I think good leadership requires being confident about where you’re going while remaining curious about how you’ll get there. I’m comfortable saying, “I don’t know. Let’s figure it out together,” because the best ideas usually emerge when people feel empowered to bring their own expertise and perspective to the conversation. Confidence creates momentum, but humility leaves room for something better than the idea you started with.
As humans, we have always clung to our need for certainty. But the reality is, our state of being is uncertainty—which has always been disguised and clouded by our illusions of certainty.
So, perhaps it’s time for a new prescription.
Because here’s the thing—seeing differently is leading differently. And leadership is not really about achieving perfect clarity. It is about accurately perceiving reality, creating meaning, and then helping people move through ambiguity.
Many of the best talks have a narrative structure that loosely follows a detective story. The speaker starts out by presenting a problem and then describes the search for a solution. There’s an “aha” moment, and the audience’s perspective shifts in a meaningful way.
If a talk fails, it’s almost always because the speaker didn’t frame it correctly, misjudged the audience’s level of interest, or neglected to tell a story. Even if the topic is important, random pontification without narrative is always deeply unsatisfying. There’s no progression, and you don’t feel that you’re learning.
Both abundance and lack [of abundance] exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend … when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present—love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature, and personal pursuits that bring us [happiness]—the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience heaven on earth.
John Cook, comp., The Book of Positive Quotations, 2nd ed. (2007), 342, as quoted in Thomas S. Monson, “Finding Joy in the Journey,” Ensign, Nov 2008, 84–87
If at the end of practice I said to (my boxing coach) Earl Blair , "See you tomorrow," he'd say, "See you tomorrow, if the Lord spares me." If I dropped him off at his house and said, "I'll see you Monday," he'd say, "See you Monday, if the Lord spares me."
Every time a plan was made, Earl would say, "If the Lord spares me." If you asked him about this, he'd tell you that it was, in part, a way of being respectful to God: "My Father owns every second, and he'll take me when he wants to."
It was also a way of practicing death - of reminding yourself and others around you that your time is limited.
One of my favorite books is The Power of Ethical Management, written by Ken Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale. In their book, Blanchard and Peale discuss the five principles of ethical decision-making which they call the “Five P’s of Ethical Power.”...
Purpose—Your purpose is the road you choose to travel, the meaning and direction of your life. It’s the driving force of why you do what you do. For some it may be rooted in their spiritual faith. Others may find their purpose is something they feel called to do, such as serving those in need, raising responsible children, or leaving the world a better place than they found it. Aligning the activities of your life according to your purpose gives you a clear sense of direction, so when you’re faced with challenging circumstances or difficult decisions, you’re able to filter those occasions through the lens of your purpose and make choices that keep you on track.
Pride—Unlike false pride, which stems from a distorted sense of self-importance that causes people to believe and act like they are better than others, a healthy sense of pride springs from a positive self-image and confidence in one’s abilities. A proper sense of pride mixed with a good dose of humility is the balance you’re seeking. Being driven by false pride causes you to seek the approval and acceptance of others which can overly influence you to take the easy way out when faced with a tough situation.
Patience—Patience is in short supply in our culture. We live in a hyper-connected, instantaneous world where virtually anything we want is just a click away. Blanchard and Peale describe patience as having a faith and belief that things will work out well, as long as we stick to our values and principles. Giving in to instant gratification is one of the biggest temptations we face and it causes us to make decisions that aren’t in alignment with our purpose and values. Enduring the struggles and challenges life throws our way helps develop the strength of our character. Much like prematurely opening a caterpillar cocoon leads to a weakened and under-developed butterfly, choosing the path of expediency leaves us with an under-developed character and weakens our ethical power.
Persistence—This component of ethical power is about staying the course and remaining true to your purpose and values. Persistence is about commitment, not interest. When you have interest in something, you do it when it’s convenient. When you’re committed, you do it no matter what! One of my favorite “Yoda-isms” from the Star Wars movies is “Do or do not. There is no try.” When it comes to making ethical decisions, there is never a right time to do the wrong thing. Persistence keeps us on the straight and narrow path.
Perspective—All the other elements of ethical power emanate from the core of perspective. Perspective is about having the big picture view of situations and understanding what’s truly important. Too often we make snap decisions in the heat of the moment and neglect to step back and examine the situation from a bigger perspective. Maintaining the proper perspective is also about paying attention to our inner-self and not just our task-oriented outer-self. Taking the time to enter each day with prayer, meditation, exercise, or solitude helps foster self-reflection which is needed to help us maintain the right perspective about life.
While Kelly’smission was primarily a stepping-stone for sending astronauts to Mars, he gained a new perspective on the Earth and the environment. From his view, Kelly was able to see the Earth’s climate in a new light – observing weather systems and pollution in a way he could never experience from Earth.
Intentionally stepping out of the typical day-to-day can help people see situations from a new – and often unexpected – perspective. Effective leaders recognize the benefit and learning that stems from these new perspectives. They are open to experiencing the bigger picture, so they can identify new barriers, challenges, contexts and opportunities.
Awakened leadership is reflective. When you reflect on things, you consider them from multiple angles, and think deeper about them than a superficial thought or two. Your job, position, work relationships, the industry you are involved in, the very purpose of your performance, your private or social connections, the things you say, the things you do, and those you refrain from saying and doing: reflecting on all of the above can help you understand yourself better, and make you more mindful from here onward....
Awakened leadership is the continued awareness in your thoughts, actions, and communications that:
You have to make your decisions by reflecting on your lessons learned from past experiences, but even more by reflection on your wishes for the future and the possible effects these decisions will have on that.
You should consider the perspectives of others, and keep an open mind to potentially different ideas, which as they may enrich your understanding, insight, and consequently, the directions you will choose going forward.
You should question, even doubt, established patterns and procedures, as many of them were created when times, expectations, circumstances, goals, and mindsets, were entirely different. If you find that the old patterns and procedures still suffice, you can continue with them, but if you find that there is room for improvement or drastic change, you should implement that.
You should keep in mind that, while details are important to safeguard quality in everything, you also have to keep the big picture in mind, so that you can focus on what really matters in the long run.
You should make mindful leadership your new habit. Your mind is a wonderful instrument, but it has the tendency to lead you astray at every opportunity it gets. This is the time to step up in awareness and regain control over the directions your mind moves into.
Restore your priorities in the right order, and realize the impermanence of everything, including yourself. If you can keep yourself mindful of the fact that you want to leave this world a better place than you encountered it, you have set an important step on the path to awakened leadership.
Mindfulness is the process of actively noticing new things. When you do that, it puts you in the present. It makes you more sensitive to context and perspective. It’s the essence of engagement. And it’s energy-begetting, not energy-consuming. The mistake most people make is to assume it’s stressful and exhausting—all this thinking. But what’s stressful is all the mindless negative evaluations we make and the worry that we’ll find problems and not be able to solve them.
We all seek stability. We want to hold things still, thinking that if we do, we can control them. But since everything is always changing, that doesn’t work. Actually, it causes you to lose control.
Take work processes. When people say, “This is the way to do it,” that’s not true. There are always many ways, and the way you choose should depend on the current context. You can’t solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions. So when someone says, “Learn this so it’s second nature,” let a bell go off in your head, because that means mindlessness. The rules you were given were the rules that worked for the person who created them, and the more different you are from that person, the worse they’re going to work for you. When you’re mindful, rules, routines, and goals guide you; they don’t govern you.
In some ways, I saw the garden as a metaphor for certain aspects of my life. A leader must also tend his garden; he, too, plants seeds and then watches, cultivates, and harvests the result. Like the gardener, a leader must take responsibility for what he cultivates, he must mind his work, try to repel enemies, preserve what can be preserved, and eliminate what cannot succeed.
I wrote Winnie two letters about a particularly beautiful tomato plant, how I coaxed it from a tender seedling to a robust plant that produced deep red fruit. But, then, either through some mistake or lack of care, the plant began to wither and decline, and nothing I did would bring it back to health. When it finally died, I removed the roots from the soil, washed them, and buried them in a corner of the garden.
I narrated this small story at great length. I do not know what she read into that letter, but when I wrote it I had a mixture of feelings: I did not want our relationship to go the way of that plant, and yet I felt that I had been unable to nourish many of the most important relationships in my life. Sometimes there is nothing one can do to save something that must die.
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