Leadership Learning #3: “ You don‘t know what you don‘t know.”

Ah, the arrogance and bliss of ignorance. It’s so darn easy to  be confident that you can solve the world’s problems when you’re not in a position to do so. It’s the same with your company. I can remember saying over my 20+ years with my company, “If I were in charge, I’d”… and then I’d expound on the most recent bone-headed decision by upper management.

And then I took over human resources where I was privy to information I’d rather not have known. Personnel decisions were much more complicated than I’d imagined. People didn’t change just because they should. The roots of culture went much deeper than I realized and were incredibly resistant to hacking. I began to realize there was a lot I didn’t know.

And then I took over operations which included all the production areas, business technology, human resources, project management, and strategy. Now my decisions affected hundreds of people; my stakeholders included our field force, our members, and our board of directors. Now I was the one making the “bone-headed” decisions. The list of things I didn’t know was growing. One thing I learned was to let help in. I started asking a lot more questions than giving answers. I began trusting others’ expertise. There are still many, many things I don’t know, but at least I know that I don’t know.

“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”

I saw the movie by that title when I was a teenager in the 60’s. One of the characters repeats the phrase as a reason for why he shot his dance partner. She had asked him to put her out of her misery. After all, “they shoot horses, don’t they? “ The title has lingered in our vernacular longer than memories of the film.

I couldn’t get the phrase out of my mind as my daughter and I prepared to have her beloved horse, Apollo, put down. We knew he’d been failing as each bout of laminitis hobbled him a little more, but when I received an early morning phone call from the barn manager telling me it was time and it would be cruel to wait, I wasn’t prepared. Our whole family was in Lake Tahoe on a business/vacation trip. I felt gratitude to my husband and my business colleagues as no one questioned my decision to cut my trip short to fly my daughter and me home to be there with Apollo at the end.

Apollo came into my daughter’s life at a time when she needed him. His deep brown eyes, steady ride, and unspoken understanding brought a new dimension to her life. His warm breath, nibbling kisses and insatiable taste for peppermints helped her see beyond her adolescent world. He taught her how to ride, but he taught her much more. Some would say the high point of their time together was their fourth place finish at the American Royal in 5-gaited Show Pleasure. But their real high point was the last half hour they spent together.

As I watched her hand-feed him hay and hold the water bucket up to his face so he wouldn’t have to move his painful front hooves, I realized the biggest lesson he’d taught her was compassion. She softly blew into his nostrils so his last breaths would hold her familiar scent. As she said good-bye for the last time, I realized the biggest gift we ever give another is the gift of ourselves, the gift of our presence. Apollo gave the gift of himself to Chelsea, and she returned the favor.

Leadership Learning #2: “Don’t listen for the facts; listen for the truth.”

My daughter worked part time through college at my organization and so had the opportunity to observe me at work. Shortly after I received a promotion a few years ago, my dad called to see how my new job was going. “All right, I guess,” my daughter told him. “All she does is talk to people all day.”

She was partially right, I actually spend more time listening to people than talking, and I’ve learned that the “facts” and the “truth” are not always synonymous. I remember being in a meeting where the validity of a report was questioned. Afterwards, the owner of the report and I were talking, and she shared her intention of developing a communication defending the validity of the report.

I asked her if she thought the report was really the problem? Could there be something else going on? She revealed that she felt there was a lack of trust between her workgroup and the workgroup that questioned the report. So addressing the “facts” of the reports was not going to solve the “truth” of mistrust. My colleague decided to go talk to the other workgroup and see if they could work on the trust issue. Once we know another’s truth, we can usually find a way forward together.

Leadership Learning #1: “Art is the lie that allows us to see the truth” (paraphrased from Picasso)

I used to make my students explain this quote and apply it to a work of literature that they’d read. A picture of a rose is not really a rose. A character in a novel is not a real person. In essence, they’re lies. So how do they allow us to see the truth. To this day, I prefer to read a good novel over a business book, and I find I learn more about leadership from The Scarlet Letter than I do from a book like Good to Great. You might find that strange, but to lead people, you must understand human nature: what motivates us, scares us, drives us, etc.

To refresh the memory of those of you who slept through your junior year, The Scarlet Letter tells the tale of a young woman, Hester Prynne, who has a baby out of wedlock in early puritan times. Because of her sin, she is forced to wear a scarlet letter A (for adultery) on her clothes at all time, and she is shunned by the others in her community. We find out in an early chapter that the father of Hester’s baby is the esteemed young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, who suffers incredible secret guilt as the book goes on and he doesn’t reveal his sin. Hester’s husband, Roger Chillingsworth, who was thought to have drowned at sea, shows up and becomes obsessed with finding and punishing the father of Hester’s baby. By the end of the book, both Dimmesdale and Chillingsworth die, victims of their demons, guilt and obsessions. Hester on the other hand lives and thrives. Her sin, acknowledged openly, has no power to destroy her. It’s an incredible study of human nature and quite relevant to today.

I have found that what derails people’s careers has much less to do with their abilities than with their demons. And we all have them.  Resentments, insecurities, guilt, revenge, unresolved relationships — these can all hold us back in our careers and in our lives.  Most of today’s business training focuses on skills and abilities, and then we wonder why we don’t get the ROI out of our training investment. Tools like effective 360s and  individual coaching can go a long way towards helping individuals become aware of their career limiters, but change only happens if the individual can recognize and is willing  to confront these demons.