First Things First

/0 Comments/in , /by

Ignorance is no excuse. 

This adage usually refers to wrong action, like running a red light because you didn’t know that when you’ve crossed the line, you’ve crossed the line. But ignorance is also no excuse for a lack of action.

If you have a wise quotation to share but can’t think of a creative, memorable way to share it, that doesn’t matter. Just share the quotation. After all, any creative frame you can provide is not that important. It’s the wisdom that matters. So here it is:

Do not say: “I do not know what is right; therefore I am not to blame when I fail to do it.” For if you did all the good about which you do know, what you should do next would then become clear to you, as if you were passing through a house from one room to another. It is not helpful to know what comes later before you have done what comes first…

—Mark the Ascetic

Right action is always the goal. Don’t worry that you don’t know everything. You never will. Just do the good you know to do because humble action will clarify the next step for you.

What we do is more important than what we know.

Anger, Self-Will, and Leadership

/0 Comments/in , , /by

A neighbor across the street has a customized license plate that reads: BN2SELF. Perhaps it’s a bit uncharitable of me, but I don’t find myself particularly interested in getting to know this person, let alone follow her. 

In one of his texts on guarding the intellect, Saint Isaiah the Solitary writes, “Without anger a man cannot attain purity: he has to feel angry with all that is sown in him by the enemy…He who wishes to acquire [this] anger must uproot all self-will…”

One doesn’t need to believe in God, sin, or the devil to profit from this text.

Isaiah’s statement may come as a surprise to those who expect a monk to be all about peace and serenity. He recognizes our need for anger, with the important caveat that it is directed toward the right target: anything that enters our minds or hearts that undermines our alignment with the greater good. The purity of which Isaiah writes is purity of the mind, the state of being untroubled and undistracted by negative thoughts and desires. All of us have surely experienced the opposite and how that state of mind negatively affects our work and relationships.

But what about uprooting self-will? Some may dismiss this activity as specifically monastic or Christian and irrelevant to others. I’d argue that it’s not. We’ve all seen coaches yelling at their players for doing their own thing instead of following the plan. Self-will undermines both teamwork and community.

This topic also calls to mind Jim Collins’ famous description of a “level five” leader as one with a combination of personal humility and professional will. A great leader subordinates self-will to professional will in service of the company’s mission and vision.

Cutting our self-will paves the way both to the external, public victory of a team in the marketplace and to internal, personal victory on the battlefield of the mind because it helps us subordinate what we want to what we need, and our own good to the greater good. 

Fueling our self-will, on the contrary, turns the crosshairs of anger’s targeting scope toward other people who would thwart us, like the person who cuts us off in traffic, and makes them the enemy instead of the thoughts and desires that undermine our alignment with the greater good. 

To start shifting the crosshairs of anger’s targeting scope to a worthier target, answer this question: To what are you committed that is greater than yourself?

The Dependency Paradox

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Independence can be deadly.

Yet even with poignant stories like that of Chris McCandless, it’s easy to get caught up in a perpetual pursuit of independence—especially if you’re an American who hears this siren song every 4th of July. Since there is no wax with which to stop our ears from hearing this enticement, let’s turn to other voices for protective balance.

Stephen Covey described a journey from dependence to independence to interdependence. This tracks with the natural course of human development, which anyone who has worked with adolescents knows. Covey returns to an appreciation of dependence in the form of interdependence. While this linear progression makes sense, integrating an insight from attachment theory adds another dimension to it. 

In their book Attached, Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller describe what is known in the field of attachment research as the dependency paradox: “The more effectively dependent people are on one another, the more independent and daring they become.” This reality reaches all the way back to our experience of childhood, as the classic “strange situation” experiments show. Incorporating this understanding into Covey’s progression transforms it from a journey of abstract ideas to something as easy to understand as a baby’s first steps.

Although Attached is essentially a practical guide for the relationship with one’s “significant other,” the significance of the dependency paradox reaches far beyond that particular kind of relationship. It applies to every interpersonal context—in any work-related relationship, on any team—but not just in the obvious way that if you’re not functionally dependable, you’ll be fired. It explains why emotional intelligence’s emphasis on a relationally safe workplace is so important. If we really want our coworkers to innovate, excel, and grow, they need to have a secure relational base with us.

To experience the dependency paradox to a greater degree, here are three of the five principles of effective communication from Attached:

  1. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Being honest about your feelings, even if it makes you temporarily vulnerable, is a prerequisite for an emotionally healthier relationship.
  2. Focus on your needs. But with an important caveat: those needs must take the other’s well being into consideration, as well. If you’re not working toward a win-win scenario, this becomes merely selfish.
  3. Don’t blame. Very few things can shut down communication faster. You can minimize the chance of defensiveness and retaliation by avoiding blame and not initiating difficult conversations when you’re angry.

Independence is attractive because freedom is a basic human need, but it gets dangerous when it cuts us off from awareness of our other needs. 

Independence is like reaching the top of a mountain. Most pictures of mountain climbers feature a solitary person on a peak with a breathtaking view. But as you reach for the sky, remember that the mountaintop of independence is no place to stay. While it may be gratifying and even necessary to summit, it’s cold and harsh and supports no life. Life is below the tree line, helping others climb up.

The image of one of those trees further down the mountain is a much more helpful image for those who want to reach for the sky. The further your roots grow down into the humble ground, the higher your branches will reach toward the glorious sun.

Humble Inquiry

/0 Comments/in , /by

Charlie Brown’s teacher is everywhere. There are lots of people who claim to have answers—and who are quite eager to share them with you. The minority on the other end of the spectrum, who have far more questions and who exercise reserve in asking them, can be paradoxically powerful problem-solvers.

We assume that telling has more value than asking. In Humble Inquiry, Edgar H. Schein challenges this assumption. He writes: “We are biased towards telling instead of asking because we live in a pragmatic, problem-solving culture in which knowing things and telling others what we know is valued. We also live in a structured society in which building relationships is not as important as task accomplishment.” While these cultural forces are significant, there are still more powerful forces of human nature at work. “Having to ask is a sign of weakness or ignorance, so we avoid it as much as possible,” Schein writes. After all, who wants to project weakness or ignorance? A saber-toothed tiger in the next cubicle might see it and pounce over the partition. 

Sadly, there is a high price to pay when leaders, managers, or others in positions of authority value telling over asking. Schein reports that “in many accidents and disasters, a common finding is that lower ranking employees had information that would have prevented or lessened the consequences of the accident, but either it was not passed up to higher levels, or it was ignored, or it was overridden.” Why does this happen? Although most senior managers assert that they are receptive to input from their subordinates, those same subordinates often report that they don’t feel safe bringing troublesome news to their supervisors or that lack of response or acknowledgement from those bosses led them to conclude that their contribution wasn’t valued.

Although it is not always easy to develop or maintain, a habit of humble inquiry is a simple and effective solution to this problem. Schein writes, “Asking temporarily empowers the other person in the conversation and temporarily makes me vulnerable.” At the core of humble inquiry is a paradoxical dynamic of power: in that moment in a relationship when we let go of our own power (or the power we think we have), and empower the other person for that moment, the relationship receives power and strength that lasts beyond that moment. 

If you want to build a habit of humble inquiry, here are three practices inspired by Schein’s work—three “A”s, if that helps you remember them—that can help:

  1. Assume nothing. Telling, as opposed to asking, puts the other person down, implying that he or she does not already know what I’m about to tell him or her.
  2. Allow curiosity to lead you. Here’s a link to a reflection by one of my mentors on the importance of curiosity.
  3. Access your ignorance. This may sound a bit harsh, but it’s a reality that we don’t know everything. And as the knowledge-producing capacity and speed of technology increases, accessing our ignorance will become more and more necessary.

The result of humble inquiry are relationships with a higher level of trust and interdependency. These relationships develop when we are willing to invest respectful attention in others, which goes beyond the functionality of a task-oriented relationship to the place of a vulnerability inspired by true courage. 

And if we go beyond the intellectual virtue of humble inquiry, we arrive at the spiritual virtues of silence and listening, traits that bring to mind an altogether different sort of teacher than Charlie Brown’s:

It is reported that in the early days of his move to the desert, Evagrius visited an old desert father, perhaps Macarius of Egypt, and asked him, “Tell me some piece of advice by which I might be able to save my soul.” The reply was, “If you wish to save your soul, do not speak before you are asked a question.”

Don’t Ignore the Yellow Lights

/0 Comments/in , /by

The speedometer gets more attention than any other indicator on my car’s dashboard. I generally want to get to my destination as quickly as possible without compromising safety or getting a speeding ticket. 

Focused as the workplace is on speed and productivity, it’s not surprising that businesses have adopted the dashboard metaphor to track the metrics relevant to their functionality and to the people who create it. But how many of the yellow signals—like the “check engine” light or the indicator of low tire pressure—are on the dashboards of business?

Among those metaphorical dashboard lights are those related to emotional awareness. Because they are yellow and not red, we sometimes pay less attention to them. But to ignore them would almost certainly affect the bottom line in a negative way. Here are three reasons why we should learn to give more consideration to emotions, all from The Body Keeps the Score:

  1. Emotions are signals that something deserves our attention (p. 100). Anger, for example, tells us that we need to confront something. It could be someone else’s behavior, a bad process, or something within ourselves. Fear indicates the presence of a threat, which could be real or imaginary. In both examples, it’s clear that emotion alone doesn’t give us clear, reliable information on which to act, which leads to the next point:
  2. Emotions and reason are not opposed to each other. They are simply in some sort of tension, balance, or imbalance with each other. Although they are valuable as indicators of what deserves attention, strong emotions can also hijack thinking. Processing those feelings is a key to clearer thinking and therefore better action. As Dr. van der Kolk writes, “Our emotions assign value to experiences and thus are the foundation of reason.” He goes on to state: “Psychologists usually try to help people use insight and understanding to manage their behavior. However, neuroscience research shows that very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding; most originate in pressures from deeper regions in the brain that drive our perception and attention” (p. 64).
  3. Emotions are a source of motivation to initiate action (p. 75). Not only do they point us toward or away from an object. They help us move and do.

The “check engine” indicator on my car’s dashboard often lights up around the time the engine needs an oil change. New lubricant usually results in that light turning off. But I still take my vehicle to the mechanics to perform that simple task because I just don’t know what else they might find.

I journal every day to attend as best I can to the emotional lights on my personal dashboard. It’s certainly a helpful practice. But I know both from personal experience and learning that the effects of emotion can sometimes be so powerful or subtle that they cloud my vision or skew my perception without my awareness. Another person often gives better attention to the complex ecosystem of my thoughts and emotions than I can myself. 

Who else is checking your internal engine?

A Better Process

/0 Comments/in , /by

Some processes are better than others.

Take the process of spring cleaning for example. In time for yesterday’s vernal equinox, I read Marie Kondo’s book on tidying for some inspiration. I certainly found it, but I also couldn’t help noticing that this inspiration came wrapped in process. Kondo’s approach to tidying is energizing, motivating, and inspiring because her principles and process are so good: sort by type, discard first, et cetera.

To improve my craft as a communicator, I also recently read John McPhee’s book on writing. He too shares a great process. But an extra surprise for me in his book was a passage he offered about editors and writers:

…no two writers are the same…No one will ever write in just the way that you do, or in just the way that anyone else does. Because of this fact, there is no real competition between writers. What appears to be competition is actually nothing more than jealousy and gossip. Writing is a matter strictly of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing. An editor’s goal is to help writers make the most of the patterns that are unique about them.

fromDraft No. 4, page 82

If one substitutes “working” for “writing” in the passage above, it could describe most of us. Just as a writer follows a process in which she submits her text to examination by a cadre of grammarians, fact checkers, and guardians of the style guide, most other professionals also have processes through which others check, critique, or correct their work. 

But for how many of those professionals does the process include the kind of “editor” McPhee describes, someone to help them “make the most of the patterns that are unique about them”? In work and life, there seems to be an abundance of critics to help us make our work better, but far fewer who offer the constructive insight, challenge, and encouragement that help us make ourselves better. 

If you could benefit from a conversation with this sort of “editor”, schedule a time to talk. The only thing it will cost you (and me, for that matter) is time. But isn’t time well spent if it leads you to a better process?

Listen from Below

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Purpose can supercharge an individual or an organization. This has been well documented. Unfortunately, “purpose” can seem like a vague thing, something abstract and philosophical that we’re supposed to grasp through some sort of contemplative process. But it’s really much simpler than that:

Purpose is first and foremost something greater than any one person, something above me or you. And to understand it, we first need to adjust the way we seek it, the way we listen for it. We need to listen from below. Not from above, which is the place of authority, power, judgment, and criticism. And not even at the same level, as we do with friends with whom we’re on equal footing. 

So what does it look like to listen from below? Here are three practices that clarify this idea:

  1. Associate with the humble—These are not necessarily the poor but anyone who exhibits the groundedness and other traits of humility. But this requires a real connection or conversation with humble people. Listening to their perspective can often help us listen from below.
  2. Be curious—respectfully and appropriately, of course. One can begin with Stephen Covey’s classic direction: seek first to understand, and only then to be understood. The great virtue of humble curiosity is that it helps us be less self-centered and more focused on the other. Another way to be curious is to look for the greater story in every conversation and experience we have. Purpose always lives in a greater story, and we have a much better chance of seeing purpose if we’re looking for that greater story. This naturally leads to…
  3. Invite others into a story of greater purpose—This puts some positive pressure on us to live into that greater purpose. After all, we can’t invite someone to a place to which we’re not willing to go. It also creates a community of purpose, which reinforces listening from below.

A story from a commencement address given by Fred Rogers, highlighted in the recent documentary Won’t You be my Neighbor?, brings many of these thoughts together:

I wonder if you’ve heard what happened at the Seattle Special Olympics a few years ago? For the 100 yard dash, there were nine contestants, all of them so-called physically or mentally disabled. All nine of them assembled at the starting line; and, at the sound of the gun they took off—but one little boy stumbled and fell and hurt his knee and began to cry. The other eight children heard the boy crying. They slowed down, turned around, saw the boy and ran back to him—every one of them ran back to him. One little girl with Down’s Syndrome bent down and kissed the boy and said, “This will make it better.” The little boy got up, and he and the rest of the runners linked their arms together and joyfully walked to the finish line. They all finished the race at the same time. And when they did, everyone in the stadium stood up and clapped and whistled and cheered for a long, long time. People who were there are still telling the story with obvious delight. And you know why, because deep down we know that what matters in this life is much more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too, even if it means slowing down and changing our course now and then.

—Fred Rogers, 2001 Middlebury College commencement address

These humble children with special needs had, perhaps because of their so-called disabilities, special vision and special hearing, the kind that doesn’t only see the finish line or hear the gun that starts the race, but which also hears the cries of a boy who fell and sees him on the ground. Because they were so unselfish and aware of the other, they saw more clearly than most that there was a greater purpose and a greater story than winning the race. They followed each other into that story, crossed the finish line together, and inspired by their human greatness an entire stadium of people.

If purpose is about something greater than me or you, then in order to see it, we must place ourselves below—in how we hear and how we act. Listening from below is how humility listens. And it is this humble mindset that gives us the perspective to see, work, and live with purpose.

A Taxonomy of Conflict

/2 Comments/in , /by

Conflict is part of our experience from the earliest years. Consider sibling rivalry, a reality so ingrained in human nature that the story of Cain and Abel appears in a text nearly three thousand years old. And interpersonal conflict continues throughout our lives—at work, at home, and elsewhere.

When we grow up a little, we begin to play team sports. We learn to cooperate with others to defeat a common foe. We learn that victory is even sweeter when we can share it with our teammates. And if we are fortunate, we gain an appreciation for the strengths and contributions of others, as well as an awareness of our own strengths and weaknesses.

But some people never move beyond external conflict to the struggle waged within. Crushing the competition in the marketplace or cheering for their favorite athletic team is the furthest they go. But in comparison with external conflicts, our interior battles are just as real, and in the final analysis, even more important. Some understand this as competing with yourself.

The self-help industry knows how real this is. There are thousands of books dedicated to helping their readers overcome inner adversity, many of which are quite useful. Meditation in the pursuit of mindfulness is also a very helpful tactic. But one of the limitations of consuming self-help or even practicing meditation is that these can remain solitary activities. Even the most self-disciplined people profit from involving others in their inner game.

Two or more heads are almost always better than one, and no one needs to struggle alone. There are many—coaches, therapists, etc.—that can provide the kind of support and challenge we need to grow, thrive, and win within.

Here’s a visual summary of this taxonomy of conflict:

No number of external victories can compensate for inner defeat. True competitive greatness and the most meaningful victories always involve an interior game, not just an external one, and that inner game doesn’t need to be a solo sport. You can assemble your own band of brothers (or sisters) to challenge and support you.

I would be honored to be one of them.

Hiring for Humility

/0 Comments/in , /by

Others have already made the business case for humility quite compellingly. Jim Collins defined his “level 5” leader as someone with the powerful combination of personal humility and professional will, and Patrick Lencioni has listed humility as one of three characteristics of his “ideal team player.” Of course, believing that humility is important is one thing. Identifying it is something else.

In their excellent book The Spirituality of Imperfection, Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham dedicate a chapter to this often misunderstood and unpopular virtue. In the modern era, they write, words like “lowly” call to mind “servility and self-abasement, ‘meek’ is equated with cowardly submissiveness, and ‘mildness’ is interpreted as blandness.” That’s certainly a distorted view of this virtue.

“Humility” comes from humus, the Latin word for “soil.” It suggests being grounded. It means being in touch with reality. It is truthfulness, first and foremost with ourselves and about ourselves—with the good, the bad, and the ugly about ourselves. One of my teachers once defined humility as being “right-sized” before the other, neither too big nor too small. Another taught me that humility is not being self-conscious. Humility enables a person to be more attentive and present to another.

So how can one identify those humble people, who make ideal team players and have the potential to become level 5 leaders? There are some obvious answers, like watching out for the red flags of grandiosity or narcissism. Here are a few other characteristics to notice:

They don’t compare themselves to others. In addition to being the “thief of happiness,”  comparison is an indicator of humility’s absence. If you’re asking a humble job candidate questions that require him to compare himself with others, be prepared for him to be a bit baffled, slow, and perhaps unimpressive in his response. Because he doesn’t have a lot of practice with comparison, he’s not very good at it. We hear about the “war for talent” and the search for exceptionally good workers. Humility adds a paradoxical twist to this search: we want exceptionally competent people who are convinced that they are unexceptional.

They don’t realize they are humble. This is perhaps the central paradox of humility: if you think you have it, you don’t, and if you really have it, you’re unaware that you do. If you want the people around you to have a better chance of retaining humility, don’t make them aware that they have it.

They are aware of their own defects and shortcomings. But they also have a serenity and peace about those defects and shortcomings that doesn’t detract from confidence in their abilities, strengths, or talents. Asking a potential associate about her defects, shortcomings, or failures is one of the best ways to gauge her humility and and to learn other important aspects of her character.

There’s one more very important way to identify this quality of great team players and superb leaders. Since we tend to see the world not as it is but as we are, the best way to sharpen our vision for the humble is to become more humble ourselves.

Ways to Scale

/0 Comments/in , /by

Scaling is about multiplying something, whether it’s a product, service, revenue, effort, or something else. There are many ways to scale, but whether they entail installing the latest software or hiring new workers, they have one quality in common: functionality. After all, to multiply the ends, you must increase the functional, productive means.

Functionality is critically important in any system or organization. It’s how the work gets done. But an unfortunate result of this reality is that we sometimes treat people more like tools than like people, especially within those contexts or systems in which those people have certain functions. We can easily forget that people are more than the functions they fulfill. 

This brings us to the other way to scale: developing people as people. Personal growth and development cannot detract from how well someone does his or her work. It can only make it better. The person who becomes aware of the wrong belief he had held or the possibility she had not considered can experience a tremendous influx of energy that he or she can bring to every facet of life, including work. But investing in people as people seems less efficient than investing in their functionality. So we drill. We work on sharpening the skills. We increase professional knowledge. All these are useful, but they leave full potential untapped. 

How can we best unlock that potential? A relationship in which a person experiences both high challenge and high support is the most powerful means of his or her personal development and transformative growth. This is what a good executive coach provides. 

In itself, this (and any) relationship does not seem scalable. We can’t multiply relationship in the same way we can multiply a product or service because relationships live in “real” time and have a finite quality to them. Relationships are live and personal. There’s a difference in quality between one of the thousand Facebook “friends” we might have and the far fewer people with whom we actually spend real time. 

But perhaps a relationship does actually scale. Maybe the time we invest in the transformative growth and development of someone else can be multiplied by the greater good they consequently do for others and the greater health they consequently bring to their other relationships. You can’t measure that. You can’t control it. And you won’t even know about it unless someone else tells you. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.