Richard Stengel Recap: Nelson Mandela’s Lost Tapes

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Well, where do I begin? Our last episode was with the one and only Richard Stingell. If you haven't had a chance to listen to it, I urge you to go and check it out. Richard is the former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy in the Barack Obama administration. Prior to going to Washington, Stengel was the editor of time for seven years. He was also the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center. In the 1990s, he collaborated with Nelson Mandela on the South Africans autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. He is the author of a number of books, the most recent of which is Information Wars. He is a political analyst for msnbc. In our conversation we went deep and I've got some key takeaways for you today. But Richard spent a lot of time, personal time with Nelson Mandela and very recently he released the lost tapes. That's all of these recordings he has done with Nelson Mandela. So if you're into leadership, I'm pretty sure Nelson Mandela will be right up there with one of your icons, your role models. So some of these insights from these lost tapes are just priceless. So going to just share some of the key takeaways. There were so many, but I'll share a few. And first things first. He said that Nelson was taken aback by his age when they initially met. Nelson actually wanted someone older to help co author the amazing book. But Nelson had respect for competence. And Richard said, you know what? They didn't connect well in the beginning. It took some time for him to earn the respect from Mandela. And I think that's a really interesting one for the younger listener out there trying to prove themselves. Just know that sometimes earning respect and trust, it just does take time. And for the older person out there who maybe is in a leadership position has that privilege, think about how you can make someone comfortable to step in and learn and grow and experience. Because some people, when they're put under that kind of scrutiny, they crumble. And they don't get to step into the greatness. They pull away, they shy away out of the fear of criticism or dislike. I've certainly experienced that and I've experienced it in recent years where people of status will try and push you down or challenge you or critique you in a way that's unsubstantiated. And I've just learned that that's just people. And most people are great. Others have a lot of work to do on their ego and that's okay. But if you're that Person in a position of privilege take the time to show respect and love for. For a younger person who's competent, maybe doesn't have the age on their side, but they're competent at what they do and support them.

Richard said Mandela is a great example of does history make the man or does the man make history? Nelson became a leader because of his experience of white supremacy and racism in his beautiful country of South Africa. A lot of his traits of leadership were born in. He was genetic. He had an incredibly even temperament. He presented really well, you know, obviously stature, very tall, and a beautiful smile. One of his fellow prison mates, Walter Sisulu, said that when Mandela came to Johannesburg as a young man, you know, he met Walter and they had a talk about, you know, what Walter was trying to do with the anc, the African National Congress political party, wanted to turn it into a mass media movement. And in walked Mandela, who naturally was what a mass leader. He had that aura about him, had that leadership energy about him in the way that he listened, the way that he addressed and inspired. And Richard talked a lot about his time and how that kept coming up and how that really was one of Nelson's greatest traits. Look, Nelson grew up in a part of South Africa that wasn't really affected or touched by this issue from the white people that arrived in South Africa. And he was actually raised by a king. He then went to prison for treason. And it was a place where he purged all aspects of himself that were unnecessary. So when he left prison and came out, you know, he was a fully formed, incredible leader who was empathic, it was. Had a lot of forgiveness for people that didn't do right by him and knew one thing. He knew his purpose, and he never, ever deviated from that. Richard said, look, a wee piece of advice for you leaders out there. Don't get too high and don't get too low. Great piece of advice. And I've heard, I'm pretty sure Barack Obama said the same thing. You know, don't get mixed up in the high ecstasy of things and don't go too low. You know, experience low and experience high, but try not to let them go too high or too low. We lose ourselves, we lose a sense of ourselves, then we mourn those things. I remember as a youngster at the world championships. Go to the world championships. You'd built up all year for it. Traveled. I was living in Canada at the time, Traveled over from Canada, went to the world championships on some occasions, was fortunate enough to win the title. Others, many others not so much. But the next day there was a state of depression and they called it the post world's depression, the post world championship depression. And it was this weird feeling because we've been so high and elated and it took weeks, sometimes even months to regather thoughts and to re engage with family and just come back down to earth. So I've learned as well that you don't get too high and don't really, you know, don't go too low.

Richard said anger is a wasted emotion. How beautiful. When was the last time you were angry? I'm sure you could think about it. Just think about it for a moment and were you proud of it? Did it help you? Did it help you move things forward?

Did you learn something from it? To me, it's an emotion that we don't want to embrace too often. It's only a wasted emotion if you don't learn something from it. If you can learn and grow, to me, there's some value in that.

Look, there's so, so many takeaways. Just. I'll give you one more, but I would urge you to go and listen to the full episode with Richard Stengel. And as always, I'm going to ask you to do me a big favor. Please subscribe to the show. It helps me to reach more amazing people like you, people who are passionate about helping other humans and leading their best selves. For me to do that, I've got to show up in the charts. I've got to show up on people's phones wherever they check out their podcast. For me to show up, I need to have incredible people like you hitting subscribe. Incredible people like you taking the 30 seconds to give me a rating and a short review. It honestly helps so much. So I sincerely appreciate if you can take the time. It's just a massive help, not just for me, but for everyone that gets to listen to these amazing guests that I bring in each and every week. So last key takeaway purpose in life comes from working to help others. Isn't that so true?

My challenge to you this week is what are you doing to help others? What are you doing this week to help other people with no expectation in return? And if you're not doing something, what could you do if every single person in your community did one tiny thing to help another person? Imagine the ripple effect. And to me, that's leadership. That's selfless servant leadership. So folks, I hope you enjoyed this short recap. Please do go and listen to the feature length episode with Richard Stengel. But for now, get out there and lead your life on purpose.

Sam.