, Robert says there's three sides of a coin. There's. Plus there's heads, tails and the edge. You got to be able to see the edge for every curse. There's a blessing. And what's happening right now is the blessing is that leaders are emerging. And are you one of them? I'm not asking you to donate to Ukraine or anything like that, but look around you. There's no shortage of need anywhere where that anybody watching this is right now. I just have you get off your duff for a little while. It took a phone call to me. I feel ashamed. I feel that I should have stepped up sooner, and I will, and I'm going to, because that's what leaders do. It's not about getting to your summit. I mean, and again, those of you that want to do that, you go to blairsinger.com like this video. If you like this video, some comments, share them with me. You know, but if you really want to do this quickly, you want to talk about it, go. Go to that website and we'll talk about it. But my point here to all of you before I sign off on this thing, is this. We are in extraordinary times. The reason I wrote the book, I thought it was to help people build scalable businesses using the lessons of Kilimanjaro, which it does. But now, in these passing days, I realize that it's not about the book. It's not about the scalable business, which it is partly. But what it's about is who you will become and who the world needs right now to become, who the world needs you to become. We are one human race. We live on one spaceship, planet Earth. That's it. That's the only one we got. And what the Polish people have demonstrated and what many people have demonstrated. What I'm so proud of, our BSTA Blair Singer training team and our mountain leadership teams around the world who stepped up, without question, stepped up. I am so proud. I am so honored. I am so grateful to be surrounded by such amazing people. And my question to you is, who's surrounding you? And give them a chance to step up, be the inspiration to get them to step up. We do that, we go to a whole new era of humanity. If we don't, then we don't. Okay, you guys, I'm signing off for now. Thank you. Thank you. Dorada, Lukas, Lukas Bata Btech and everybody else, Yana and Czech Republic and PoW in Malaysia for stepping up and for making something happen. Making something happen. And that's what the world needs. Be your amazing self.
