ICYMI: "It is time to stop talking about leadership, and lead"
A moment of transition that I invite you to share with me
Published November 1, 2022.
Listening
There have been a few times in my life when I have heard a voice, clear and unambiguous, say something to me.
One of those times was in 1999, on the back of a horse in the Mt. Leidy Highlands on the east side of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. As I rounded a bend on the trail, the magnificent Grand Tetons came into view. I then heard these words.
“It is time to stop talking about leadership, and lead.”
Whether the voice was God or some inner voice within me, I’ll let the Calvinists, the Freudians, and the Jungians debate it with me, over a bottle of fine single malt scotch.
At this point in time, I had been engaged in the world of leadership for fifteen years. Four years prior I had started my consulting practice. Like many of us, I was living in my head. These were the days when the first versions of the Circle of Impact were being drawn in my journal.
My good friend, John, who I met there, could not believe that I was walking around with a notebook. This is at the end of a stage in my life where I was glad to sit back and watch what was happening in the world. Even on vacation, rising before dawn, to watch the sunrise on the Tetons, sipping a hot cup of coffee, I was reflecting on the nature of leadership in our world.
Within months, two opportunities to lead were presented to me. From those experiences, the practicality of the Circle of Impact was born.
What Leadership Isn’t
Leadership isn’t the projection of one’s personality upon an unsuspecting group of people. It isn’t adopting a title of self-aggrandizement. It is not something passive or simply influential.
Leaders create change. Typically, small change. Big changes tend to be destructive and unsustainable. Most of the current global crises are big leadership initiatives. The result is a viral pandemic, an economic recession, climate change, and perpetual wars. People who take on the belief that leadership requires big gestures are mistaken. They tend to be harmful to the people that they lead.
These leaders are responsible for the problems that we have in the world. Today, they alone are the ones who benefit from their leadership.
Many people in the world will lose their pensions, their homes, their jobs, watch their families disintegrate, and many will die from disease or starvation because of these leaders.
This is not leadership. What it is, I’ll leave it to you, my readers to decide. I’m not interested in investing a lot of energy in being their critic. They are not listening. Instead, I am more interested in focusing my attention on what leadership actually is and how to support people as they seek to make a difference in their world.
What Leadership Is
Leaders create change through people. I believe this to be true because …
“All leadership begins with personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters.”
The impact of leaders is a change that makes a difference that matters. This is the shift in mind that I went through at the turn of the Millennium. Apart from all that I have written about leadership, here are a few things that I haven’t talked about enough, but are important to share.
Organizational leaders facilitate the leadership of others.
They walk beside their people communicating, collaborating, and coordinating the work of the organization. They equip their people and free them to take personal initiative to solve problems, communicate across an ever-growing network of relationships, and help the organization innovate across the wide spectrum of its business.
Leaders invite others to participate and contribute in those areas where they have interest, talent, expertise, and a sense of mission.
One of those leadership opportunities that I had was to be the scoutmaster of my son’s scout troop. When I took on the role, I really did not know what was expected. It was a small troop when I began. Within a couple of years, it was an organization of 35 scouts, 19 assistant scoutmasters, and a dozen or more parents and local citizens who served on the troop committee.
I decided to do that which I knew best to do. So, I constantly spoke about our values as a troop. They were organized into five principles.
Every scout will learn to lead.
Every scout will advance.
Every scout will have fun.
We will teach leadership through the camping program.
Every scout will wear a uniform as a sign of strength and unity.
We determined that a scout who was advancing but was not having fun had some external pressure placed on them to succeed. We also saw that those scouts who were not advancing but were having fun had a bit of a lazy streak in them. As a result, principles #2 and #3 became our shorthand for measuring how well we were doing with each scout.
Can you imagine a company that measures its people by whether they are advancing and having fun?
We discovered quickly that this focused everyone’s attention on what they could contribute. As a result, we implemented the same principles for all adults. We wanted them to advance, have fun, and wear the uniform.
For the adult leaders, I invited them to choose those areas where they felt that they had something valuable to contribute. We equipped, supported, and released them to be persons of impact for the troop. As a result, we became one of the strongest troops in our council.
Leaders listen, then talk.
A reason for my criticism of the leaders above is that they tend to talk, and not listen. The problem is that over time, they become disconnected from the people that they lead. When a leader listens, he or she affirms the agency of that person. They are recognizing that this person is not JUST a person, but a person with something to contribute. Not JUST something to contribute, but an impact to be created that makes a difference that matters.
You Talk. I’ll Listen
I have been wondering for several months about what the next stage is in my engagement with people here at Substack. I want more interaction because I value your thoughts and perspectives. Even as I plan to launch a podcast next year (Launched in February 2023 as The Eddy Network Podcast), I wanted to do something here that strengthens our engagement with one another.
If you are interested in a one-to-one or a group interaction with me, as a paid subscriber, we can schedule a conversation on Zoom.
The way a call works is that after introductions, we’ll talk about whatever you want to talk about from what I have written. The concept was tested with a group of students in Switzerland. It went extraordinarily well. A modified form of it became the model for the podcast. Plan for one hour. Become a paid subscriber, and I’ll send you a scheduler to set up a time to talk.
It is Time To Be More Engaged
I know from what many of you have said to me that what you find here does two important things for you.
One is that I am a calm, rational voice in the midst of a chaotic world of noise.
I cannot tell you how important this is to me. It means that I don’t have to shout over the din of noise that we hear from the leaders that I mentioned above. Thank you very much.
Two is that how I describe what I observe is giving language to what you see and feel.
I am grateful for that. It is my intention to provide clarity, perspective, and a sense of hope. Of course, I don’t mean hope, I mean belief in your individual value to your communities. Hope without action becomes corrosive. We can certainly talk about this.
The comments on large changes being destructive has really made me reflect on instances of that - and how small change....is also more achievable yet it's not very glamourous to talk about i guess! Thank you for reposting Ed.