The author and professor Ken Bain once wrote, “Teaching is one of the human endeavors that rarely benefits from its past... For the most part, [great teachers’] insights die with them, and subsequent generations must discover anew the wisdom that drove their practices.”
I have come to believe that this observation may apply even more to mission-driven leaders. When I was winding down my 18-year run leading Grameen Foundation, which I established in 1997 after a decade of mentorship under the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, I embarked on a process of documenting the most important things that I had learned along the way. It was an alternatively soulful, disturbing, enjoyable, cleansing, and arduous process. The 800 pages I churned out were ultimately chiseled into 300 pages and released in 2019 as Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind: Leadership Lessons from Three Decades of Social Entrepreneurship.
Unlike most non-profit leadership memoirs, I focused on insights rather than on my accomplishments. As one reviewer noted, it was more mea culpa than self-congratulation. Each story contained ideas, techniques, and practices that I came to value, use, and depend on. In all cases, I wished I had learned them earlier. The last third of the book focused on self-care for mission-driven leaders. The messages seemed to resonate with many readers and reviewers, including this one.
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