Leadership Reflections for the Week of July 14th
Wisdom
Is wisdom dead in our society? Try this experiment. Watch the nightly news for a week or two focusing on stories dealing with major challenges or grand opportunities. Pay attention to the dialogue and try to find a single mention of the word wisdom as an essential prerequisite to success. Likely you’ll detect barely a whiff of the word wisdom. Why is that so? Because we’ve become accustomed to easy answers, afraid of tough questions, conditioned to instant gratification, and therefore, we’ve developed an inability to live in tension and temporary suffering long enough to break through to wisdom. We readily embrace information and intelligence because we see these as factual and empirical; but these are not the true realms of leadership wisdom. Wisdom is the next level of knowing—which comes from intuition, a kind of “wisdom seeing,” where leaders break through the limits of a single field of knowing into a unified field of knowing. So, how do we reawaken an expectation for wisdom in our leaders?
A Vital Balance
There’s much written about the need for leaders to achieve “work-life balance.” I think this goal is misdirected. Why? Because I don’t think there really is such a thing. We are given time, and time is unchangeable. The issue, therefore, is what we do with ourselves, and our energy, in time. In other words: we have to make hard choices. Thinking of work and life as two detachable elements is flawed and leads us into a false paradigm in which we wrongly believe we can carve out equal amounts of time for all the many things we’d like to do. This does not lead to balance, but to a steady dissipation of energy and mental fatigue. Leaders must be brutally honest about priorities and make discerning choices about the few things that really matter. I call this Vital Balance. Find those things in life, which when done mindfully and consistently, bring you vitality and generative energy. I do not believe we become tired from too much mindful exertion, but rather, from too much mindless work. Leaders must make choices and invest energy in those few things producing vitality and renewal.
Pot Luck Progress
A consistent challenge I encounter with companies dealing with progress is simply the need to begin. People can feel the need to change but despite this feeling, remain paralyzed. Consider this paradox: Planned change is more frightening than unplanned changed. I believe the biggest cause of progress paralysis is one of appetite and portion control. When companies deal with change their tendency is to envision change in its full, complex, and enormous manifestation—like a holiday meal—in which only those few senior leaders at the very top partake. Everyone else in the organization feels they have no seat at the table and no role to play. Result? Paralysis! A better approach, one that will break the paralysis and create action is to treat change as a pot luck affair. Everyone, regardless of role or experience, has a seat at the table and has an expectation to contribute—to bring their best dish. Remember this: Big problems are solved most effectively by many people doing many small things well. Pot luck progress leads to powerful first steps. There’s a magic in momentum called unity of purpose.
Be The Change
My favorite Gandhi quote is, “Be the change you want to see.” Unfortunately, often in our lives and work, when confronted with external shortcomings, it’s easy to bemoan the problems and look for someone “out there” to create the change. Result? Lots of finger pointing, blaming, and angst. Venting may feel good, but the reality is, positive change does not happen this way nor does it necessarily start at the top. More likely, positive change happens at the edges and from the bottom. Or said simply: Individuals change themselves, then they change their worlds. Regardless of our position or our level of authority, we must be accountable for ourselves; namely–our leadership, our behavior, and our attitude. If you want others to be better leaders, then commit to being a better leader yourself. If you want a better culture, then create a healthy climate in your own space. If you want more positive energy “out there,” then create more of the same “in here.” The best thing we can ever do to keep our groups growing and improving, is to grow and improve ourselves. Be the change you want to see.
Leading in Front of a Mirror
I equate leadership to a master craft because leadership is a way of life requiring pursuit of self mastery. As an example of a master craftsman, consider a master dancer, who hones her craft by the 90-10 rule: They spend 90% of their time practicing only to perform 10% of the time. Think of that–a master dancer spends most of their development dancing in front of a mirror. And the mirror does not lie; it tells the dancer exactly where strengths and weaknesses reside, where blind spots lurk, and where perfection still awaits. The mirror reflects back to the dancer, honestly and candidly, her affect. Now, what if we leaders had to perform in front of a mirror, reflecting back to us in real-time candor how we were influencing other people? Actually, we do have such mirrors. Our leadership is mirrored in those we lead. Our followers’ growth and development mirrors back to us the quality of our character and the virtue of our leadership. How they grow, or don’t grow, is a direct reflection on us. Therefore, reflect on this question: Is the person you see in the mirror the same person others see when they look at you?
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