Conductor.
The orchestra conductor isn’t the best musician in the orchestra.
The choir conductor isn’t the best singer in the choir.
Each is the person every musician and chorister looks to for direction and follows so each can play and sing to their potential.
The only real power of a manager is the authority to call a meeting.
What happens after that is out of their control.
The Leader Must Be a Realist.
The more unsure a team or organisation is about its competence, the higher the level of hype and cheer-leading about its virtues. The boss talks them up, whistling past the graveyard of failure and incompetence.
That’s why the first job of a leader is to define reality.
The leader must be a realist.
The leader must seek out and soberly look at the evidence both before them, and presented by others who the leader must reassure their frankness will be respected.
The leader will discover for themselves what the silent majority already knows.
The first gift the leader gives her followers is sharing the unvarnished, and often painful reality with them.
This is a practical sign of her trust and reliance on them. Many will not be worthy of one or both. But that’s why leaders are brave. She only needs a few to hear her call and respond to it.
The leader can then authentically applaud the virtues of truth and trust she has witnessed in the team or organisation, rather than manufacture fake ‘positives’.
Leader or Manager?
Here’s a test to identify whether you are a manager or a leader.
Highly value predictability?
Manager.
The Foundation of Children’s Education.
Chatting to my 11 year old.
‘Thank you for joining me on the walk today.’
‘I didn’t have a choice.’
‘That’s true. I still wanted to acknowledge it, though. I suppose there’s not a lot of things a child your age has a choice in what to do … What DO you have a choice about in your life, Darcey?’
She thought for about five seconds.
‘Whether to pay attention in class.’
Beyond Recognition.
If we met the person many people think we are - we’d never recognise us.
I’ve Never Lived This Day.
What I’m going to write must be the most obvious yet overlooked profound statement one could make.
I have never lived this day.
I have never experienced 59 years and 158 days old.
I have never experienced being married for 18 years and 267 days.
I have never co-parented a 14 years and 148 day old daughter. (Although I have once co-parented a 11 years, 3 months, and 15 days old daughter.)
I have absolutely no experience in what I’m doing.
A total novice.
Today.
Like disembarking from a train in a foreign city. Enough familiarity for me to function.
Otherwise - I’m making it all up as I go along.
Everybody’s bluffing.
Their Little Ledge.
They plant their flag and pitch their tent.
Settle onto their narrow little ledge and a smug sense of achievement.
Gaze down upon those of us, beginning our ascent.
Toss down advice, along with showers of pebbles.
Oblivious they are miles below the summit.
Lawyering.
In the movie ‘The Hurt Locker’ there is a scene where the Army bomb disposal expert thinks he’s defused a bomb, only to tug on a cable, that joins to six other cables, each attached to a bomb buried just below the surface.
That’s what lawyering can be like.
Spring.
With the unimportant, our life is a line stretching behind us. The trivia of a minute, hour, day or week ago quickly disappears, never to be recalled.
With the important, our life is like a tightly coiled spring. Our mother’s touch, our father’s grin, kind words from a childhood friend, first praise from a teacher. Though distant in time, they are recalled instantly to mind and heart.
Once Told.
To the boss or their minions it’s a fib. A white lie. A protection of privacy or confidentiality. An avoidance of having to explain context to those who don’t have a need to know.
The ends justifies the means.
To you and me who know the Truth - it’s a Lie.
Once told - the boss can never be trusted about anything.
Worse - once told and never challenged - the boss learns she can lie about anything.
And Therefore.
We don’t say ‘She’s black, and therefore …’. Or ‘He’s Greek, and therefore …’. Or ‘She’s a woman, and therefore…’.
Yet we still regularly hear in meetings ‘He doesn’t like conflict, and therefore …’. ‘She’s new, and therefore …’. ‘He’s never worked in a school, and therefore …’. ‘She’s an introvert, and therefore …’.
The binary ‘therefore’ shuts down any nuance or rich gifts of insight that often come from difference.
It’s not political correctness.
It’s smart.
Zip Up Our Sleeping Bag.
The first step … is to forget about cracking the case or displaying your intellectual acuity. Try instead to see yourself modestly and realistically, as one of the fallible human creatures depicted throughout serious history and literature, as well as in contemporary social science. This will help you avoid mistakes and clear the way for the second step. - Joseph L. Badaracco, Managing in the Gray – 5 Timeless Questions for Resolving Your Toughest Problems at Work
The First Step in the Five Steps to a Good Decision is - Step Back.
When we step back - we surrender to our humanity. We submit to the weight of the decision before us. To the height and gradient and difficulty of the mountain. We set up our base camp and crawl into our tent, zip up our sleeping bag and do nothing.
Confessing to our humanity only makes the heroism of the next four steps more magnificent.
Flipping and Flopping.
Making decisions without a Widget progresses organisation and self as a landed fish flipping and flopping on the beach.
Panning for Gold.
Receiving a complaint is like having a bucket of river water and sand thrusted at you.
The complaint is the bucket.
The water - emotion.
The sand - stuff you already know.
You are a prospector.
Panning for gold.
Mistaken Respect.
The military has a saying: ‘You salute the rank and not the person.’
People respect the office and thus the person.
A bad boss mistakes respect for their office, particularly one created by government or the church, for respect or even admiration for them.
A bad boss will pretend to defend their office and those who appointed them, when really they’re protecting their ego.
The Lie.
Spend enough time around a bad boss and eventually you will witness:
The Lie.
Usually drawn forth by the neutral inquiries of a disinterested but informed third party.
The bad boss is doing their usual bad boss thing of saying a lot without saying anything.
Then the question comes whose truthful answer will put the bad boss in a bad light.
The bad boss knows you know the truth.
Thus - the long pause as the bad boss does a quick mental calculation of the pros and cons of telling the truth and being shamed by their inquisitor - or telling a lie and you being a witness.
The bad boss always chooses the Lie.
‘Yes,’ they answer, when you know the answer is ‘No’. There’s no fudging the Lie when it comes.
The bad boss chooses their reputation with third parties over their reputation with you because the bad boss assumes you’ve stuck around this long, you’ll overlook and forgive the Lie. The bad boss counts on you buying the story that the Lie was necessary to protect the organisation that you rely on to pay your mortgage.
Neither you nor the bad boss will ever speak of the Lie.
But know this.
The bad boss routinely lies.
Including about you.
Immunity.
As few as three, two, or even one person can poison a team, department, or entire organisation of thousands.
Thus, people bring a natural protective suspicion, resistance, and immunity to the new person.
This organisational immune system lies in wait for them.
Which is why the innovator, change maker, improver, and genius find it so hard to rescue dysfunction.
