Before it was this book, The Making Magnificence Project® was a yearning to understand. In the early spring of 2009, life as I knew it essentially went into a blender. After my long marriage dissolved, I exited the business we’d built, a greenhouse operation begun from scratch and grown to success over 15 years, and the home we’d made, located at the greenhouse. In the ensuing 13 months, I would have to put down both of my beloved older dogs in short succession of one another. Save for two dear friends, I was as close to anchorless as I’d ever been. And there was a blank canvas in front of me.
I read a lot of memoir during that time, and although the details of those other lives didn’t always exactly mirror those of my own, their stories provided a potent combination of sustenance and inspiration. It was some time later, as my new career and life began to take shape working with senior executives in the business world, that I remembered the power of story and, in particular, its companionship. Inside that companionship, a path forward often resides. Another’s story can birth our own.
So I created The Making Magnificence Project® and began interviewing people who had navigated significant upheaval. I wanted to put together a collection of narratives that explored the themes of transition and resilience, transcendence and transformation. But then something happened: The deeper I went into peoples’ stories, the broader my perspective became. I realized that while there were seismic events that thrust some people into chaos and impose new directions, other individuals forge paths under less tumultuous, but no less significant circumstances. And with no less determination. Making magnificence, it turns out, is a lifelong journey. Transformation is an ongoing process. And transition and uncertainty are attendant to any path.
Thus, in these pages, you’ll find many types of narratives. The stories, all from my interviews for The Making Magnificence Project®, feature leaders in their fields across a wide range of domains and disciplines, including an elderly widow who was leading an extraordinary life at age 91 when I interviewed her. For those who sat at the helm of organizations, as do my clients, I wanted to hear how they led into the future when the present is characterized in most industries as turbulent, chaotic, and uncertain. How did they make decisions and set direction for their organizations, particularly in the face of the unknown? What were their influences? How did they lead themselves? What did they believe leadership was? Where did it intersect with driving business outcomes? How did they build resilience in the face of grinding performance pressure?
No matter someone’s story, I used three tools that a qualitative researcher might: curiosity, questions, and listening. I asked how individuals got from one place to another, what brought them to a critical juncture. Once there, what did they do to orient themselves and chart a course? What served them best along the way? How did they face obstacles and impediments and not become derailed? Or did they? And what then? How did they take steps when the stakes were high and the outcome was long yet to be determined? I sought to understand someone’s internal process as much as their external path.
While it’s true that most of the interviewees from The Making Magnificence Project® have achieved significant success, accomplishment by itself isn’t very instructional, and while I was happy to laud the achievements of the people I interviewed, my intention was to demystify the glittery exterior of success and show as full a picture as possible. As it came into focus, that picture included continued iteration and stumbling, triumph and setback, and disappointment and doubt, no matter how far someone had ascended.
After conducting more than 25 interviews, I began exploring how these stories might relate to one another. What did a critically acclaimed, award-winning writer, the ninth dean of the United States Air Force (USAF) Academy, and the CEO of a multibillion dollar company have in common? They’d all successfully transcended significant challenge and difficult circumstances to create something greater. Yes. But was there more? As I stepped back, themes began to emerge from this seemingly disparate collection. In the end, there were eight threads that ran through the stories. Those threads weave a vibrant picture of living in aspiration, which I’ve come to understand as the essence of Magnificent Leadership®.
Each chapter features narratives that best exemplify and highlight one of the eight key factors of Magnificent Leadership®, even though many, if not most, of the factors are often found in an individual’s story. To put these factors to work for you, there is a chapter at the end of the book with opportunities for practical application to yourself, first, and then, if you’re in a leadership position, to your team and organization.
If leadership’s measure is in part defined by courage, you’ll find that it runs deep among the narratives in these pages, not only in the stories themselves, but in the generosity of the people who shared them. My gratitude is truly inestimable. And The Making Magnificence Project® continues on with more interviews. Information can be found on my website: www.sarah-levitt.com.
No matter your path’s direction or arc, my wish is that these stories keep you good company. We are all leading through change. We are all finding our way through uncertainty. And we all hope to transcend and transform circumstance into something greater, into magnificence.