Cossie's Food for Thought

How would you handle an invitation to war?

Have you ever received an invitation to war?  Did it come with an RSVP deadline?  I got one last week.  One of the things I do, outside of Arbinger, is manage a golf team in the local 18 hole interclub competition.  Last week we were playing at another, flasher course so, knowing I was going to be out of town for most of the week, I contacted them early to get the starting time for our match.  8.22 am.  Great!  I love the smell of cut grass in the morning (especially when someone else has cut it :-).  I contact my team and let them know. Everything is sorted - or so I think.

Late on the Wednesday evening, before the match, I get an e-mail from the opposing club forwarded to me with the start time now set at 12.30.  What the (insert the bleep that works for you)?  Are they messing with us?  Are they just arrogant?  Is this just incompetence?  I rang them up the next day and no-one could tell me why the time was changed - it just was.

I found myself planning revenge.  I lost 2 of my better players for the match because of schedule clashes.  I started planning how to 'stick it to them' when it is our turn to host.  I found myself running the opposition down to anyone who had ears.

There is only one problem.  What if it wasn't an invitation to war?  What if it was just a mistake?  What if the change was to help someone out?  When we turned up on Saturday and I asked the question - it become clear very early that the time had never been changed - there had just been an error in communication - either at their end or mine.  Even though I am constantly surrounded by better explanations - I always choose the ones that suit me.  To add insult to injury - they whooped us.  Could it be that the victim card I dealt to my players undermined their ability to enjoy the game?

The other club did nothing wrong.  There was no invitation to war.  There was just me, in the box towards them, looking for proof that would justify my prejudice.  When I am like this I am already at war and everything they do is an aggravating invitation - regardless of what it is.  Their very existence offends me.  How many conflicts in my life would be prevented if I looked for better explanations instead of just the convenient ones?  What if the invitation was posted by me?  What if it always is.

Food for thought ...

p.s. Todays clip is unrelated to the post but it says something about the magic of the moment - when people connect.  It is about 18 minutes but I think it is worth the investment as Sarah Kay has something to say and an engaging way of saying it.

 

What's the one thing?

There are so many books out there sharing insight and expertise on leadership that it is easy to get overwhelmed with all the recipes on offer.  Add five of this, stir in three of these, leave out eight of that ....  Sound familiar?  Almost all the recipes have value - but I don't have the time to experiment with them all.  Sometimes I have wondered what the one thing might be  - the one recipe, the one ingredient - that could be of greatest value to my leadership efforts.

I found a candidate this week in an unlikely place - or should I say - under an unlikely heading.  Barry Brownstein added a blog post to the Arbinger Community with the title 'Projecting Charlie Sheen'.  The headline was so unexpected that I went in for a read and found a gem.  In his post he quotes a recent blog post from former student and now professor Warren Nilsson....

"…In general people are very poor at reading and understanding each other’s inner lives. Most of us might think we are among the exceptions – that our powers of psychological insight are remarkably keen – but I think this is a grand delusion. We are experts not at comprehending each other but at projecting our own perspectives, desires, and insecurities out onto the world. We are gifted and unapologetic fantasists… We .. continue deceiving ourselves that we understand perfectly what other people are experiencing."

What if the one thing of greatest value to me as a leader - as someone looking to have influence on others - is to simply accept that our understanding of what others are experiencing is imperfect at best.  One of the greatest deceptions I perpetuate on myself is that 'I know what you are going through'.  When I do this I simply project an overlay of myself onto you and congratulate myself for my deep insight.  This distorted insight now reinforces my perception of my powers of understanding - and the hole I am digging for myself just gets deeper.

How can I lead or influence people when I won't see them and therefore can't learn from them?  How can make the most of the people I work with when I won't allow myself to be influenced by who they really are and what they are actually experiencing?  

Maybe the greatest improvement I can make in my leadership is to assume that I know nothing of their experience and that there is much that I can learn from every person I come in contact with.  Not long after pondering this topic I found a talk given by Steve Jobs.  It was interesting to watch given the assumptions I had built up around the speaker.  If you haven't seen this already - it is well worth the investment of 15 minutes:

 

Much of leadership, and life, is about connecting the dots - making sense out of our experiences and moving forward with purpose - and many of the greatest opportunities that come to us are not in the things we do but, rather, in the people we meet and the lessons we learn from them - if we will just stop looking for our own reflections and simply see them, as they are, without distortion ....

Food for thought ....

The downside of playing it safe ...

I had the opportunity this week to work with a team that is wanting to achieve great results.  One of the biggest barriers to achieving great results is our tendency towards homeostasis - our innate desire to maintain balance - which almost demands that we play it safe.  The dilemma we face is that breakthroughs in performance rarely come from doing the same old thing in the same old way.  Breakthroughs often require us to take risks and do things differently - which can often lead to a short term drop in performance - and put our commitment to the test.  Who wants to run the risk of looking bad in an environment where results count?

Our reluctance to change is natural and it afflicts many of us.  In his archetype of the human story, known as the Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell describes this process of going from the safe to the uncertain as 'crossing of the threshold' - an act that requires a leap of faith.  Some of us try and put a dollar each way and 'straddle' the threshold - but it never works?  We simply find ourselves stuck - getting more and more uncomfortable in the moment.

Those who stay safe in the comfort zone avoid the 'risk' of failure - but they also avoid the best opportunity on offer to become more and to achieve more.  This clip from Shakespeare is a favourite quote that speaks to this point:

Saint Crispin's Day
Henry V at MOVIECLIPS.com

 

 Achieving breakthrough results requires a special kind of courage - and the willingness to trust our carefully cultivated self-image into the hands of our colleagues and team mates - and not to worry to much about what others may think - if I don't get it right first time.  It has been exciting, this week, to work with a team that stands at the threshold - ready and eager to leap.

This morning I found myself wondering who, if any, of the group might balk at the threshold - when I caught myself in the hypocrisy in it.  Who am I to question anyone at the threshold if I stand in the safety of the comfort zone.  Leadership at the threshold requires us to be out front - the first to commit, the first to leap, the first to put the torch to boat that brought us here.  There is something wrong about encouraging boldness and adventure adventure from the comfort of a recliner.

I can play it safe and settle for mediocrity or I can take some risks and have the chance of breaking through to another level.  It's my choice and it always has been .....

Food for thought...