Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of February 23rd
Behind and Ahead
When reflecting on leadership development I realize we are all in a constant state of moving back-and-forth between behind and ahead. Early in life we are admittedly behind; lacking experience, short on wisdom, deficient in self mastery. As we progress, and if we transform ourselves, we begin to transition to being ahead, not in terms of winning or losing, but in terms of self mastery. We need to gain self-control, self-regulation, self-and discipline to move ahead of our former limitations. Being behind is neither bad nor unnatural; it is simply a reality we all face. Moreover, this interplay between behind and ahead plays out daily in all organizations and teams. Think of it: Most groups are made up of older people whose lives are now mostly behind them, coupled with younger people whose lives are mostly ahead of them. Some see this generational divide as a form of tension; I prefer to see it as a healthy opportunity for those further ahead on the journey to aide the ascent of those slightly behind. Behind and ahead are constants for us all.
The Call to Lead
When I was a young boy, the Catholic Mass was still conducted in Latin. Can’t say I recall much of it, but one word resonating with me even today is vocare, which means “to call.” At the heart of any great pursuit must be a calling, and so it is true with heroic leadership: One must be open to the call to lead. Our modern word vocation is derived from the Latin vocare; this is why we think of a vocation as a calling. Leadership, understood correctly, is a vocation. In our modern world we often mistakenly think of leadership as a tactic or function, which explains the modern mania of trying to reduce leadership to simplistic menus and lists. Ugh! Leadership, properly seen as a life-long journey and as a component of one’s character, is a calling to excellence. The question is, are we open to this calling? If we are open to the call to lead, then I believe we are set on a course distinguished by these two timeless truths: (1) You will do what you most need to do, and (2) you will do what the world most needs done.
Saying Yes to Leading
Yes, there is something you have to do;
Yes, there is something you have to do;
Yes, there is something you have to do;
Yes, there is something you have to do;
Yes, there is something you have to do;
Yes, there is something you have to do.
Time
Time is something we all need to mature and grow as leaders. But the reality is, we are all given the same amount of time in a day to use. So, what distinguishes great leadership with respect to time? How we think of it! In Greek, the word chronos means time but in a purely quantitative sense; seconds, minutes, hours, days, etc. Chronological time. For many leaders, chronos is the only way they think of time, and hence, they focus on time management. Good, but not great. The Greeks, in their classic wisdom, knew there was another and more important aspect of time, which they called Kairos. Kairos meant time but in a qualitative sense. Kairos describes what one could do in time, an aspect not able to be measured by a watch. To be great leaders, we must shift our focus from chronos to kairos; we must stop focusing on what we do with time and start focusing on what we do in time. Or said another way: It is time to think differently about time.
Formulistic Leadership
When reading leadership articles posted on line, I see many resorting to formulistic leadership. You’ve probably seen the like, where leadership is presented like an algebra problem: x + y = z. If you know the value of x you can solve some of the problem. If you know the value of two components, bingo! You can solve the entire problem. The deficiency with formulistic leadership is threefold: One, it views leadership as a tactic instead of an art; two, it wrongly reduces leadership to a set of quantifiable techniques capable of fitting into neat formulas; and three, it fails to address whether the person trying to solve the problem actually understands the components in a meaningful way. Leadership, as a master craft, defies a formulistic solution. What’s a better approach? Leaders must take the x and y and flesh them out in terms of human experience, human dynamics, and mostly—their own personal experience. We can’t simply repeat formulas as if in a playbook. Only when the x and y of leadership become foundational components of our character and our self mastery will true leadership emerge.
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