Written by Gloria Puc
Gloria is a graduate of the Certificate in Leadership and Collaboration. Like her classmates, upon graduating from the program she was invited to become a mentor for a new leader. Mentors receive training and accompaniment to perform their role in the best way possible. In this article, Gloria describes how the process of becoming a leader and mentor was, and she does it with an inspiring metaphor.
Who knows what it actually means to be a leader?
Since childhood I have admired the beauty of the butterflies, many times I dreamed of flying like one of them, knowing other mountains with other colors, smells and flavors. On many occasions I woke up trying to understand what the dream meant.
Over the years I discovered that some butterflies can live and travel alone, but they can also live together and that is precisely what makes them special, they fly, meeting other lands, transforming themself and accompanying the transformation of others.
Butterflies vary in size, some are incredibly large and others tiny, some are slow and others faster, but nothing takes away their splendor. They have their own communication system using sounds and noises that they produce with their wings.
The butterflies do not fly a single path consistently, they are wise, they know how to wait and move to the rhythm of the wind because with their wings they embrace and sustain the magic of change and growth.
They are not afraid of death, because they know that there is an opportunity to be reborn by dancing and the opening of the path to clarity of the mind and self-transformation.
In the metamorphosis of the butterfly is the leader. The leader who experiences anger, silence, pain, but then heals among the flowers.
Heal to expand your awareness and walk with other butterflies, to see together the next phase of existence and be successful in community life.
The mentor who has expanded his consciousness shares all his wisdom without waiting for others to do the same, for he knows that awakening consciences is a multiplied miracle of transformation and resurrection.
The mentor who has transformed knows how to honor his predecessors, since he understands that being a leader implies the need for movement to get out of comfort, until his next phase.
The most powerful thing about being a mentor is accepting to be more butterfly and less caterpillar, this means spreading wings, developing skill, discovering opportunities, growing wings when you learn from others, flying through uncertainty, reflecting on things, giving time to internalize changes, generating skills and strategies to enrich yourself with the new possibilities to accompany.
Thank you my dear ALG family, for joining me in my process of metamorphosis from leader to mentor and becoming a community of butterflies that are healing and learning to accompany. The experience that led me to this process is the light that is shared and shared, multiplied with good actions to improve those fields that need to be transformed.
"And just when the caterpillar thought it was its end, it became a butterfly." - Anonymous
*Butterfly photo from National Geographic https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/monarch-butterfly/
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