Two leadership lessons from MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail
MLK's masterclass for leadership
Hey there 👋
Every MLK Day, I read “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
This year I listened to it 👇
Martin Luther King Jr. hand wrote this 7,000-word-long letter in response to eight religious leaders who called his Birmingham campaign “unwise and untimely.”
While imprisoned, MLK proved the power of words by penning quotes that still inspire us to create change.
Like this one.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
As an Atlanta native, I’m proud of how the country is still reaping the benefits of my city’s most iconic figure.
His life is a masterclass for leadership.
And “Letters from Birmingham Jail” offers lessons we could all practice more often.
Here are two leaderships lessons I took from it this time around.
Leaders embrace tension
One of the biggest obstacles keeping you from creating change is your obsession with comfort. More specifically, your comfort with being liked.
You won’t change the world if your top priority is image management.
Not everyone who creates change has a poor image, but they are polarizing. They are disliked by many.
Because change demands disagreeable people.
As we see in MLK:
“I must confess that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’”
MLK not only tolerated tension, but he welcomed it as a necessity for progress.
“I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth.”
He goes on to make the bold claim that people who are more devoted to order (aka comfort) than to justice are the “great stumbling block” to freedom.
I’ll close this thought with one of my favorite and most challenging sections from the letter:
“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Q for you: How can you better embrace tension to create change?
Leaders give people healthy ways to express their emotions
I imagine millions looked up to MLK because he validated emotions rather than disqualifying them.
He did not shame people for public demonstrations. He made sense of them by saying it’s an overflow of a “vital urge for freedom.”
“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come.”
It’s easier to validate emotions when you — as the leader — are in the trenches with your community feeling the same pains. MLK spent more time on the streets than he did on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. And on those streets, he felt the weight of strong communal emotions.
“The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations. He has to get them out. So let him march sometime; let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have sit-ins and freedom rides. If his repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous expressions of violence.”
Creativity is mentioned three times in the letter.
Two of those times are in reference to how people can express their emotions for good.
“I have not said to my people, ‘Get rid of your discontent.’ But I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action.”
MLK knew the dangers of repressed emotions, and he believed creative expression could be a key for transforming stored emotions into positive impact.
Q for you: What emotions do you tend to pent-up, and how can you express them in a helpful way?
✌️
— Luke
P.S. In other news, I made Sunday’s edition of the Morning Brew, a newsletter read by more than 4 million people 🤯
