A Personal Laboratory at the “University of Life”

I had this personal laboratory at the University of Life that taught me that, when you’re bold, when you stand up for values and principles about our common and shared humanity, our Ubuntu… I met people across every part of the political divide. — Anne Pratt

Imagine growing up in an anti-apartheid activist family in South Africa –

• where your family was followed by state police for daring to befriend people across the color lines and
• where neighbors tattled to the police about your mother for inviting into her home black women who had missed their bus home.  

Wow.  That’s pretty scary.  It would be enough to make me hide and not want to challenge the apartheid system. 

While you or I might feel afraid, that’s not how my podcast guest Anne Pratt reacted.  She embraced this oppressive environment and personal disempowerment as her own “transformation laboratory,” where she learned that “those self-created false beliefs about what divides us is a myth.”

After years of praying for Mandela’s release and dreaming that one day she would meet him – she met this visionary leader.  Mandela’s capacity to forgive people – and his profound realization that “in order to be truly free, he needed to leave his bitterness and hatred behind” – deeply moved Anne.   

Mandela’s model of forgiveness and reconciliation led her to a key leadership development theme: the need to recognize our own resentments, and to ask ourselves, “What parts of my interactions do I need to own?”  It is that inner work that became the basis for the leadership work that Anne is now involved in.

Having learned at the foot of a master of reconciliation, Anne believes that in order to achieve societal transformation:   

“If we want people to wake up, we have to take them out of their comfort zones and expose them to opposing and conflicting people, ideas, and environments.”

That’s a lesson for the ages.

Ready for a spark of inspiration? Tune in to this short, thought-provoking conversation.

Listen to the complete interview below