960 Years of Leadership… Thrown Across a Room

You never know what will resonate.
What sparks connection.
What shifts someone’s leadership in a single moment.

What lands for one person may miss another entirely. And in that, there is risk. We can walk past insights that might change how we lead simply because they were not ours in that moment.

That is why sharing matters.

Wisdom does not compound when it is held. It grows when it is passed.

I was recently invited to speak to about eighty directors and leaders within a medical organization. We explored a familiar challenge. How to inspire accountability and navigate resistance.

Before we began, I acknowledged something often overlooked.
The wisdom in the room.

Collectively, there were over 960 years of experience sitting in those chairs. Years of trial and error. Breakthroughs and failures. Decisions that worked and ones that didn’t.

That is where wisdom comes from.
Experience. Intentionality. Resilience.
The willingness to reflect, adjust, and move forward without judgment.

And yet, so much of that wisdom goes unspoken.

At the end, I used an exercise I learned from Chad Littlefield. I invited everyone to capture two insights. Wisdom that challenged them, shifted them, or stayed with them. They wrote them down, crumpled the paper, stood up, made eye contact across the room and on the count of three… threw them!

The room filled with laughter and energy as paper flew and perspectives collided.

They each collected two “snowballs.”
Someone else’s anonymous insight.

A piece of wisdom they did not walk in with.

They left with more than notes.
They left with a perspective that might change how they lead.

That is the point.

Leadership is not built in isolation.
It is shaped in the exchange.

So here is the question.
What wisdom are you holding onto that someone else needs?

How can you encourage collective growth and insight?