That’s It.
The bad boss is like a photocopy of a photo of a photocopy of a photo of a photocopy of a photo of the good boss.
With the word ‘Boss’ written beneath it.
You know it’s the boss because of the title: Boss.
You can discern the shape and indistinct outline of a shadow of what the good boss looks like.
You know it’s the boss because HR points to it and says ‘The boss said…’.
That’s it.
On Love.
The teacher handed out photocopies of Emerson’s essay ‘The Oversoul.’
The last page of the photocopy had the last page of The Oversoul, and the first page of ‘Love’.
I borrowed Emerson’s Essays from the library so I could read the rest of ‘Love’.
I can’t remember anything about The Oversoul.
Love changed my life.
Foul.
Hundreds of boys aged eleven and twelve voluntarily spend ninety minutes doing basketball drills under the scrutiny of a dozen adults.
No names - just numbers drawn in black marker on their arms and upper thighs to identify them to the coaches.
Those boys will be divided into groups of ability, culled, divided into smaller groups, culled again.
The coaches will gather at the end of each session to compare notes and shuffle names.
Lists are emailed to parents together with training timetables.
This process will take a couple of weeks of sessions.
Drill, scrutiny, divide, cull, list, drill.
Parents are not allowed to observe.
At the end of it, there will be seven teams of ten boys, ranked from those with the highest skills, to those with the least.
With a few disappointed and noisy exceptions, everyone accepts the result because the process and each boy’s skills were open.
That’s how a weekend basketball sporting competition operates.
Those same boys - along with hundreds of thousands of others - progress through successive years of school in their same cohort behind closed doors for thirteen years - educated and drilled with a programme based solely on the date they were born.
That’s how thirteen years of school preparing each boy for life operates.
Easy.
Leadership is easy.
Be technically competent in your work.
Believe in something bigger beyond where you are.
Believe another believes in something bigger beyond where they are.
Be prepared to disappoint them.
Be prepared for their disappointment in you.
Care more about the something beyond where you are and the other - than the risk of disappointment.
Act.
Leadership is easy.
The hard bit is the Leading.
By Definition.
By definition, a leader is always on the wrong side of the debate, and on the right side of history.
By definition, organisations do not create, nor tolerate, leadership.
The only people following the words and deeds of a leader in an organisation - work in HR.
And the IT person HR tasked to monitor emails.
Four Words.
Four words to say to a punter that show more authentic leadership skills than you’d learn deep diving in a five day workshop:
‘What do you think?’
Reconnaissance.
The mediocre boss either fearfully waits for problems to solve, or creates problems for others to solve.
The good boss actively and eagerly reconnoitres for both emerging problems to fend away from fettering their workers, and solutions for problems yet to arise.
Behind You!
Lawyers spend our days reading stories.
Claims, allegations, affidavits, counter-claims, precedents, judgments, appeals.
Lawyers know more than anybody else how almost every story ends.
That’s why our job is to yell at our client:
‘Behind you! Behind you!’
Chivalry.
A theory as to the origin of the military salute with the hand is that it traces back to the knights.
As a knight approached a stranger, he would raise his hand to tilt his visor up, exposing his eyes, and therefore his life.
Demonstrating he meant no harm to the other by showing his trust they meant no harm to him.
Chivalry is an act of vulnerability not strength.
Tug of War.
The employer - employee tug of war over bringing the 40% of workers working from home back to the office is a proxy war.
Whether an employee is the 80% disengaged from their work sitting in their cubicle or at their kitchen table is just geography.
The real battle employers ignore is to giving meaningful, purposeful work.
Employers should invest their time and resources in increasing employee engagement.
Something Else.
Take some time to define your reality.
Start with financials.
What are your worldly goods? House? Assets? Liabilities? Income? Superannuation?
Feel your mind and heart move from reluctance, to discomfort, resistance, to denial, to panic, to surrender, to …
Peace.
(Yes - you need to create and commit to several hours to allow this process of your head and heart to work fully through.)
You will find yourself sitting in front of a page or three of numbers.
You will wonder how you made it here - given those daunting figures.
But bigger than the numbers and more impressive is:
You.
Your presence transcends and answers all the ‘But how does it all work?’ head stuff.
Only when you allow yourself to admit that, logically, you cannot explain how you got here.
Can you begin to recognise it’s not the dollars and the sense.
Most of it is you: working and saving and budgeting and planning.
But some of it - isn’t.
Something else is guiding you.
Condemnation.
The severest condemnation is reserved for those in positions of power above the operational managerial level who know the managers below them are incompetent, yet do nothing for fear of upsetting those in power above them.
They choose their security over the wellbeing of the workers and those they serve.
Force Multiplier.
How quickly we learn and increase our skill and ability to execute when we are privileged enough to work with another creative, clever, generous mind.
A force multiplier.
Not the artificial and forced ‘team’ that a boss so often shoehorns us into and saps our time and spirit.
An authentic collaboration - col-labour - with another.
Add a third, and a fourth - and a good boss - and we can literally change the world.
Your Second Response.
Our first response to a stimulus is what makes us human.
Our fear, anger, disappointment, or frustration are natural, and embedded in us from tens of thousands of years of evolution.
It’s not reasonable, fair, or healthy to expect us to suppress or deny our first response.
We should give ourselves (and others) permission to feel what are reasonable and natural reactions to the world.
We step back - for a millisecond, second, minute, hour, month - and allow ourselves to feel the first response.
Only then do we respond.
Our first response is what makes us human.
Our second response can lead us to the divine.