Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of June 23rd
New Eyes
Ever feel stuck in a kind of inertia where things aren’t clicking and your group can’t quite break through the quagmire, gain unity of purpose, and generate positive momentum? We’ve all been in this malaise at some point. When I reflect on my personal experiences, I find the answer to breaking out and through usually lies in finding new eyes. Here’s what I mean. When we are stuck, what we are actually experiencing is the classic conundrum of being between a rock and a hard place; the rock being things we simply can’t change and the hard place being things with which we can’t do much good. But it is precisely when we are fully between the rock and hard place where that stuck situation actually does something to us. We don’t change it, it changes us. We are given a chance to see anew…a chance to gain a new set of eyes. When we are uncomfortable, this is the shattering that often does change us, if we let the lessons teach us. The environment doesn’t change; we do. And when we gain a new set of eyes, we re-engage the situation with new leadership energy and the vitality of a heroic leader.
Retreating Forward
Paradoxically, I often have to step backward—actually retreat–to find the clarity needed to move forward into positive engagement. Many communities and groups embrace retreats as healthy forms of renewal and rejuvenation. On a personal level, I try to discipline myself to create space and time each week to completely detach from my normal routine and customary pace, and when I do this, I find this purposeful solitude, this break from my over-stimulated life, creates a still learning space in which deeper thoughts emerge. Leadership is, among other things, deep sensing, deep knowing, and true discerning. I don’t think we ever come to any kind of knowing, or any real wisdom, in the midst of frenzy, chaos, or hyper-stimulation. This is why it is so important for leaders to find time to retreat from the rat race, to “make time for break time.” We must find places and spaces that present quiet time, allowing us to see and hear new questions, and equally, new answers. Sometimes as leaders, we must retreat to move forward.
Giving Away Your Gold
When I reflect on truly significant leaders, one of their hallmarks is their willingness to share their knowledge, gifts, and wisdom. They freely give away their gold. This is what distinguishes significant leaders from merely successful ones. A leader can achieve great capability and capacity, to become successful in the external trappings of the public eye, but if that leader does not share his boon, then he will never become truly significant. A willingness to share one’s gold, to give away one’s knowledge and wisdom, is one of the hardest thresholds for leaders to cross. Why? Because society worships success and the external earmarks of accomplishment, such as rank, position, salary, perks, etc. And when leaders fall pray to the siren’s call of personal success they will ultimately crash against the corrosive shores of self interest and self aggrandizement. Conversely, when leaders give away their gold they elevate themselves into the realm of significance, and doing so, they ensure the enduring excellence of their organizations long after they have departed. Give away your gold!
Images
When I think about how I honestly learn the deeper truths about leadership, I realize most of what I ultimately come to understand, and then fully internalize, is done through images and experiences rather than ideas and concepts. Why is that so? I believe images more fully teach us, and convert us, because images touch a deeper part of our soul—our unconscious—which is the place real transformation and conversion occur. For example, though I have been presented numerous leadership theories and concepts throughout my life, nothing has more fully transformed me as a leader as images of leadership in action, such as Lincoln at Gettysburg, King on the Washington Mall, Churchill’s resolve in the darkest hours of WWII, or Malala Yousafzai’s incredible courage in the face of near death in Pakistan. I have stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial many times, in total silence, and absorbed more about heroic leadership than I ever have from reading an essay on leadership concepts. It seems to me that images, pictures, and stories deeply touch our unconscious and call forth our better, more heroic selves.
Larger-Than-Life Leaders
When I contemplate history’s most significant and enduring leaders—those whose personal example transcends time and place—a good description of them is larger-than-life leaders. They weren’t merely successful, they were significant. But here’s the most instructive lesson for us to learn from these historical examples: Each person actually started out, or hit a key threshold moment at some point in their life, where they were actually smaller-than-life leaders. They were less than they could be. At some key point they hit a road block and fell into an psychological abyss. They had reached a crucial breakdown, a point of no return, with no apparent way forward. But instead of lying down, they broke through, and then rose up. Instead of avoiding the crucible, they moved through it. Instead of asking another person to shoulder the burden, they chose to shoulder it themselves. And when they came out on the other side of this life-defining crucible, they were different, and the difference was forged from the inside, out. Enduring the crucible is what made them larger than life. There’s a lesson there for us.
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