Lessons from Nelson Mandela #1

I said that I'd write about some of the lessons that I learned from Invictus/Playing the Enemy - I'll do some of this over the next few days.

It seems clear that Nelson Mandela is an amazing man. It also seems that everyone that he met succumbed to his charm and manner. We frequently hear about some people having 'presence'. From the portrayals in the book and the movie, Mandela had bucketloads of presence. He was naturally charismatic; he smiled a lot (there's a mini lesson in that for me!); and he took an interest in whoever he was talking to. He engaged them - even when they were hostile.

What follows is assumption on my part, so you can judge the validity of it. I think that Mandela was/is very conscious of the impact that he has on the people he meets. He knows that he can charm the birds from the trees, and he uses this to his advantage. I suspect that he also had to work hard to develop his natural ability into a skill that he could deploy to great effect.

In other words, he identified a key strength and carefully crafted it over many years.

So the question for us - do we know what our strengths are and are we actively honing them to maximise their impact?

Books and movies

On Friday night we went to see Invictus – the film about Nelson Mandela and the Rugby World Cup of 1995 (more of which in later posts).  I had just finished reading the book, originally published with the title “Playing the enemy” – I was determined to finish it before I saw the film.  However, this tempered my enjoyment of it.

I was constantly comparing and contrasting the two versions, which certainly took away from the overall experience.  Helen really enjoyed the film; I thought it was good.

Ironically I felt that John Carlin, the author of the book, overplayed the saintliness of Mandela and the power of his smile; for me, the film underplayed the sense of presence that Mandela apparently has.

How do you resolve the book/movie dilemma?  Does it even affect you, or am I just being a bit anal?