Fourth Practice: Leadership and Influence

Hear me read this post.

For more con­text on this post­ing, please see:

The Prac­tice of Leadership
Eight Lead­er­ship Practices
First Prac­tice: Know­ing Your Lead­er­ship Edge
Sec­ond Prac­tice: Devel­op­ing Your Com­fort Lev­el with Feedback
Third Prac­tice: Car­ing for Self
Fifth Prac­tice: Dis­cussing Undiscussables
Sixth Prac­tice: On Collaborating
Sev­enth Prac­tice: Per­son­al Integrity
Eighth Prac­tice: Spir­i­tu­al Perspective

We con­fuse influ­ence with lead­er­ship. If lead­er­ship is about “doing the right thing,” then it real­ly does not depend on a desire to push, coerce, or even per­suade. It is about being true to a unique per­son­al path, whether or not there are fol­low­ers. The irony is that by fol­low­ing this path, fol­low­ers often come.

A few days ago I watched a video about renowned diver­si­ty teacher, Jane Elliot, and her Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exer­cise. While there is no ques­tion that she intends to bring peo­ple to anoth­er mind­set through her teach­ing work, it is also clear that even if she could not teach her truth in the way she does, she would find a mil­lion oth­er ways to live it. Her “influence” comes not so much from her role or the exer­cise, which is about what is feels like to expe­ri­ence dis­crim­i­na­tion, but out of the amaz­ing­ly strong, sen­si­tive core of her being as a leader. It is not a put-on or cal­cu­lat­ed tech­nique. It is sim­ply a reflec­tion of who she is – and who we are, too. When peo­ple con­fuse influ­ence with lead­er­ship, they are con­fus­ing “the exer­cise” with the one guid­ing it.

Try­ing to lay­er some­thing onto our­selves in order to become bet­ter influ­encers only moves us toward becom­ing bet­ter manip­u­la­tors. And as we all know from the “spin” indus­try, we can cer­tain­ly be manip­u­lat­ed. Appeal­ing to core val­ues, pleas­ing con­stituen­cies, per­suad­ing on the basis of polls may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be bad things in them­selves. They are polit­i­cal means and real­i­ties. But let’s not con­fuse them with leading.

A leader’s influ­ence comes from one pri­ma­ry source: motive. With­out the cor­rect motive, the “methods” can real­ly become a prob­lem. By motive I mean even more than “doing the right thing.” Ulti­mate­ly, this is a slip­pery phrase at best. I’m sure any num­ber of auto­crats, polit­i­cal and cor­po­rate, thought they were doing the right thing. “Right” can be defined in too many ways. This is not a strong enough test. Nor are her­alds such as “the good of the people,” “a bet­ter world,” or the “will of God,” any of which can lead to enor­mous vio­lence and social control.

No, the motive is deep­er still, in the nature of per­son­al aware­ness itself and our under­stand­ing of suf­fer­ing and its caus­es. Which is about our rela­tion­ship to our­selves. First and fore­most, this is the ground of lead­er­ship because it is the only place where a per­son actu­al­ly and per­son­al­ly comes into con­tact with the truth about human­i­ty. If we are gen­uine­ly open to our­selves, even­tu­al­ly we will dis­cov­er how involved we are in cre­at­ing the very prob­lems we say we want to solve, how prone to delu­sion and pro­jec­tion we are, how self-igno­rant, and there­fore insen­si­tive and unin­tel­li­gent in cer­tain ways; and how out of touch we are with our core. In my opin­ion this core is none oth­er than a pro­found good­ness, cov­ered over by neg­a­tive con­di­tion­ing from this and per­haps many life­times. We are like seeds push­ing up through the earth, seeds that must press through lay­er upon lay­er of insen­si­tiv­i­ty and self-igno­rance in order to join the sun­light. In that sun­light we find our­selves tru­ly alive.

I remem­ber work­ing with a man who owns a very suc­cess­ful sys­tems change con­sult­ing busi­ness. He was strug­gling at that time to choose the lines of ser­vice his busi­ness should focus upon. And behind that ques­tion, he also held a more per­son­al one as to what his own work as com­pa­ny leader should be. Where should his com­pa­ny make a dif­fer­ence; where should he? After some con­ver­sa­tion in a bar over­look­ing a frozen lake (I’m sure you catch the metaphor), I sug­gest­ed that per­haps we could work togeth­er on his own pri­ma­ry vision for his com­pa­ny and its most fun­da­men­tal con­tri­bu­tions. I will nev­er for­get his reply. “Who me?” he asked, almost stunned. “Visions are for oth­er peo­ple, famous peo­ple. Who am I to have a vision?”

Well, we went on to do the work, of course, and he dis­cov­ered a lot more about his direc­tions, per­son­al and com­mer­cial. But that first reac­tion – that came from the part of him cov­er­ing the spark of lead­er­ship genius he’d been car­ry­ing around with­out tak­ing much stock or giv­ing cred­it. He did not yet know how tru­ly to lead because he had yet to touch that good­ness in him­self in a pro­found way.

A per­son who has real expe­ri­ence of what is pro­found­ly good, and fol­low­ing it sees how it comes through his or her own pres­ence, that per­son leads. In my expe­ri­ence, this indi­vid­ual has the strength to press through the lay­ers of his or her own uncon­scious­ness, to learn, to accept feed­back, to cross the hot stones of ambi­gu­i­ty and con­flict, to be alone, and yes, to set a mean­ing­ful vision. And because of this per­son­al work, which puts the per­son in touch with human­i­ty, he or she devel­ops great com­pas­sion. This makes lead­er­ship about break­ing one’s own chains and in that process begin­ning to help oth­ers break their own — and with­out com­ing from a place of being “better than” or “wiser than.” A per­son who does not expe­ri­ence the good­ness that comes through at the core of self, who has not uncov­ered the spark, may devel­op strength in oth­er ways, but for that per­son influ­ence, accom­plish­ment, and self-proof may eas­i­ly become much more impor­tant than lead­er­ship. And, sure­ly, the vast major­i­ty of us are real­ly not one or the oth­er, nei­ther ful­ly in or out of touch with the spark, but live our lives as a com­bi­na­tion of both, and exhib­it both depend­ing on the cir­cum­stance and the day….

A leader whose devel­op­ment reflects the aware­ness of pro­found good becomes known for many things. These nat­u­ral­ly include:

See­ing more in oth­ers than they see in them­selves. Those inter­est­ed in influ­ence alone tend to see less in oth­ers than they sense them­selves to be. The leader nat­u­ral­ly becomes a coach because of this capac­i­ty to rec­og­nize oth­er­s’ gifts and wis­dom and desire to release these into the world.

The will­ing­ness to take an eth­i­cal or philo­soph­i­cal stand and to be clear, even when anoth­er per­son or an entire room is against the leader’s actions or ideas. This is a mat­ter of hav­ing and hold­ing to expec­ta­tions for self and others.

Open­ness and dis­clo­sure, includ­ing expe­ri­ences that osten­si­bly cre­ate per­son­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, but which are actu­al­ly state­ments of strength. This is about cre­at­ing the finest dia­logues pos­si­ble, the ones where peo­ple feel whol­ly present and val­ued, the ones where every­one learns from each other.

Oper­at­ing as a mod­el for oth­ers, not inten­tion­al­ly, but sim­ply by virtue of that person’s appar­ent self-trust and desire to live a con­gru­ent life. This is a mat­ter of integri­ty in the sense of whole­ness and consistency.

These qual­i­ties and many oth­ers are reflec­tions of the person’s inner atti­tude, which if found­ed on pro­found good­ness, spills into every­thing that is done. See­ing these “marks” of lead­er­ship, we are influ­enced. The leader’s spark of genius calls to our own. This is called inspi­ra­tion, which is the finest form of influ­ence. We see in the leader’s inner atti­tude a mir­ror for our own pos­si­bil­i­ties. The leader, sim­ply by being present, wakes us up to who we real­ly are, to this pro­found good­ness flow­ing through us, too.

Learn­ing to lead, then, is not a mat­ter of imi­tat­ing these qual­i­ties. They can’t be imi­tat­ed. They are infi­nite­ly rich and infi­nite­ly vari­able. Learn­ing to lead is find­ing the spark, and that hap­pens, when you begin look­ing for it, almost every day.

Two sto­ries, both about the trans­for­ma­tion in groups that hap­pens when the leader shows up in the moment.

Some­times a per­son sur­pris­es him- or her­self. I recall a very tense retreat I facil­i­tat­ed some years ago for a pro­ba­tion depart­ment. It was so tense we had to spend a few moments at the begin­ning dis­cussing whether it was even prac­ti­cal to have this group of man­agers in the same room at the same time. But we did decide to pro­ceed and the group launched into its key task: devel­op­ing a pur­pose state­ment for the orga­ni­za­tion as a whole. There were wide­ly diver­gent views of what such a state­ment should say and soon the room broke into a storm of argu­ments sur­round­ing the word “punishment,” which had been includ­ed in pre­vi­ous pur­pose state­ments. Some vehe­ment­ly believed that the word should be retained. Oth­ers felt it should be dis­card­ed in favor of “rehabilitation.” The argu­ments ranged from sci­ence to CYA (email me if you don’t know what this means), all prin­ci­ples and abstrac­tions, and noth­ing much that was real.

One of the folks in the room, I’ll call him Brad, argued with such deep per­son­al con­vic­tion in favor of reha­bil­i­ta­tion that his voice and his pres­ence absolute­ly stood out — as well as his dress. Among a group of peers most of whom had cho­sen to come in jeans and sweat­shirts, Brad had shown up at the retreat in a three-piece suit and tie, with sus­penders, no less. He was the finance guy, with degrees in both law and busi­ness, and yet the pas­sion in his voice sound­ed like he’d been work­ing on the street with pro­ba­tion­ers all his life.

In order to slow the con­ver­sa­tion down a lit­tle, I asked Brad why he felt so deeply about this mat­ter of choos­ing words. He was silent for a moment and then shared part of his per­son­al sto­ry. Some years before, he said, he had gone through a very rough patch in his life. He was depressed, doubt­ing, unsure of his direc­tions, and although degreed, felt like he did not under­stand where he was going or what his gifts were at all. He had been using drugs and drink­ing way too much. One night in a fit of anguish he inten­tion­al­ly drove his car off a cliff. When he recov­ered, he was sent through the sys­tem, he said, and end­ed up going through the very pro­ba­tion depart­ment the group was dis­cussing. “So, if this had been about ‘punishment,’” Brad con­tin­ued soft­ly, “I’d be dead today. I need­ed help, not more humiliation.”

Only Brad’s super­vi­sor, who was in the room, knew this sto­ry. Now the tone of the con­ver­sa­tion changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Sud­den­ly oth­ers, inspired by Brad’s will­ing­ness to break down the walls, told sto­ries of their own about why they chose to work in the pro­ba­tion depart­ment. Some of them were equal­ly pow­er­ful. This group of man­agers, dis­cov­er­ing their com­mon­al­i­ties as peo­ple, began to put their con­flicts aside. They gave up on the argu­ment in favor of a search for new words, even­tu­al­ly adopt­ing this lan­guage as the pur­pose state­ment of their agency: “to restore the per­son, the vic­tim, and the community.”

It was Brad who for just a moment, had led, real­ly led by allow­ing his heart and his spark to be gen­uine­ly present in the room. In doing so he swung open a door for his team that seemed to have been shut for years.

The sec­ond sto­ry is dif­fer­ent in some ways, lighter for sure. This one also a bit dis­guised, and true. I was work­ing with about thir­ty high lev­el man­agers in a big fed­er­al agency. After a day learn­ing about col­lab­o­ra­tion, the group sat togeth­er with their man­ag­er infor­mal­ly talk­ing over devel­op­ments in Wash­ing­ton. They, too, were depressed. There had been a news release that day from a per­son close to the Pres­i­dent that many felt had been on the edge of an out­right lie. It was one more mes­sage about toe­ing the polit­i­cal line with a high-lev­el threat around the bud­get for fail­ure to do so. The group fell into a kind of “ain’t it awful” dis­course – the kind they might have crit­i­cized their staffs for as a “gripe session.” After a few min­utes of the neg­a­tive talk, one of the mem­bers, Nan, spoke up. Instead of agree­ing or dis­agree­ing with the group, she sim­ply said this: “We have an oppor­tu­ni­ty ahead for boldness.” Bold­ness! As she went on to explain what she meant, the ener­gy tan­gi­bly shift­ed from “We’re screwed!” to “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” Ideas began to flow, pos­si­bil­i­ties began to emerge. A col­league and I watched from the out­skirts of the group. It was like watch­ing a won­der­ful engine start up after hope­less­ly sput­ter­ing. What had Nan done? She had sim­ply remind­ed the group of their good­ness, their capa­bil­i­ties, and their opportunities.

Peo­ple who are con­cerned about their lev­el of per­son­al influ­ence often can be observed to lack one or more of the four qual­i­ties I’ve list­ed above. They don’t see their stake­hold­er­s’ (e.g. peers or employ­ees) gifts, only their fail­ings; they have few real per­son­al bound­aries and are con­stant­ly nego­ti­at­ing in a slip­pery, polit­i­cal world; they don’t dis­close any­thing of deep or mean­ing­ful per­son­al impor­tance – all that has been locked away and kept under seal; and because they do not read­i­ly express their nat­ur­al courage and integri­ty, they are not seen to lead by exam­ple. They claim this is the result of their orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture, and some­times for sure, it is. And they often want tech­niques to lead rather than going to the heart of the prob­lem, which is about rela­tion­ship to self. Many “leadership devel­op­men­t” pro­grams and “assess­ment instru­ments” fail because they con­fuse the exter­nal evi­dence and qual­i­ties of behav­ior expressed by lead­ers wtih the sub­stance of the per­son. As the Zen say­ing goes, “Don’t con­fuse the fin­ger point­ing at the moon with the moon itself.”

In the end, I would say, influ­ence is about direct “contact,” a word I learned from a Seat­tle ther­a­pist and con­sul­tant, Bar­bara Bouchet. Con­tact, as I use the term, means being deeply and direct­ly in touch with anoth­er per­son. As was Brad; as was Nan. This can only come from first being in touch with your­self. Instead of skat­ing around in abstrac­tion or deflec­tion, you come right up against me. Your spir­it, the pow­er of your pres­ence, your real­i­ties and truths come right up against mine and we are com­pelled to look at the con­nec­tions — or lack of them. This is what moves us. When a leader uses his or her inter­nal spark of divin­i­ty for this pur­pose, it is like an act of trans­mis­sion. Call it a radio sig­nal of some kind that cross­es dis­tances between peo­ple as wide as out­er space and equal­ly as dark. Or maybe it’s just a fin­ger snap – the telling one that final­ly wakes us up to ourselves.