An arsenal of grit, stamina, and determination

Leaders have a nonstop flow of fortitude.  ~Bill Hybels

Last week the headline of Crain's Chicago Business got my attention: "A Business of Life & Death: A South Side institution since 1933, Leak & Sons Funeral Home handles roughly a quarter of Chicago’s victims of gun violence."  I watched the video link and read the cover story several times.  Last year Leak & Sons served 107 of Chicago's 511 homicide victims.  That's just slightly more than two per week. 

Spencer Leak Sr. is a leader with a nonstop flow of fortitude.  Quoting from Crain's, "'No mother should experience the death of a son on the streets of Chicago without having the ability to celebrate his life,' Mr. Leak says.  He adds, however, that there are times when his charity causes his accountants and his sons to shake their heads in frustration.  It's fortunate that at 76 years old, Mr. Leak has the stamina to live up to his conviction.  Always dressed in a three-piece suit, he routinely works up to 14 hours a day, seven days a week."

This isn't intended to suggest that we should all start working 14-hour days, seven days a week.  But it is intended to cause us all to pause and ask ourselves if we have a nonstop flow of fortitude, as does Mr. Leak. 

Since his father started the business in 1933, their mantra has been to "turn away no one." Mr. Leak says you have to "look past the profit."  But the Rev. Leak's fortitude goes well beyond his business.  In 1965 he marched alongside Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama.  In the 70s he founded a church in Englewood.  Last year, out of 80 funerals at the church, 65 were for victims of homicide—more funerals than christenings, baptisms, and weddings combined.

All this talk of homicides and death can be bit on the depressing side of the equation.  But if we look at the other side of that same equation we see a leader among leaders, and that’s what I’m trying to emphasize.  His fortitude to walk alongside families grieving the senseless death of homicide, day in and day out, year after year and decade after decade is almost unimaginable.  I would be hard-pressed to find a more suitable example of someone with fortitude.

Synonyms of fortitude include strength, courage, resilience, guts, grit, stamina, and determination.  As a leader, is there something around which you can muster some fortitude? 

Now and then I become concerned that our culture isn't encouraging leaders with fortitude.  When I think of leaders similar to Mr. Leak, they are individuals who have committed themselves to something over the long haul.  They aren't frequent job jumpers or career changers.  It's certainly possible to have a great deal of fortitude and change jobs or careers and keep moving toward a passion or goal.  But I think that's far more rare than the person who truly commits themselves to something and with an arsenal of grit, stamina, and determination they see it through. 

In the coming years, may we all have the opportunity to encounter a few more Mr. Leaks along the way and experience their nonstop flow of fortitude.