The Question is How

If you like, you can lis­ten to me read this post.

In my last post about how true lead­ers influ­ence oth­ers, I talked about the impor­tance of con­nect­ing with a sense of pro­found good­ness flow­ing through one’s core. Giv­en the day-to-day stress­es of our per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lives it is dif­fi­cult some­times to stay in touch with this sense and to be a chan­nel for it in our lives.

I did an infor­mal sur­vey yes­ter­day, ask­ing this ques­tion of three peo­ple who I think are pret­ty astute: “How do you go about releas­ing the real good­ness in peo­ple?” I got three very dif­fer­ent answers. The first per­son replied, “Well, isn’t that the $64,000 ques­tion? I haven’t got a clue.” This was a very hon­est answer and reflects just how big and philo­soph­i­cal the ques­tion real­ly is. The sec­ond per­son said she thought this was all about help­ing peo­ple see their own good­ness and encour­ag­ing them to express it. This is done, she said, by help­ing oth­ers to rec­og­nize their own unique tal­ents, remind­ing them of these capa­bil­i­ties and poten­tials, reward­ing them for those times when they dis­play their gifts through accom­plish­ment, and help­ing them focus on their con­tri­bu­tions rather than fail­ures. This is a won­der­ful answer, and cer­tain­ly com­plete in its own way. The third per­son had a dif­fer­ent take. He said he thought peo­ple could not get in touch with their own good­ness unless they had faced some real adver­si­ty in their lives, forc­ing them to dig deep­er to con­front them­selves. Only when a per­son has come face to face with hard­ship and done the soul-search­ing, does he or she real­ly find and touch that core. His answer implies that we best help oth­ers wake up to them­selves by being good wit­ness­es and “hold­ing the space” for one oth­er when we are suffering.

Of course, there are many more answers and sure­ly you have your own. For me the answer isn’t a sin­gle set of action steps. Each per­son comes from a dif­fer­ent set of con­di­tions and faces a unique strug­gle. In that regard I like an answer some­one shared with me a few years ago, one that comes from an African tribe. If a young per­son com­mits a crime in this tribe, as often as not the “pun­ish­ment” is to sit with the elders and recite every good thing that has ever hap­pened in life to him or her. Seems to me that might be a pret­ty good method for those of us who com­mit the every­day crime of for­get­ting who we are.

This reminds me of a famous poem by Bill Stafford called, “A Sto­ry That Could Be True.” Here it is:

If you were exchanged in the cra­dle and
your real moth­er died
with­out ever telling the story
and some­where in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.

He can nev­er find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the rob­beries of the rain
you stand in the cor­ner shivering.
The peo­ple who go by–
you won­der at their calm.

They miss the whis­per that runs
any day in your mind,
“Who are you real­ly, wanderer?”–
and the answer you have to give
no mat­ter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
“Maybe I’m a king.”