David McElroy

I’m never going to be a leader, at least not the kind the “leadership books” teach you to be. And I’m finally OK with that.

When I was still in my “empire-builder” stage of my 20s, I read every business book I could find. I studied the ideas of popular writers such as Peter Drucker, Tom Peters and W. Edwards Deming. There were many more. The books often seemed profound as I read them, but I slowly realized something.

The concepts and management tips in the books turned out to be useless in the small companies I managed. No matter how brilliant the concepts seemed — and no matter how well they worked for the people in the small companies described — my employees looked at me blankly when I tried the ideas.

This left me confused about myself. Was I just a terrible leader? Was I doing something wrong? If so, why did people in organizations naturally turn to me when work needed to be done?

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When did I put up this wall around my heart? And why has it taken me so long to notice it’s here?

I unexpectedly talked with a friend Tuesday evening. It’s someone I’ve been close to for a long time, but we haven’t been able to talk much for the last five or six years. The reasons don’t matter, but I’ve really missed talking with her. We correspond by email, but it’s not the same.

It was actually our second conversation in the last few weeks. In the first, we spent most of it talking about some things in her life. When she called back Tuesday, she said she wanted to ask what was really happening with me — since the other conversation had been all about her.

I didn’t realize this until just a few minutes ago — about 30 hours later — but I didn’t answer her questions. I found reasons to tell her a few surface-level things, but I didn’t tell her anything of importance.

It just hit me that it’s been so long since I’ve been “real” with someone that it felt threatening. I didn’t know how to tell her the truth.

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Cora often called to chat, so it wasn’t any big deal when I heard her voice on the phone in March. I was driving to work and we chatted for about five minutes. She reminded me that she wanted to take me out to dinner sometime.

As she was about to hang up, Cora said, “I love you. You’re such a good neighbor!” And I told her that I loved her, too.

Cora has been my neighbor for a bit more than five years. She’s a feisty and strong-willed black lady in her 70s who was a high school English teacher before she retired.

She’s always pestered me to find out about any women in my life. When she’s seen a woman at my house, she always wanted to know whether this is “the one,” and she was always disappointed when I told her otherwise. As she was about to leave my porch one time in May, she looked at me very seriously.

“I’m going to find a good-looking white girl for you,” she said. “I know a lot of rich and powerful white people, you know.”

She’s always seemed determined to find “a white girl” for me. But I found out tonight that this is very unlikely to ever happen. In fact, it’s unlikely I‘ll ever talk to Cora again.

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