Why this book
The checklist I didn’t have.
The Apache has a procedure for everything that can go wrong in flight. Engine fire. Hydraulic failure. You run it before you think, because you ran it a hundred times before you needed it.
Leadership comes with no such card. Most of what gets sold as one is a technique, and techniques work until the day they don’t. After twenty years of flying, leading and writing about grit, I went looking for what lasts.
What lasts is old. Monks in the Egyptian desert in the fourth century. Benedict’s Rule in the sixth. The Celtic church and its soul friends. A Roman emperor writing to himself at night. These practices have been tested in monasteries, on battlefields and at hospital bedsides for a very long time, and they hold up in a conference room on a Tuesday.
The five practices
Each one is small enough to start this week.
Begin with North
Orient the day to purpose, not tasks. The Polaris Principle: the North Star looks like one point of light, and is actually three.
Stay in the Cell
“Stay in your cell and it will teach you everything,” Abba Moses told a young monk in the Egyptian desert. Stillness is the ground of wise action, not a delay of it.
Work with Your Hands
Benedict’s Rule orders a day around prayer, work and community. The rhythm grounds the whole person, and the leader with it.
Find Your Council
The Celtic church called it the anam cara, the soul friend. Every leader needs one who will tell the truth, and most have none.
Release the Outcome
Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself, at night, about effort and open hands. Do the work fully. Hold what comes of it loosely.
The human factor
What carries the person.
Aviation has a name for the part of the system that gets tired, afraid, distracted and brave: the human factor. Most accidents live there. So does most of leadership.
The Grit Factor was about what a person can carry. The Forgotten Ways is about what carries the person. The two belong together, and the second is the question I get asked most in the hallway after a keynote.
For organizations
Bring the practices to your people.
The keynote is new for 2027. The workshop turns it into a week’s worth of habits before anyone leaves the room.
Keynote
The Forgotten Ways: Ancient Practices for Modern Leaders. 45–60 minutes, in person or virtual, shaped to your theme.
Half-day workshop
The five practices, worked through in small groups, with a plan each person leaves holding.
Churches & retreats
Parishes, retreats and faith-based nonprofits get the same practices with their vocabulary intact.
Book clubs
A reading guide will accompany the book. Readers of Facing the Wind hear first.
Where it comes from
I write from inside the Christian tradition.
It is where I found these practices and where I pray, and I don’t hide it. Nothing in this book asks you to share it. The practices were tested long before the boardroom existed, by people who would not recognize one, and they work in it anyway. In a corporate room I use the language of the room. In a church I use the older one. The practices don’t mind.
“The glory of God is the human being fully alive.”Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, second century, as the line is traditionally rendered
The book
Forthcoming. Hear first.
Subscribers to Facing the Wind get the publication date, the early chapters and the presale before anyone else.
Next steps
