The Conversation Was Quite One-Sided and Seemed Self-Aggrandizing.
As I continued to reflect during the conversation, my thoughts turned and I realized… he was not trying to convince me, he was trying to convince himself. Even though he had received rewards and recognition, he knew in his heart of hearts that he was not ready. His peers were being promoted around him, and this caused him to take on their call as his own.
My role as a coach was not to judge whether he was ready, my role was to help him explore his reality so that he could make informed decisions about his own life. After he stopped talking, we ate in silence. A long and very uncomfortable pause ensued, and I could tell he was starting to get uncomfortable. “You're not ready,” I said. My intention was not to judge him, but rather to shock his ignition and get him thinking.
He immediately became defensive. "What do you mean I am not ready?" he said. Immediately, he launched into his list of accomplishments once again. I let him go on until it seemed he was out of breath. When he finished I said, “You have all the WHAT you need. You have all of your individual contributions. You have shown your skill and capability. I think you might be missing the HOW.”
“What Do You Mean by the How?” He Asked.
I turned to one of my favorite modern-day philosophers, Parker J. Palmer, who wrote, “I now know myself to be a person of weakness and strength, liability and giftedness, darkness and light. I now know that to be whole means to reject none of it, but to embrace all of it.”
My young friend was still trying to embrace all of his strengths as an individual contributor. He was still selling to himself the idea that these attributes were enough for him to lead others.
He was also not being completely honest with himself or in his description of his accomplishments. He was grandstanding, and frankly, it made me uncomfortable just listening to it.
So I asked him, “Would you tell me about a time when you worked on a project that did not succeed?” Long silence again. I could tell he was stuck.
The thinking in his head must have been like a game of chess, calculating his next best move: “If I tell him about an unsuccessful project then I admit failure and that looks bad, but if I don’t tell him anything then I look arrogant and that looks bad, too.” I could see the thoughts rolling around in his head like a pair of dice being shaken just before being jettisoned in a game of Craps. I interjected, "You see, what Palmer is saying is that you have to know your whole self. We all have strengths and we all have weaknesses. Until you are ready to embrace your weaknesses, I don’t think you are ready to lead. Begin to think about HOW you accomplished your work, then frame your story around that.”
My Morning Reflection
Many of you know that I try to spend my mornings in quiet reflection and meditation prior to starting my day. Many days I will do some type of scripture reading to accompany this reflection. I love it when the topic of my reflection shows up later in my day. The day of the above conversation was such a day.
Prior to my talk with this young leader, my quiet meditation had been on the story of Moses. When I think of Moses, I cannot help but think of the Charleston Heston caricature in the movie The 10 Commandments. In my mental picture, Moses is standing on the rock, staff held overhead, as the wind and clouds swirl around him and the Red Sea in front of him splits open like a zipper separating two sides of a jacket. Powerful, in control, strong, mighty….Moses.
However, my study that morning showed a different side of the biblical character. God is having a conversation with Moses trying to convince him that he is the guy to lead the Hebrew people out of slavery. Moses, who had been raised as the son of an Egyptian Pharaoh, felt self-righteous enough as a young man to kill an Egyptian and vindicate a fellow Hebrew. Rather than face the conflict of what he had done, he ran from that life to be a shepherd - a bit of a nomad in the wilderness. Forty years later, Moses encounters God in a burning bush. God says he wants Moses to go and lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt. Moses’s reply is so classic, “Who am I?"
According to Dr. Ken Boa, this question revealed a radical change in Moses, from radical impulsive youth to a middle-aged man feeling inadequate for the task. Moses had come to grips with the totality of his humanity, from knowledge of his strengths to understanding the depth of his weakness.
This level of self-knowledge is what Palmer calls “embracing one's wholeness." It is this wholeness that allows a leader to balance their strengths and weaknesses, their confidence and self-assurance, along with empathy and compassion.
Self-Regard: The Ability to Respect and Accept Yourself.
Essentially, self-regard involves liking yourself the way you are. This competency ensures the leader has enough self-confidence that others would want to follow. That his/her self-worth is balanced with enough empathy that the leader is going to be able to get through good times and bad.
Eleanor Roosevelt is famous for saying, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." People who have positive self-regard have a real sense of identity and work to overcome feelings of inadequacy or inferiority.
In order to lead others, you must have enough confidence to lead yourself. Then, you must have enough empathy to realize that leadership is not about your identity, but your relationships with your followers that matter.
Appreciate your positive qualities, and accept your limitations. Know your strengths and weaknesses. Learn to like yourself, “warts and all.” After all, if you don’t, why should they?
Reflection Question: What value would it provide for you to understand your strengths, and what would it feel like for you to embrace your weaknesses?
