Peo­ple nat­u­ral­ly turn to those they con­sid­er lead­ers in times of cri­sis — for answers, deci­sions, emo­tion­al sup­port, for a clear path through tense real­i­ties that risk immense and painful change. If you want evi­dence of this turn toward lead­er­ship, note the wide-spread cri­tique of the Pres­i­den­t’s inac­tions, cor­rup­tions and lies well rep­re­sent­ed by this Boston Globe edi­to­r­i­al.

It’s impor­tant to bring the mes­sage down to you and me, this notion that a cri­sis defines the point when pres­sure for effec­tive lead­er­ship is at its high­est, when oth­ers expect the most of us. While for some that pres­sure inex­plic­a­bly feels good — “I was born for this,” a client said to me recent­ly — the pres­sure also con­tains big risks for both effec­tive­ness and the well-being of the leader. Per­haps the great­est of these risks is the age-old one of self-delusion:

Can you see how in its way each of these state­ments poten­tial­ly rep­re­sents a per­son­al myth or for­mu­la that might dri­ve dys­func­tion­al behav­ior? Such for­mu­las are com­fort­ing to the leader. They seem to offer tem­plates for action and rules for self-eval­u­a­tion under try­ing cir­cum­stances. But they also can release “the beast,” mean­ing unex­am­ined behav­ior, blame, defen­sive­ness, hid­ing and self-jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. Unex­am­ined behav­ior by def­i­n­i­tion is uncon­scious­ly con­di­tioned, dri­ven less by an actu­al sit­u­a­tion and what to do about it than ingrained per­son­al assump­tions and beliefs that ful­fill a fan­ta­sy — in this case of leading.

Now, the goal isn’t to over­think every­thing in a cri­sis, but it makes sense to notice — prefer­ably in advance — how our most hide-bound pri­vate rules and suc­cess for­mu­las show up all too eas­i­ly in high-stakes sit­u­a­tions. Adver­si­ty can bring out not so much our best or worst selves but sim­ply anoth­er side of our per­sona, a side that we are like­ly less famil­iar with — and that’s the dan­ger. If Socrates’ dic­tum, “the unex­am­ined life is not worth liv­ing,” rep­re­sents a val­ued form of self-lead­er­ship, then sure­ly reflect­ing how we lead in crises can tell us an awful lot. It can also pre­pare us to rec­og­nize when we are falling into those old pat­terns and to release them in favor of more prac­ti­cal, time­ly, sit­u­a­tion­al and sen­si­tive approaches.

Max DePree, Chair­man of Her­man Miller, Inc. in the 1980’s wrote a best-sell­ing clas­sic called, Lead­er­ship Is an Art. He begins an ear­ly chap­ter with the notion that “The first respon­si­bil­i­ty of a leader is to define real­i­ty.” Think of that idea from the stand­point of address­ing a cri­sis and how impor­tant call­ing out the truth is as both a chal­lenge and as a reas­sur­ance of our capa­bil­i­ties to deal with it. But DePree also goes on in the same para­graph to report a friend’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of lead­ers: “They don’t inflict pain; they bear pain.” They define real­i­ty, they bear pain. This, it seems to me, is a good place to begin think­ing about what lead­er­ship looks like gen­er­al­ly, but espe­cial­ly in a crisis. 

I would add one oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tic. Yes­ter­day, I hap­pened to read a (very like­ly) bogus state­ment cir­cu­lat­ing on Face­book writ­ten by “White Eagle, Hopi indige­nous” about how to behave in the pan­dem­ic cri­sis. It begins: “This moment human­i­ty is going through can now be seen as a por­tal and as a hole. The deci­sion to fall into the hole or go through the por­tal is up to you.” While the rest of the state­ment may well be an offen­sive appro­pri­a­tion of Native Amer­i­can motifs tinged with occultism, I do like this ini­tial thought. A cri­sis can be thought of as either a hole or a por­tal. I would say that the Boston Globe edi­to­r­i­al linked above is crit­i­cal of the Pres­i­dent pre­cise­ly because as a leader he has not only denied real­i­ty and inflict­ed pain, but also because he seems to have fall­en into a hole rather than tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for guid­ing our com­mu­ni­ties through a por­tal — a por­tal being the entry point to a bet­ter world. 

You may well have oth­er thoughts and ideas. Right now I think these three char­ac­ter­is­tics serve well as coun­ter­points to oth­er beliefs and assump­tions. It’s a strange and dan­ger­ous spring, all too fre­quent­ly and euphemisti­cal­ly called, “these chal­leng­ing times.” The real­i­ty is so much tougher, the pain so very much greater. 

And sure­ly that por­tal is still wait­ing to be opened in this defin­ing moment.