You are Your Only Tool

When a leader raises awareness of the need for change, the natural result is for stakeholders to resist that change and the loss that comes with it. When weeks go by and the secret hopes that our lives will “return to normal” don’t materialize, grumbling can turn into outright resistance.

“That hammer is heavy,” the instructor said. For my wife, Beth, and me, taking a beginning blacksmithing class, this was the moment when we started doing the actual work we had come to do—to transform a piece of steel into a tool that could be of good use.

Standing in front of the anvil with a…