The Master Blows It Out

Lead­ing is more or less drenched in the assump­tions of individualism. 

At least in Unit­ed States cul­ture, the tra­di­tion­al belief is that lead­ing oth­ers depends on hav­ing a strong, clear sense of self, one that is more or less unas­sail­able by cir­cum­stances or the arbi­trary per­cep­tions of oth­ers. Even when there is an aware­ness — aware­ness that learn­ing is going on con­stant­ly; aware­ness that the sense of self itself is evolv­ing all the time — still there is the base­line expec­ta­tion that the leader is strong enough to pull peo­ple togeth­er, align them, and serve as a guide. 

And this is just as true for “ser­vant lead­ers,” who also are sup­posed to have a firm sense of the unselfish self. Even there it’s about being some­body, a who, a defined indi­vid­ual who shows up in his or her per­son­al clar­i­ty and pow­er, along with stature and a title — even if the pur­pose of all that is to give that pow­er away. With­out that sense of per­sona, the leader may well have to sus­tain crit­i­cism that their lead­er­ship isn’t clear or pur­pose­ful enough. Lead­ers are expect­ed to “step up” or step in, call impor­tant shots, move oth­ers to break log jams via per­son­al pres­ence or clever solu­tions and the knowl­edge that lead­ers are, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, expect­ed to possess.

Some­times I’ve heard peo­ple in my pro­fes­sion say that mod­ern lead­ing is not so much about a par­tic­u­lar per­son as about cer­tain behav­iors, such as pre­sent­ing a clear vision, bring­ing for­ward a pos­i­tive vibe, or resolv­ing a big dilem­ma, but even there, in assert­ing the idea that “we can all be lead­ers,” the focus is still on indi­vid­u­als and the roles in the moment they choose to play.

Hence, when we dis­cuss lead­er­ship devel­op­ment it’s all about the refine­ment of the self. In a way this is prob­a­bly inevitable. We can­not eas­i­ly escape our her­itage. We talk about “self-actu­al­iza­tion.” We prac­tice emo­tion­al intel­li­gence and agili­ty. And in this process we intend to “live our best lives,” a process of grad­ual but con­stant self-improve­ment. Orga­ni­za­tion­al­ly, we rein­force this self-per­fect­ing through per­son­al­ly ori­ent­ed per­for­mance appraisals and a con­tin­u­ing empha­sis on the impor­tance of indi­vid­ual feed­back for growth. As a lead­er­ship con­sul­tant, I am guilty of all of this.

And yet I also want to ask if this goal of per­fect­ing the indi­vid­ual actu­al­ly gets us what we want? Or is there an error in the system?

I am not sug­gest­ing that the alter­na­tive is some kind of “col­lec­tivism,” mean­ing an empha­sis on groups. Groups, just like indi­vid­u­als (and we have seen many exam­ples of this late­ly) are just as prone to delu­sions, often called “group-think.” Groups can be self-serv­ing, sub­ver­sive and self-pro­tec­tive, too. 

In fact, I would say that the cur­rent cul­ture of the Unit­ed States, appar­ent­ly focused on indi­vid­u­al­ism, has become espe­cial­ly open to group delu­sion. Each of us wants — needs — a home base from which to mea­sure the agency of our lives and this can make us par­tic­u­lar­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to fol­low­ing for­mu­las for self-accep­tance that are manip­u­la­ble, espe­cial­ly by author­i­ty fig­ures. The more oth­er peo­ple seem to agree on the cor­rect­ness of a for­mu­la the more we may tie our “indi­vid­u­al­i­ty” to that norm, what­ev­er it might be. This kind of indi­vid­u­al­ism is real­ly just con­for­mi­ty in sheep­’s cloth­ing. We fit in by adopt­ing a false eth­ic of a com­mon­ly accept­ed kind of self­hood. Could there be a stronger or more delu­sion­al (but com­fort­ing) form of con­for­mi­ty than the illu­sion of indi­vid­u­al­ism, espe­cial­ly when it becomes a de fac­to loy­al­ty test?

The oth­er day, for exam­ple, I read an arti­cle by a pro­fes­sor who want­ed to encour­age peo­ple to “think for them­selves.” What he trans­par­ent­ly meant, how­ev­er, was that peo­ple should adopt con­ser­v­a­tive stand­points and val­ues. It would­n’t have mat­tered if his advo­ca­cy were meant to encour­age adopt­ing lib­er­al ones. The point is that for him think­ing for your­self was a polit­i­cal act with­in the con­text of the cur­rent cul­tur­al polar­iza­tion. He was real­ly say­ing: “Don’t think for your­self; call it that but think like us, be one of us.”

The idea of the self is what I am talk­ing about here, and the temp­ta­tion to make it some­thing sol­id when as a pure­ly polit­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal (or even spir­i­tu­al) fab­ri­ca­tion it is not that sol­id at all. I am not say­ing ego is an unnat­ur­al thing — quite the con­trary, it is as nat­ur­al as wings are to a bird. But is there any­thing beyond this polar­i­ty of self­ish and unselfish lead­er­ship? That loves the self but sees it in the con­text of a greater uni­verse that sur­pass­es human cog­nizance and attempts to con­trol? That frames our inter­de­pen­dence — with each oth­er, with our world, with nature — more effectively?

So you see, I am won­der­ing if there is a field any more drenched in this notion of indi­vid­u­al­ism, of becom­ing and being some­one, than lead­er­ship. Why else would there be so many books and pod­casts and YouTube videos on lead­er­ship? Why else this search for a per­fect­ed self­hood brought for­ward in count­less posts with three or five or how­ev­er many steps or points? If only we absorb them and live their wis­dom, the promise goes, our suf­fer­ing will be done, our prob­lems with self and oth­ers will be done. Even if the style of these recipes ulti­mate­ly adds up to a human­is­tic per­spec­tive and aims to bring many voic­es togeth­er toward com­mon val­ues and action, are we not still left with an illu­sion, beau­ti­ful as that may be?

Sup­pose we sim­ply say that all these images, heuris­tic over-sim­pli­fi­ca­tions, log­i­cal for­mu­las and trea­tis­es, each super­sed­ing the next and sup­posed to gal­va­nize our growth, nev­er do form any ulti­mate answer — the fact of who we are always escapes.

Sup­pose we say sim­ply that we must be care­ful about the self we choose to chase. Real indi­vid­u­al­i­ty is a deep­er riv­er, a big­ger ques­tion, per­haps, than we shall ever know. We have glimpses of it in var­i­ous arts, in a paint­ing or poem, a piece of music, in the tran­sience of autumn leaves blow­ing by, dri­ven by the wind.

There is a sim­ple and beau­ti­ful Zen sto­ry about a monk and mas­ter. It gets late in the evening and the mas­ter sug­gests the monk retire. The monk gets up to leave, opens the screen to go out and says, “It is very dark out­side.” The mas­ter offers the monk a light­ed can­dle to find his way, but just as the monk receives it the mas­ter blows it out.