Lesson #21 - Letting the tide go out
Thought for 2024…does leadership change you?
Should it?
Michelle Obama says not.
Her famous line, “Being president," she said, "doesn't change who you are; it reveals who you are.”
What I do know is this. Leadership, if you’re prepared to embrace all its expectations, will pick you up somewhere and leave you somewhere else.
Leadership, in revealing who you are, will leave you with a choice.
You can ignore the ‘feedback’ and allow your ego to prevail.
In his book ‘Hidden Potential’, Adam Grant asks, “Do you focus on feeding your ego or fuelling your growth?”
When given access to new information, the leader’s capacity to absorb, recognise, value, ingest and apply, is one of the tests we face.
Think of it across two domains: reactive and proactive.
The reactive is the knowledge that, through situation and circumstance, comes across your field of vision. The proactive is the information you search for, the books you read, the podcasts you listen to, and the people you put yourself in conversation with.
Wherever it comes from, this knowledge is an opportunity to build new skills or experiences and understand a different perspective. Then, now, having access to this knowledge, can it become wisdom?
We do this by reframing leadership in this way:
As leaders, we are makers:
Makers of Sense, defining a future (next steps, next day, next year…) in the face of complexity and ambiguity, the only reason we need leadership in the first place.
Makers of Meaning, crafting an ‘us story’ so clear and compelling that it will harness your team’s energy. People will understand who we are, why we do it, and what their role is in it.
Makers of Place, embedding a sense of belonging. The words “you belong here” may well be the most important ever spoken in your team or organisation. We will not always agree, but we will stay aligned on the stuff that matters.
To achieve this, leaders need to be Makers of Space, a preparedness to do the work, a practice of reflection that will become the whetstone that sharpens your inner voice, and enables you to answer as an ongoing challenge, the core leadership question:
“What does the role expect of me?”
And there is only one answer to this question:
“Create the conditions that enable this group to perform at its best”.
I am reading former Richmond skipper Trent Cotchin’s book, ‘From the Heart’. He is very open, generous, and thoughtful, happy to articulate what is often known but left unspoken, particularly by young men facing emotional challenges, and it has become his credo.
But he was not always this way. His turning point as a leader was at the end of a disappointing Tiger season in 2016, when leadership ‘revealed who he was’ and struggled at many levels, including his perfectionistic tendencies. In response, Trent made a choice. He sought the support and guidance of a mentor, Ben Crowe, someone I have known for many years. Trent was in good hands.
The wisdom Ben’s shared with Trent was profound:
“Sometimes you have to let the tide go out to see where the rocks are.”
Trent, in that moment, experienced Ben’s wisdom but also Ben’s presence. He found the trust of a mentor, someone who could support him through discovering his place of vulnerability, but also its power as it related to his leadership and the important relationships in football, family and friendship.
He embraced the feedback football/life was giving him by allowing the tide to go out, and it changed Trent’s life, and Ben’s as well, I’d suggest. By extension, it changed the Richmond Football Club, who won three of the next four Premierships, with Trent playing a massive role, on and off the field.
Ben helped Trent become a ‘Maker of Space’, and when leadership revealed who he was, he was okay with it and set about doing the work, something he had always done, but a different kind of work.
Again, from Trent’s book, “I had spent most of my life seeking perfection and thinking vulnerability was a sign of weakness, so this message was a game changer for me.”
He did not take his role any less seriously, but it seems he started to take himself less seriously.
I once heard the actor Matthew McConaughey say something like”
“There are angels of truth everywhere, but we only tend to access them when we’re fucked’.
The challenge is to access those angels when we are not fucked.
The work I do is for leaders who engage with leadership and its expectations to the extent that when it reveals who they are, they work hard to find the best parts of themselves while having the self-awareness that this is not what people get to experience all of the time, as well intended as you hope and believe it is.
Growth mindset leaders. Open, curious and committed to learning, but also with the courage to unlearn, and then apply these new perspectives in such a way that it becomes their wisdom.
It is for leaders who want to create conditions that enable people, teams and organisations to perform at their best, however defined, because this is what the role expects of them.
If this sounds like you, I have three mentoring places available in 2024, so feel free to email me back or call.
I am confident it can be the difference maker.
Love to chat.
Play on!
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