The value of coaching, use in case of resistance

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Whenever I take my glasses off (usually they fall off), I panic. For one split moment, the grass becomes green fuzz, the sun, an overflowing cup of honey. There’s nothing ugly or aggressive about nature blurred. But I don’t know where I am. I can’t recognise friends. At any moment I could trip. That’s how I felt with Hanui’s playing – beauty glimmered all around me, but nothing was defined. I was helpless in a blur of colour. The transformation Hanui underwent brought clarity, and with it, a more intricate, true beauty. The pristine architecture of Bach finally rose up to its aching glory.

Music student, Amanda Burr, on the performance of a fellow student from The Art of Possibility, by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.

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Image: courtesy of Liquid Paper

Funny-looking objects

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World, I gotta tell you, there’s a new baby boom headed your way and it’s originating in this middle-sized city at the bottom of the world, namely, Melbourne, Australia.

When the boom arrives on your shores you’ll know the babies by their outfits. If I have anything to do with it, they’ll be wearing one of the knitting world’s most covetable patterns, a knitting pattern so famous it has its own acronym.

The BSJ, or Baby Surprise Jacket to the uninitiated, was created in 1968 by the very droll Elizabeth Zimmerman. There are thousands of sites on the internet dedicated to the knitting of this garment. Holding the pattern in one’s hand is akin to handling a recently unearthed ikon, coming as it does via only one route: snail mail from deep somewhere in the American prairie.

And it’s unlike any other pattern I’ve read. Here’s Elizabeth at about row 10:

Work will start to look very odd indeed, but trust me and press on.

Here she is a little later:

Hope you are still with me.

And when you get to the end, there’s this:

Funny-looking object, isn’t it?

By which she means an object looking a bit like my first 20 rows above, only bigger and curlier and even less baby-jacket-like. Still, after 44 years of cult status, I’m prepared to believe the object does somehow turn into a baby-jacket. By which time, she says,

The baby will probably be unmoved by this offering, but the parents may well be charmed and your friends will be amazed.

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Yarn is Sirdar’s Sublime, Baby Cashmere Merino Silk in Shade 0124 which is a lot more aqua than it appears in the photo.

Situations pertaining to leaders #1

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There is an extended family: husband and wife, two small children and another on the way, grandparents, aunts and uncles. The husband has had some difficulties with alcohol and gambling. He is highly-strung, a perfectionist; things around the home have to be ship-shape all of the time. He is irritated if the childrens’ toys are lying around, if dinner is not ready when he’s used to it being ready.

His wife works hard to ensure he is not upset. She cleans diligently but sometimes her husband still finds something wrong. The couple has experienced a deep sorrow with the loss of a stillborn child some years earlier. Being pregnant again fills the wife with joy and fear in equal parts.

One of the grandparents, the wife’s mother, is fearful too. Most weeks, she spends time with the couple and frequently minds her grandchildren. She has noticed her son-in-law’s behaviour and is uncertain and fearful. She is uncertain whether her son-in-law’s behaviour towards her daughter could be characterised as abuse, and she fears what might be happening behind closed doors.

She is caught between feeling something’s wrong and not knowing how to proceed. She feels intimidated by her son-in-law’s mood swings, and also by the shadow of the loss he and her daughter have suffered. She feels called on to intervene in some way – sometimes she has to cut short her visits because the protests are there in her mouth – but she dreads the potential repercussions. She fears if she says something to her son-in-law or daughter her access to her beloved grandchildren might be revoked. She also fears it would cause fresh suffering.

One day, nothing much happens except for one thing. The grandmother chooses to act. She looks at the fear and then picks up the phone anyway.

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A question of trust

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The Carnival of the Lions and Christians, also known as the Festival of Stupidities, also known as Australian politics, is back on stage after the summer break, and the players have taken up where they left off.

All that time! Four weeks in mid-fatuity! How galling!

Thankfully, normal stream-of-fatuity has resumed. And first up we have the same old, same old: the issue of trust. Namely, that all Australians will be outraged if Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, does not deliver on her promise to introduce poker machine reform, and once more, breaches the trust of a nation.

Over and over again, the media exhorts us to equate delivering on promises with trust, and not delivering on promises, with moral turpitude.

Yet say if it weren’t true?

Say if we actually had very little idea about what generates trust?

Say if it were the non-delivery of promises that provided the greatest opportunity to generate trust?

Que?

When a person or organisation handles the non-delivery of their promises in a certain way they generate trust, and the trust they generate is deeper and more lasting than the trust that may have accrued if they had delivered on their promise.

What is that certain way?

If the person or organisation: (1) acknowledges the non-delivery and its impact; (2) makes amends for the impact (this might include apologising, making financial or other reparations, arranging replacements, etc), and (3) re-promises.

These actions are the path to generating trust. To take them requires courage and risk.

While ever courage and risk remain inimical to politics, questions of trust will be used to sabotage leaders and gull the public.

***

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Personal archaeology

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Remember I wrote a letter from six months in the future? It was addressed to Benjamin Zander, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic orchestra, and of course, myself.

In the letter I described a version of myself I’m inventing during these six months: self as a conduit for expression and creativity to pour through, just as the famous cellist, Jacqueline Du Pre, with whom Ben played Schubert, was a conduit for music.

He tells this story of her.

When she was six years old, the story goes, she went into her first competition as a cellist, and she was seen running down the corridor carrying her cello above her head, with a huge grin of excitement on her face. A custodian, noting what he took to be relief on the little girl’s face, said, “I see you’ve just had your chance to perform!” And Jackie answered, excitedly, “No, no, I’m just about to!”

“Even at six,” Ben notes, “Jackie was a conduit for music to pour through.”

***

A week or so after I wrote the letter I came across an old photo of myself. That’s it above. I think I must be about three years old.

Looking at it, I’m struck by my freedom and delight. I have the same joy Ben describes in Jackie at age six, and it’s the exact expression of self I was groping towards in my letter.

So I see this new self I’m inventing is a revealing or reclamation of a previous self.

***

When I found this photo I looked more closely at other photos that were lying around from when I was about ten years old.

These are a whole other matter.

In photo after photo, the freedom and delight has been replaced by something else, something cautious and watchful.

I’ve previously mentioned the fact of the ruthless conditioning girls receive. It was the subject of the “Beyond Wanting to be Wanted” series. It’s a conditioning that suppresses and seeks to obliterate what a girl feels, what a girl thinks, what she looks like, her very being. It colonises her soul.

Now this is not a matter of blame. I’m not blaming my parents or my society or my culture. My parents loved me dearly and always wanted the best for me.

It’s just the way it was, the way it probably still is.

And by acknowledging that I also had a choice in the matter – the choice of not submitting, of rejecting the conditioning, of keeping my soul alight – I’m not blaming myself either. I was a child, dependent on my parents and my society, and I didn’t even see the possibility anyway.

No, I’m not interested in blame. I’m interested in reclaiming that earlier free and delighted self, that unabashed, untrammelled young girl and letting her roam.

It’s her time again.

Even the most captured woman guards the place of the wildish self, for she knows intuitively that someday there will be a loophole, an aperture, a chance, and she will hightail it to escape.*

***

* Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés

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Leaders! We want you

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This is a call for people to participate in a new book project. The book is part of The Leadership Project, started in October, 2011.

We want interview subjects, people who have views about leaders and leadership.

The views may be gleaned from your own practice as a leader, or they may be views about other people being leaders.

Perhaps you’ve been touched, moved or inspired by someone being a leader.

Perhaps you’ve been being a leader in a way that’s had others touched, moved or inspired.

We want to talk to you.

How does it work?

If you’re in the US or UK or somewhere other than Melbourne, Australia, interviews will be conducted by phone. Interviews take about an hour.

If your views are referenced or quoted in the book you will have the opportunity to review the draft text.

To arrange an interview time, contact me at solidgoldcreativity@gmail.com

Happy leading!

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Who is a leader? Post-mortem on a definition

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I’ve been attempting to define what I mean by a “leader”. I’ve been doing so under the provocation of a book called Leadership for the Twentieth First Century by Joseph C. Rost, a man outraged that the majority of people writing and thinking about leaders and leadership do not attempt to define their topic.

Well, Mr Rost, I’ve attempted it, so count me in.

What have I concluded about defining a leader?

1. Being in the enquiry is what counts

The definition doesn’t matter as much as the trip one takes to get to a definition. Being in the enquiry is what counts, not the answer.

2. Leaders matter to me

The most important distinction is the distinction between leaders and leadership that was preliminary to the definition. I’ve discovered I’m more interested in being people leaders than in this thing called leadership, and I suspect it’s people being leaders we need more of, not leadership per se.

3. Leaving responsibility implied

I’m happy to leave the question of responsibility implied. Many people would say that taking responsibility is the mark of someone being a leader. I heartily agree, but I want to leave the act of taking responsibility implied within all five points.

We could say that responsibility is a condition of possibility for a person being a leader; ie, no responsibility = no leader.

4. To do or not to do morality?

The big question is one we’ve been tripping over a little: what to do with the question of morality or ethics?

I’ve chosen to leave it out, mainly because I see it as part of the evaluation of a leader. I’m interested in something prior to this: what it means to be a leader. I’m not interested for the moment in what it means to be a good leader.

5. Integrity

I’m still umming and ahhing about what to do with the question of integrity. By integrity I mean the wholeness and soundness of a person as given by the practice of honouring one’s word; I don’t mean something to do with morals or ethics, right and wrong, and so on.

Here’s the practice, a little simplified:

Honouring your word … means you either keep your word, or as soon as you know that you will not, you say that you will not be keeping your word to those who were counting on your word and clean up any mess you caused by not keeping your word. By “keeping your word” we mean doing what you said you would do and by the time you said you would do it.*

On the one hand, we could say integrity is another condition of possibility for a person being a leader; no integrity = no leader. On the other hand, integrity is fundamental to every person, regardless of their being a leader or not.

For now, I’ve chosen to leave it out of the definition because including it might imply it’s only required for leaders.

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* Integrity: A positive model that incorporates the normative phenomena of morality, ethics, and legality – Abridged by Werner H Erhard, Michael C Jensen and Steve Zaffron. To read the paper, click here. It is a 30-page abridged version of the full 100+ page paper I’ve previously linked to.

Image: The Hare, 1927, Joan Miró

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Who is a leader? More implications

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Now, where were we with the definition of a leader?

So far I’m not convinced that attempting a definition is worth the candle, whatever Joseph C Rost may have to say about people looking at leadership who don’t define their topic. Still, post-mortems later.

We’ve covered the implications of points 1 and 2 of the definition in a previous post. This post, the implications of points 3, 4 and 5.

3. A leader sets out, or intends, to make change. A leader may or may not be successful in having the change occur. If the change does not occur, the leader is still a leader.

4. A leader takes on the risk of setting out to make change. A leader’s stance is “I’m willing to be blamed, criticised, attacked, ridiculed or worse if things don’t work out.”

5. A leader faces off the “tyranny of fear” and offers possibility in its place.

3. A leader sets out, or intends, to make change.

The leader intends change. He may or may not succeed in having the change come to pass. What counts is the intention, not the outcome.

The sooner we decouple the idea of “leader” from the ideas of “success” or “outcome”, the better. For one, we’d have more people willing to step up to being a leader. In addition, we’d have to become a certain way to allow people to do their best and not shoot them down when they didn’t pull something off.

We’d have to grow up at last and stop waiting for Santa Claus. Or Godot.

Now, to this word “change” …

In his definition of leadership, Rost qualifies it with the word “real”, which he says means, “substantive and transforming”. This doesn’t work for me for three reasons:

  • once you introduce an adjective or other qualifier into a definition, you’re lost; it’s time to go back to the drawing board
  • I explicitly reject the criterion of degree in my idea of a leader; people can be a leader in small matters or large
  • part of what happens when someone is being a leader is that the unexpected starts to show up; unforeseen, even undreamt-of results start to occur. It’s this magic proliferation – a doing without doing – which is the surest marker of someone operating as a leader. So if you have to know a change is “real” or “substantive or transforming” at the outset, as in Rost’s definition, the magic dimension of the unforeseen is ruled out.

What I mean by change is novelty, as distinct from, say, change as reaction. I mean something new to the situation, new factors, new options.

4. A leader takes on the risk of setting out to make change.

More than half the people I’ve interviewed to date for my book have said being a leader is tough. They’ve talked about blame and criticism, and the fear of it, and they’ve talked about the lack of support, the loneliness. As one interviewee put it,

People are happy enough for you to get out of your comfort zone, but when it comes to them … people vanish.

As Seth Godin says in Tribes,

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.

That’s it. Being willing to feel discomfort – even most of the time – is one of the requirements of being a leader.

5. A leader faces off the “tyranny of fear” and offers possibility in its place.

A person being a leader does not create or contribute to conversations that rehearse fear.

You know the ones. Conversations about imminent disaster, imminent catastrophe, imminent shortage; conversations which have the shape and content of the “downward spiral”, as Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander describe it in The Art of Possibility.

Instead, a person being a leader creates conversations about possibility.

This new leader carries the distinction that it is the framework of fear and scarcity … which promotes divisions between people. He asserts that we can create the conditions for the emergence of anything that is missing … This leader calls upon our passion rather than our fear. She is the relentless architect of the possibility that human beings can be.

***

Image: The Gold of the Azure, Joan Miró

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The Liebster Blog Award

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I’ve just received a Liebster Blog Award from Mrs Daffodil of The Painting Gardener. Mrs Daffodil is a talented artist of great warmth and thoughtfulness. Plus, she has the world’s most smile-inducing username!

“Liebster”, to quote Mrs Daffodil, “is a German word, meaning dearest or beloved, but it can also mean favourite. The Liebster Blog is to be given to bloggers who have less than 200 followers in order to spotlight these wonderful blogs.”

Rules for giving the award

These are the rules:

  1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you (thank you, Mrs Daffodil!)
  2. Reveal the five blogs you have chosen and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog
  3. Copy and paste the award onto your blog (see above)
  4. Request the people you have chosen to receive the award pass it on to their favourite bloggers.

Mrs Daffodil’s other award-winners

The other four bloggers to whom Mrs Daffodil has given her award are (I’ve subscribed to some already):

My award-winners

The bloggers to whom I’m giving this award are (in random order):

Thomas Stazyk: A leader in the world AND exquisitely house-trained … where’s that cloning machine?; made a big difference to me in a time of grief

Notes from around the block: A woman hitting her stride and keeping it real in the face of the slings and arrows from those who haven’t yet tasted freedom

Hansi’s Hallucinations: World’s favourite Probation Officer and Hallucinator; plus, all you’ve ever wanted to know about the birds and bees but were too afraid to ask

Totsymae: A woman working it, even with a booger in her nose; also, an artist of power and superb colour sense. And I jus love it when she talks Southern to me

Exuvia: Makes a difference whenever she/he alights on your page. A blessing.

Enjoy!

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Who is a leader? Implications of the definition

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Following are some implications flowing from the five points I used to define a leader, together with a few starting remarks.

Being a leader vs Leadership

The five points I raised in yesterday’s post relate to being a leader; they do not relate to leadership per se. There are a few reasons:

  • I’ve just finished Joseph C Rost’s Leadership for the Twenty-First Century and I’m taking his point that the terms “leader” and “leadership” are often conflated
  • at present, I’m more interested in people being leaders than in leadership
  • talking about people being leaders is easier and more productive than talking about leadership; once we human beings start talking about concepts rather than people, the concepts have a way of becoming progressively fixed and abstract. Think “justice”, for example, or “freedom” or “socialism.” This applies even where the concept is defined as a process or relation, as Rost and others have it.

Being a leader doesn’t require others

Yes, it’s counter-intuitive, and lots of leadership people will baulk and think I’m a nutter, but I cannot see that the definition of being a leader requires others.

Most often, other people will be involved. However, there’s nothing in being a leader, as I’ve defined it, that makes other people essential. One can be being a leader on a deserted island with only an old boot for company.

In other words, followers are not essential to being a leader. When it comes to leadership it may be a different matter, and that’s a topic for another day.

The five points and their implications

1. A leader is someone choosing to be a leader at this moment and in this situation.

A person may be being a leader in one situation, and not a leader in another situation. For example, a person may be being a leader in a community project such as a campaign to build a local bike path, or a project to secure employment for long-term unemployed people, while not being a leader in her friendship group or her Rotary club or job. In the following month, she may take on being a leader amongst her friends or at work, and have someone else be a leader in the bike path campaign.

Being a leader is a proposition, a malleable, changing proposition.

2. A leader is given by that choice, and not by other people and their choices. In other words, a leader is a leader by virtue of his own choice or declaration.

A person is being a leader because he is choosing being a leader. Being a leader is not given by some quality or characteristic dispensed at birth. Or by training. Or by reading “how to become a leader” books and blog posts.

Being a leader is given by a choice. Moreover, it’s a choice made by the person being a leader; it’s not a matter of being “anointed” a leader.

For example, say the CEO asks you to become the Program Director on the project to develop a new type of credit card and you say “yes”. It can look as if the choice for you to be a leader was the CEO’s.

Not so. For at least two reasons:

  • you said “yes”; until you gave an answer it wasn’t a choice, it was an offer
  • every day, you still have to get up and go to work and make something happen; every day, every moment, it’s you who is making the choice to be a leader.

Consider something else. Say a colleague, M, is hired as one of 10 business analysts on the credit card project. M too might choose to be a leader. For example, M might start talking to his colleagues and you, the Program Director, about using a new method of developing a prototype he’s seen work well elsewhere. No-one asked M to investigate a new method. M just chose to do so, to be a leader on the project.

… to be continued

Next post: More implications

Image: The flight of the dragonfly in front of the sun, Joan Miró, 1968

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