I Am the Pot

There is a whole tra­di­tion in the def­i­n­i­tion of lead­er­ship that has to do with what lead­ers do not do them­selves. The Tao Te Ching is full of that tra­di­tion — express­ing the very foun­da­tions of a phi­los­o­phy and aes­thet­ics that depend on an expect­ed inter­play between absence and pres­ence, an object such as a pot and the spaces that sur­round it. We do have our cor­re­lates in the West. For exam­ple, it to often said that the job of a leader is to set a vision, direc­tion, or major strate­gic goals while it is up to oth­ers to deter­mine how these things will be achieved. But this per­spec­tive and the log­ic behind it are often dead­en­ing­ly lin­ear, mechan­i­cal, and expe­di­ent­ly focused on the end it mind. They may have lit­tle to do with a real appre­ci­a­tion for the bal­ance and inter­play of uni­ver­sal forces — or of peo­ple. They may be based on notions of supe­ri­or­i­ty and dominance.

I am always impressed when I observe lead­ers who are effec­tive pre­cise­ly because they:

• do not fill up much airtime

• do not see them­selves as nec­es­sar­i­ly hav­ing the best or smartest answers

• do not need to be total­ly in control

• do not believe they are the only ones who feel responsible

• know they do not under­stand everything

When I talk with lead­ers about par­tic­i­pa­tion and equi­ty, I also some­times hear them blame oth­ers for what seems like a lack of reciprocity:

“I give team mem­bers lots of chances of par­tic­i­pate, but they just go quiet.”

“Peo­ple don’t seem to want to take any risks.”

“They tell me its my job to make the deci­sions, so they wait for my answers.”

Feel­ings like these at one time or anoth­er seem to haunt those who want to be seen as open, sup­port­ive lead­ers. And they may take it per­son­al­ly, even though on anoth­er lev­el they also know that such behav­ior is sim­ply the inher­i­tance of old cul­tur­al norms. They want a more bal­anced view, an escape from old styles of super­vi­sion and man­age­ment. They want the real exchange, a gen­uine team.

Get­ting it right can be a true art. I remem­ber an exer­cise I facil­i­tat­ed some time ago with a small orga­ni­za­tion made up of the founder, a four per­son exec­u­tive group, and forty or so key staff. I asked the founder and exec­u­tives not to talk while the rest of the room dis­cussed the orga­ni­za­tion’s cul­ture. It was rev­e­la­to­ry for the founder as he lis­tened to his orga­ni­za­tion because he could see that being qui­et him­self encour­aged peo­ple to start their own real dia­logue. They were will­ing to be quite real­is­tic about some major resource ques­tions and were begin­ning on their own to address con­flicts he had assumed he would have to han­dle alone. 

This exam­ple of the pow­er of absence in turn reminds me of what is known as the “crit­i­cal friends process,” based orig­i­nal­ly, as I under­stand it, on Quak­er prin­ci­ples. This sim­ple process involves small groups help­ing indi­vid­u­als by using a high­ly struc­tured prob­lem-solv­ing for­mat. The “absence” part comes as the per­son who is seek­ing solu­tions inten­tion­al­ly is qui­et while oth­ers share their ideas for how he or she could best address the prob­lem that per­son has pre­sent­ed to the team. In essence, a “leader” is momen­tar­i­ly pushed out of the group in order to bet­ter lis­ten and also to give explic­it free­dom to oth­ers to share their ideas. In the crit­i­cal friends process, the indi­vid­ual lit­er­al­ly push­es his or her chair back from the group. When I have facil­i­tat­ed the process, I have encour­aged peo­ple to talk about the per­son tem­porar­i­ly removed in third per­son only, “he or she,” not “you,” to fur­ther remove the indi­vid­ual psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly. It’s almost as if the per­son is being talked about behind his or her back, except the per­son, a short dis­tance away, is still actu­al­ly there and is hear­ing everything. 

The crit­i­cal friends process focus­es on an absence that changes speak­ing and inter­act­ing into lis­ten­ing and receiv­ing. No big sur­pris­es there. But it can also pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for some­thing quite mag­i­cal to hap­pen — depend­ing on the cir­cum­stances, indi­vid­ual and prob­lem. And this is to give a per­son a chance to real­ly sur­ren­der, to lis­ten with­out hav­ing to solve. This, in turn, may open up path­ways to insight and new under­stand­ing. Our own absence, our own silence can unstop our ears. Then, if we are real­ly open, it can change our minds.

And if that can hap­pen, equi­ty, bal­ance, real exchange and dia­logue can be reborn among peo­ple, includ­ing the leader. 

This all seems too sim­ple to write down, and yet it is not so sim­ple at all. We are clogged with our needs to remain who we are, to jus­ti­fy and defend. To sur­ren­der depends on lis­ten­ing to our own absence in a par­tic­u­lar way, so that whether we end up lis­ten­ing in that silence to oth­ers’ actu­al words, to the sound of a moun­tain stream, to the noise of traf­fic beyond a hotel win­dow, or with­in our­selves very deeply to empti­ness itself, what comes in to us involves accep­tance of our lev­el of agency and its real lim­its. We can only do — we can only be — so much. And then we must turn it over. The very word, sur­ren­der, comes from roots that mean “to give it back.” 

A good ques­tion, then, to ask our­selves next time we are stuck might be about what we must “give back”: a par­tic­u­lar ambi­tion, a need to be right, a desire to influ­ence or change some­one else, an illu­sion, a desire to be per­fect or per­fect­ly congruent. 

It seems to me that could be the secret and this, then, could be the mantra: 

I am the pot and I would do bet­ter to emp­ty myself for the time being. Then I might lis­ten, appre­ci­at­ing the space that sur­rounds me and that could fill me up — if I let it. I sur­ren­der, and in so doing, car­ry my hopes of dis­cov­er­ing a dif­fer­ent, bet­ter way.

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