(We are grateful to writer, teacher, speaker, and consultant Margaret J. Wheatley for allowing us to lightly edit and reprint her essay, which remains powerful after 20 years.)

Several years ago, I read of a Buddhist teacher who offered his encouragement to a group that was filled with despair over the state of the world. His advice was simple, profound and placed things in historical context: “It’s just our turn to help the world.”

What I love about this statement is that it reminds us of other times and other people who stepped forward to help create the changes that were necessary. Some succeeded, some did not. But as we face our own time, we need to remember that we stand on very firm and solid shoulders.

In my own work with local communities around the planet, I’ve learned to define leadership quite differently than the norm. A leader is anyone willing to help, anyone who sees something that needs to change and takes the first steps to influence that situation. It might be a parent who intervenes in her child’s school; or a group in a rural village in Africa who decides to put in a well for fresh water; or a worker who refuses to allow mistreatment of others in his workplace; or an individual who rallies his or her neighbors to stop local polluters.  

Everywhere in the world, no matter the economic or social circumstances, I see people stepping forward to make a small difference. They are impelled to act in spite of themselves; they often describe their actions as “I couldn’t not do it.” Others see what they do and label them as courageous, but those who step forward never feel courageous. They just did what felt like the right thing to do.

Because a leader is anyone willing to help, we can celebrate the fact that the world has an abundance of leaders. Some people ask,“where have all the good leaders gone?” But when we worry that there’s a deficit of leaders, we’re just looking in the wrong place. We need to look locally.

Every great change initiative in the world begins with the actions of just a few people. Even those that win the Nobel Peace Prize. I’ve looked at the history of several of these prize-winning efforts, and one phrase always pops up as the founders describe how they began. Their laudable efforts began not with plans and official permission, but when “some friends and I started talking.”  

I recently listened to Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in planting over 30 million trees in Kenya and east Africa. Her first efforts were with a few local women, and they planted seven trees, five of which died. But they learned from that experience, spread the learning to their villages, then to other networks, and ten years later, 30 million trees flourish.  Villages now have clean water and local firewood, creating improved health and community vitality. And it all began “when some friends and I started talking.”

This is how the world changes. Individuals have an idea, or experience a tragedy, or want to resolve an injustice, and they step forward to help.   Instead of being overwhelmed and withdrawing, as many of us do these days, here are people who decided to act locally. They didn’t know at the beginning where it would end up.

They didn’t spend a great deal of time planning and getting official support.They began, they learned from their mistakes, they kept going. They followed the energy of yes rather than accepting defeat. This is how the world always changes.  And this is how we must act now to respond to the frightening issues of these times, to reverse our direction, to restore hope to the future.   — Margaret J. Wheatley, 2006

You’ll find Wheatley’s current writing and thinking on her website.

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