Demons and Angels

In a world of prof­fered quick fix­es — do these four things, take on these five steps — all hon­or goes to the leader who ignores super­fi­cial wis­dom and takes on the real task, the inner demon, the one that has been there all along. 

This demon, of course, is some aspect of self, and we might as well say it can be an angel, as well. It’s only at first that the task of true self-mas­tery may seem impos­si­ble and all we can imag­ine is fac­ing some­thing ter­ri­ble or ter­ri­fy­ing. Soon enough, with real com­mit­ment, a dif­fer­ent feel­ing comes in.

This is the art of growth, the will­ing­ness to probe deeply, face and accept what­ev­er truth is there, work through it and wait patient­ly for the shift from fear to courage — and joy.

I remem­ber a client from many years ago who was strug­gling with an employ­ee, a sub­or­di­nate man­ag­er, who could say or do things that were gross­ly insult­ing to his employ­ees. Even though the con­text was a heavy con­struc­tion cul­ture that could quite rough and tum­ble and macho, the man­ag­er stood out for his abu­sive tantrums. Usu­al­ly, the man­ag­er was okay, even a cheer­ful voice in the crowd, but when he came down, he could come down on peo­ple in a mer­ci­less way. Nat­u­ral­ly, my client (the man­ager’s boss) want­ed to gain some con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion. It was the clas­sic cir­cum­stance of a tough, tech­ni­cal­ly expe­ri­enced man­ag­er who made mon­ey for the com­pa­ny but whose style also had a sig­nif­i­cant down­side. Yet my client had a dif­fi­cult time con­fronting the man­ag­er about his out­bursts — he found him­self get­ting so hos­tile, he felt he was exem­pli­fy­ing the very prob­lems he was condemning.

One day my client med­i­tat­ed on the prob­lem in a par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cen­trat­ed way, lit­er­al­ly tak­ing a day off to try to dis­cern what he should do. He found a qui­et place in a field among some aspens to think things over. It was then he remem­bered one par­tic­u­lar scene from his own teenage years. The scene had to do with pro­tect­ing his moth­er from phys­i­cal abuse by his father. He’d watched it hap­pen many times before in his ear­ly life, but now he was big enough to step in and he’d just watched his father hit his moth­er. He phys­i­cal­ly grabbed his father and told him in no uncer­tain terms that if he ever did any­thing like that again, he’d kill him. 

My client made an impor­tant con­nec­tion that day, years lat­er. He could see that it was only nat­ur­al when­ev­er his sub­or­di­nate man­ag­er did some­thing insen­si­tive and my client heard about it, that old mem­o­ries — an old rage — would be trig­gered and threat­en to flood him. The rage he felt was not just anger, but the kind of excru­ci­at­ing­ly help­less anger a child might feel when some­thing goes hor­ri­bly wrong between a moth­er and father. Sud­den­ly he knew where that feel­ing came from and he under­stood the pro­jec­tion: — plac­ing his father’s face on the man­ag­er. He found him­self back in that hor­ri­ble, trag­ic fam­i­ly bat­tle and bul­ly­ing of the vul­ner­a­ble; father over moth­er, father over son — and now boss over employee.

That was a turn­ing point. He began to mas­ter his own reac­tiv­i­ty and inher­it­ed rage, bet­ter under­stand­ing its ori­gins. He found he could set a rea­son­able lim­it for the man­ag­er with­out him­self get­ting “hooked” so bad­ly. He was able to hold the man­ag­er account­able in a more rea­son­able way. Even­tu­al­ly, when the man­ag­er con­tin­ued to act out and failed my clien­t’s expec­ta­tions for change, my client fired him. Not every­one in the com­pa­ny agreed then or lat­er — it left a hole in com­pa­ny’s tech­ni­cal exper­tise — but in his heart my client knew he had been thor­ough about coach­ing his man­ag­er, and it was the right thing.

He had accom­plished a most basic aspect of lead­ing: reflec­tion to under­stand, to make things gen­uine­ly con­scious, not just to react. Based on that, he’d made a dif­fi­cult per­son­al call. 

Is such reflec­tion ever a per­fect process? No, there are no guar­an­tees. Some might read the sto­ry and say, “yes, but.” Yes, but how would you ever know whether my clien­t’s actions weren’t at least some­what uncon­scious? That his pro­jec­tion was­n’t still over­tak­ing him, that he had exag­ger­at­ed the man­ager’s crimes? How do you know the ter­mi­na­tion was tru­ly in the best inter­ests of the com­pa­ny? Maybe revenge was still hid­ing some­where in the wings and the sit­u­a­tion real­ly was­n’t that bad. Maybe my client secret­ly took plea­sure in the firing.

I sup­pose you can nev­er know any of that in any absolute, per­fect way. 

In this case, how­ev­er, I’ve pre­ferred over the years to trust my clien­t’s judg­ment. He made the call, I believe, based on the evi­dence and the impact of the man­ager’s behav­ior. And I’ve cho­sen to trust the inner angel he had wait­ed for so long.

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