The God Who Has My Back

I have been think­ing about a phrase I used in my last post about self-trust. Sym­bol­i­cal­ly, I said, I have “a god at my back,” mean­ing sim­ply that there is an ener­gy that sup­ports me from with­in when I meet dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. Many peo­ple report hav­ing this sense, and know it has got­ten them through hard moments or hard times. I think of Eliz­a­beth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame and her recent TED talk on cre­ative genius. In this short, inspir­ing pre­sen­ta­tion she talks about the “glimpse of God,” the inner genius that is expressed through art, the prod­uct of gifts that are only “on loan” to the artist. We know them when we see them in oth­ers. And I would add that we feel them come through our­selves with a deep sense of flow.

I am remind­ed of a col­league, I’ll call her Lin­da, who worked for a very tough, demand­ing CEO. After the hol­i­day sea­son, com­pa­ny man­agers and their teams got togeth­er for what promised to be a cel­e­bra­tion of a high­ly suc­cess­ful sales effort. Lin­da’s team had sur­passed all their pro­jec­tions and they were rid­ing high. How­ev­er, instead of rec­og­niz­ing these accom­plish­ments with praise, the CEO chose instead to pub­licly crit­i­cize mem­bers of Lin­da’s team in the meet­ing for their lack­lus­ter per­for­mance. In that moment, Lin­da stepped between the CEO and her team and imme­di­ate­ly asked the CEO to direct his remarks to her, not her team mem­bers. If he had a prob­lem with the team’s per­for­mance, she said, he should plain­ly address it to her. She also asked the CEO direct­ly why he felt a need to crit­i­cize a team that just sur­passed its pro­jec­tions — a ques­tion for which he had no answer. Lat­er, and after a long series of con­ver­sa­tions cov­er­ing many months, Lin­da and the CEO decid­ed togeth­er it would be best for her to leave the firm. It was more than clear to her that the CEO loved his oppor­tu­ni­ties to grand­stand and hook peo­ple into con­fronta­tion­al meet­ings through out­ra­geous crit­i­cism. I think of this sto­ry because I know Lin­da well and I can see her there stand­ing her ground calm­ly, ask­ing for respect. To lis­ten to her tell the sto­ry is to expe­ri­ence her pro­found gen­uine­ness, her real truth and authen­tic­i­ty. This is a clas­sic case, as is the sto­ry I told in this post on lead­er­ship as a call­ing, of some­one will­ing to move into tense, uncom­fort­able space in order to change the sta­tus quo. When such demand­ing moments hap­pen and we have the priv­i­lege to see some­one lead­ing, it is exact­ly this same “glimpse of God” that Eliz­a­beth Gilbert elo­quent­ly described in her speech. We have all seen and felt that divine ener­gy come through.

I believe this is one of the most chal­leng­ing thoughts I could pos­si­bly put for­ward about lead­ing. Because what I am not doing is pre­sent­ing a for­mu­la for how actu­al­ly to respond when the tough moments hap­pen. I am not shar­ing a list of key phras­es to use with peo­ple in pow­er, suit­able for Pow­er­point. I am not cater­ing to intel­lec­tu­al solu­tions that please the ego and attempt to use slick inter­per­son­al tech­nique to replace truth in the moment. And I am cer­tain­ly not telling any­one to go back to church to learn more about all this sim­ply because the lan­guage sounds spir­i­tu­al. What I am say­ing instead is that unless a per­son wakes up to their own source of this ener­gy, the lead­er­ship they might bring will always be bound­ed and their pres­ence diminished.

Per­haps you feel some anger, as I do, for the sit­u­a­tion Lin­da was placed in, or some anger that in the end she decid­ed to leave with­out any par­tic­u­lar change or new under­stand­ing by her boss. These are the shoulds of the sit­u­a­tion and they are pre­cise­ly what trap us and vic­tim­ize us, along with fear of let­ting out the force with­in. If I were to spec­u­late, I would say that Lin­da was larg­er than the sit­u­a­tion and she did what she was des­tined to do. No one speaks eas­i­ly of this real­i­ty — that once the sacred ener­gy has learned to express itself, the lead­er’s path becomes unique and there­fore alone. This does not mean that the leader has no friends or com­mu­ni­ty or can­not sus­tain dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ships. To the con­trary. But it does mean that the inner strength that moves peo­ple out of con­for­mi­ty and com­pli­ance also caus­es them to see dif­fer­ent­ly and to take paths that they alone can take.

Over all the hilltops
There is silence.
In the tops of the trees,
You feel
Hard­ly a breath.
The birds have fall­en silent in the woods.
Sim­ply wait.
Soon,
You too will be silent.

– Goethe

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