Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of October 6th
Personal and Public
Leadership is an art. One of the finer points of this art is one’s ability to balance personal and public needs. On the one hand leaders must make their leadership resonate with each individual, attuned to the needs of the individual. Leaders do this by cultivating deep, trustworthy, and highly textured relationships with their people–knowing their fears and aspirations; goals and barriers; hopes and anxieties. On the other hand, leaders must make their leadership resonate with the group as a collective entity—what we might call the public face of leadership. I believe all groups have an intrinsic, almost DNA-level need to be part of a great enterprise, a heroic purpose, and a grand ambition. Groups need to feel infused with common purpose and deep meaning to lift them above the tyranny of small private worlds and into something that is magnificent. Groups want high stakes and great challenges, as long as the leader can define those larger purposes with meaning and clarity. Leaders must master the art of leadership and make their leadership both personal and public.
A Creative Redoubt
Leaders need to find purposeful solitude; a trustworthy place for reflection, contemplation, and quiet time allowing better questions and wiser answers to arise. I think of this place of solitude as a creative redoubt—a place were a leader goes to refresh, regain vitality, reawaken purpose, and rekindle heroic ambition. The forms of a creative redoubt are many—a quit room, a long walk, travel to a distant land, the wilderness. The key is to find a place where the normal busyness and chaos of work-a-day life are removed and one feels totally detached. This is what, in past societies was thought of as a retreat; an apt name as one truly does need to retreat occasionally from the world of doing to the realm of thinking. We need a fortress of solitude. Most great leaders I have studied have discovered this vital habit–Thomas Jefferson, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill to name a few. Truly, each were men fully engaged in the arena, yet they also understood the need to exit the arena to regain balance and vitality.
Distilling Complexity Into Clarity
A vital thing leaders must do is provide a clear and energizing vision of our future end state. In this role leaders must be both idealist and pragmatist–providing us both the dream and the roadmap. Leaders must learn to distill complexity into clarity and provide followers a clear and understandable message touching our hearts and minds. When leaders effectively distill complexity into clarity they galvanize their followers into a great collective impulse—a single intentionality–resulting in unity of purpose and a willingness to sacrifice against great odds. When leaders fail to distill complexity into clarity, they imprison themselves and their followers in the widening gyre of confusion, despair, and fractured relations. Where the former is a kind of high ground of peak experience and flow, the latter is a form of barren waste land characterized by atrophy and stagnation. It’s therefore a leader’s obligation to move us to the high ground; to distill complexity into clarity and create a future end state we cannot only believe in, but more so, readily devote our hearts and minds in getting there.
One Leader at a Time
Today I am contemplating this question: “How does one make their organization better?” There are many possible answers such as good strategy, effective marketing, new technology, increase in market share, better benefits, etc. However, as I reflect on this question I keep coming back to this simple yet powerful answer: Make your individual leaders better! I firmly believe a commitment to grooming and cultivating a “culture of leadership,” one leader at a time, is the surest route to excellence. Though this may seem trite, I deeply believe in this truth to the extent that for me it has become axiomatic: When we develop great leaders, all other problems take care of themselves. We should therefore set our focus on attracting the best talent, and once on board, committing to intentional and long-term mentoring with the objective of creating a culture of leadership. Leaders creating leaders. There simply is no shortcut to excellence. Each day, day after day, one leader at a time.
Themes
What are the themes animating your group? This is a great question on which to reflect, for the answer to this question can reveal much about who we are, to what we aspire, and the nature of our vocation. I believe all truly excellent organizations–sports teams, companies, military organizations, or even societies–have foundational themes that animate them, inspire them, galvanize them, and fortify them. These themes infuse their work with deep meaning, purpose, and conviction. For example, as a US Marine, we were animated by ethos-driven themes like fidelity, honor, courage, and commitment, and a cultural austerity that engendered bone-deep readiness, hardiness and resiliency. These themes were neither technical nor functional; they were a form of perennial knowledge—an esprit de corps—catalyzing companionship, common sacrifice, and indefatigable energy. I believe every leader should pause occasionally, contemplate this question, and determine what themes animate your company. Leaders must discover those themes and bring them to life within their groups.
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