Twenty-five years ago today, former Czech President, poet, playwright, and political prisoner Václav Havel published his book “Letters to Olga.”
Havel wrote the letters to his wife while imprisoned from 1979 to 1983 for subversion against the dictatorship in Czechoslovakia.
They are a fascinating account of the resilience and determination he found while surviving the brutal conditions of a Soviet-era prison.
What makes the letters even more remarkable is the harsh restrictions the prison warden placed on letters written by inmates to outsiders.
Prison rules required letters to be perfectly legible with nothing crossed out, only four pages long, and without humor, quotations, underlining, or foreign expressions.
If they violated those rules or contained too many thoughts, they would be confiscated and destroyed.
Havel chose not to become a victim, bitter, or succumb to depression.
Instead, he viewed his conditions and letter-writing constraints as an opportunity to be even more creative and to clarify his values and thinking.
He credited his time in prison for giving him the insight to see the world more clearly and to think big about what was possible politically for Czechoslovakia.
Havel came to believe every person has a role in shaping their reality, and he encouraged individuals to contribute positively to whatever situation they found themselves in.
In the face of extreme adversity, Havel proved it was possible to find opportunity and value in an otherwise horrible situation.
Leaders of all stripes sometimes find themselves in a living hell. One unlike actual prison but sharing many of its qualities.
Leaders above who control decisions, policies, sanctions, and work processes can sometimes create a toxic work environment that has a tremendously negative influence on the leaders and team members below them.
Havel doesn’t remind us just to tough it out and endure a negative situation until matters improve or leaders change. Instead, he implores us to create a slice of heaven where it is least likely to exist.
Irrespective of the larger context, leaders are in charge of the morale and engagement on their team and in their small part of any organization.
Their job is to think big about what is possible and how to achieve it, if only for their small slice of the world.
If Václav Havel could do so inside the walls of a prison, so can any leader without such draconian constraints.
No matter how poisonous the workplace is, team leaders carry the antidote for their team with their decisions, rewards, behaviors, and messages.
As famed motivational speaker Zig Ziglar liked to say, “Don’t let negative and toxic people rent space in your head. Raise the rent and kick them out.”
