Recently my friend Roopa was flying home to New York from Madrid. Somewhere over the Atlantic the plane lost one engine.

I flew hundreds of thousands of miles in my career as a consultant and have traveled extensively internationally, and have only ever experienced some mild turbulence once or twice. So I don’t know how I would have reacted to this crisis. I suspect I wouldn’t have reacted as well as Roopa did. She first comforted other passengers and then began to set her affairs in order, texting her sister instructions about wills, and the care of her children. She sent last communications to those she loved. Later, she posted a video about her reactions on LinkedIn.

This video had an outsized effect on me. I drove on a trip and made sure everyone had my route, license plate, and hotels along the way. My wife and I are pretty disciplined about this anyway. If we are traveling separately, each knows where financial details and passwords are filed. The video upped the ante.

Preparation is a key to much in life; it turns out it is a key in facing death as well.

Every June, fathers and grandfathers give thousands of graduation cards to their sons and grandsons with Rudyard Kipling’s poem If. Kipling is definitely out of fashion at the moment because he was a nineteenth century British man, that is to say, a colonialist, imperialist, racist, antisemitic, misogynist chap completely at home in the milieux of his time. He wrote some great stuff though, Jungle Book, Kim, Rikki Tikki Tavi, and Just So Stories for the kids. He wrote Captains Courageous, and The Man Who Would Be King among other novels.

And Kipling wrote poems, Gunga Din, Mandalay (which my father repeatedly sung the 1920s song version of), and If, which begins:

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,”

If is a father’s advice to his son, which is why Hallmark and the rest of the greeting card industry can’t let it go. It extolls the leadership virtue of self-mastery that Roopa so amazingly demonstrated during her real crisis at 35,000 feet.

Self-mastery is about, self-knowledge, prioritization, preparation, focus, and practice.

Self-knowledge

There is a whole industry built upon helping people understand themselves, Myers-Briggs, LIFO, DISC, Gallup Clifton Strengths, etc. These are all valuable means of self-discovery. However, perhaps the most important self-knowledge is how you react in a crisis.

On September 11, 2001, I worked in an office on Park Avenue and 28^th St. We learned that first one plane then another flew into the World Trade Center. At first, I was stunned silent. One of the firm partners told us to “call family” and that we would “shelter in place.” Like Roopa, Marc’s first act was to help others. That calmed him and us.

I looked for something I could do. We had a TV for watching videos, but no antenna, so I went looking for a wire coat hanger to MacGyver one, but by the time I found one, someone had gone across the street to Radio Shack and bought an antenna.

My first instinct was individual action; someone else brainstormed with others and came up with a quicker, better solution.

Prioritization

My mother frequently helped me when I was overwhelmed. She asked me “Alan what’s the one thing that you must do?” I use this even under the most mundane circumstances like when my to-do list goes to two or even three pages.

In a crisis, there are things to do first, “Stop the bleeding,” “Get everyone to a safe position,” or “Communicate to your loved ones.” It helps if you’ve thought about that before the crisis.

Preparation

In the 1970s, I read the books of Carlos Casteneda. Casteneda is out of fashion for different reasons than Kipling. The anthropological community maintains that the spiritual guide, a Yaqui shaman named Don Juan, who imparted this wisdom to Carlos, was fictional, likely the product of a ayahuasca hallucination. Maybe, I don’t particularly care.

In the books, Don Juan, instructs the young Casteneda, “Begin by envisioning your death. Feel life leaving you. Feel the cremation fires consuming your flesh or the worms devouring your organs. Only when you build a relationship with your Death can you live your life.”

Even if it’s fiction, it’s a useful exercise. It focuses the mind. Roopa in her video alludes to some “health issues.” I know they were serious because of her preparation she describes repurposing during the crisis.

Focus

I’m an emotional guy. Not everyone knows this about me because most times I’m pretty easy going. I don’t anger easily. My friend Ed once said, “You can push Alan from Boston to New York and he smiles at you. But when you cross the George Washington bridge into New Jersey? Watch out!”

I do sometimes get overwhelmed in a crisis. I get inside my head. What I’ve found helps me is to breathe. I have meditated daily for more than thirty years, starting by focusing on breath. I find that three to seven slow breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth, can calm me, or anyone, and bring what is important to act upon into focus.

Practice

Anyone who begins any activity will be bad at it at first. That is why practice focused on improvement is the key to sports, playing a musical instrument, or learning a language. Practice at self-mastery, practice at leading yourself, is no different. Set some time aside frequently to:

• Envision a crisis
• Observe how you might react
• Determine what is most important for you to do
  • Breathe
  • Begin by helping others
  • Take the most important actions
• Evaluate your self-mastery and
• Plan to improve
• Repeat

Learning to master your reactions, and lead yourself will qualify you to lead others, or to quote that old reprobate Rudyard Kipling:

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on, when there is nothing in you . . .

 Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it. . .”

Change Leader? Who Me? Hard Earned Wisdom for Those New to Leading Change is a collection of stories and essays about what it takes to lead organizational change. There are stories about ordinary people who share insights about leadership and change. There are concept essays from my almost forty years “helping leaders make strategic change,” including descriptions of change “levers,” tools, models, methodologies, and skills to help start or accelerate organizational change. There are some unusual examples ( e.g., a Ritz Carleton shoe shiner, Genghis Khan, and Bruce Springsteen).

Launch September 15, 2025

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