Years of being a hockey fan (and coaching a bit of it) provoked me more and more toward tenacity. It also incorporated the word “snarly” into my vocabulary.
Back in the 1980’s while running a retailing company I first sat down and wrote this fragmented sentence as a mission statement to create the culture I most wanted:
To become a sleek, highly maneuverable, viciously competitive retail company delivering customer service that is 2nd to none
A decade later I took those same words to another retailing company. The words were important. They expressed and evoked emotions that I thought were urgent and important. My mind hasn’t changed.
All that verbiage points to some of the most necessary ingredients for business success – or higher business success. Name the problem and I’ll make application.
The higher the tenacity, the higher the performance. It’s not the same as resilience. Tenacity is an offensive weapon. Resilience is defensive.
As for snarly-ness, it’s driven by the passion and need to succeed. The strong desire to win and kick the teeth down the throat of anybody or anything that would hinder victory.
All that language reeks of action. It’s a lot of doing. Doing that starts in your head because the main battle ground for all this is in between our ears.
I intentionally phrased that mission statement with that beginning…”to become…” It’s something we could start today. It’s something we’d never be able to walk away from, saying we had completed it.
Relentless Pursuit
That’s the deal. That sums it up best for me.
So let’s wrestle this down and make some applications. I want to go from the outside in because of all the noise out there. I know it’s noisy in your head, but that little 4″ screen in your hand, and all the other screens in your life produce an avalanche of noise unlike anything we’ve seen before. The net floods us with data, information and opinion that is often indiscernible from reality and truth. Do this. Do that. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Follow these 4 steps. No, follow just these 2 steps. Go left. Go right. It’s black. No, it’s white.
Your relentless pursuit of tenacity and snarly-ness starts with shutting up and shutting down all the crap entering your world. Now before you think I’m suggesting you not listen to people, let me clarify.
I’m on the phone with a friend and we’re talking about a variety of things, both business and personal. I reiterate something I’ve believed and tried to practice for a very long time. It has to do with selling. And building meaningful relationships. It’s a sequence that begins with us getting acquainted with somebody. We migrate from being strangers or unknowns to each other to where we know something of each other. You know my name and a bit about me. I know your name and a bit about you.
Next, we have to move toward safety. That is, you have to feel safe around me. I have to feel safe around you. If we can’t get to that spot, the relationship or connection won’t happen. There are plenty of people in your life who are known to you, but you don’t feel safe around them. You know their name. They know your name. No matter, you feel ill at ease for some reason. Maybe it’s because you feel they’ve got some hidden (or not so hidden) agenda. Maybe it’s because their personality bristles you and makes you uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because your communication styles are so opposite you just can’t relate. For some reason, we have all these known people in our lives who bring us no value because we just can’t get to a safe place with them.
Keep in mind — and think of all the people in your life who aren’t known by you — but you feel safe with them. Authors, speakers, experts…they all fall into that category. You know them, but they may not know you. Because they crank out content that you enjoy, or that helps you, you’ve become acquainted with them. You feel safe with having them “speak” to you in whatever way they do that (books, speeches, blog posts, videos, webinars, podcasts, etc.). Okay, so far so good. Or is it.
Experts are nice, but who is really an expert. And who do you listen to? Who should you listen to? Why should you listen to them? Those are GINORMOUS questions that have big and varied answers. No, I’m not going to try to answer them here, except to give you some things to consider and think about. YOU have to decide for yourself. You’ll hear that theme throughout today’s show because it’s at the heart of tenacity and snarly-ness. This is YOUR tenacity and snarly-ness we’re talking about so you have to own it. It’s got nothing to do with me or anybody else. It’s all you!
The distraction of the Internet ruins tenacity and snarly-ness because for every expert who says go right, others say go left. For every guru who wears French cuffs and $3000 custom made suits there are other gurus who wear jeans and a hoodie. There are gurus and experts who use Uber exclusively and others who drive Bentleys. How can you listen to them all? You can’t. Well, you can listen, but your mind will be trashed trying to figure out a path with all these incongruent messages coming at you.
“I’m my own man,” says the guy in the corner office. I’ve heard that before. Quickly I’ve come to learn the corner office guy or gal has demons in their head just like everybody else. Sometimes more so. The stakes are higher. So is the pressure. Beware the man or woman who declares, “I decide for myself.” They’re listening to something or somebody. Sometimes they’re as confused as anybody about all the voices of advice entering their brain.
This is where it turns inward. This is where your world view and your view of yourself matters.
When I was a teenager I went through a phase, like most teens, where I got really tired of being worried about what people thought. My teen angst wasn’t rebellious toward behavior though. Mine was a drive against vanity and status. I was sick of seeing people think somebody was better because they had cool clothes or cool cars, or lived in the cool neighborhood. I just didn’t care. It wasn’t a judgmental thing for me. It was purely a substance over style thing for me. I had nice, even cool clothes. I had a cool car, too. But I was blessed.
One word summed it up for me during my teen years: pretense.
I hated pretense. Still do.
I’m also a zig zag guy. When everybody is zigging or people want me to zig…I gravitate toward zagging. Just because. Freud would likely have a field day with me (and you, too, huh?).
It’s why during most of my adult career I was the guy in the corner office. Compliance isn’t my strong suit. 😉
Compliance Is Driven By Listening To Others, Not Yourself
Lose weight. Get cosmetic surgery to fix that nose. You introverts, become extroverts. Blah, blah, blah.
Here’s what the world is telling us – be something you aren’t. Fix yourself.
Sure, lose weight if you must to improve your health. Growing great is all about improving so we can be the best version of ourselves. Emphasis is on being ourselves though.
Embrace who you really are and go all in on it. It’s crazy hard because we see people who are nothing like us and admire them so. The introvert looks longingly at the gregarious fellow holding forth in the group and wishes he could be more like that. STOP IT.
You’re not him. He’s not you. Get comfortable with who and what you are — and become the best version of yourself.
Why is that important? Because if you’re not true to yourself you can’t be tenacious or snarly. You can’t win in the market – whether that market is your home or your office or the world at large. You just can’t win without being tough to play against.
Be tenacious. Be snarly. Be tough to compete against. If the world is going to beat you down, make it tough on the world to win. Develop that habit and you’ll win a lot more than you’ll lose. It’s not about winning all the time (nobody does that), but it is about winning much of the time. People determined to grow great do that more often than not. Join us.
He’s the guy at the front of the room. Leading the meeting.
Around the room sit all his direct reports. All eleven of them.
It’s a half-day meeting that’s been planned for months. It happens about three times a year — a meeting whose sole aim is to “get down to it,” according to the CEO. He means it’s a meeting he hopes will foster the most candid conversations possible.
The meeting starts off slowly, as so many meetings do. They go around the room sharing whatever they’d like – a trite, common way folks start meetings. I’ve never understood the strategy. Here you are, at a prime time to get the meeting off to a great start and immediately you stomp things down with a 3rd grade show ‘n tell tactic. I watch the energy dissipate increasingly as the the exercise gets underway. People are sharing the most innocuous things possible. You can tell they’re prepared for this little exercise. You can also tell nobody is getting anything from it. Certainly not more energy.
After 15 excruciating minutes it’s over. There’s a slide deck prepared by the CEO to update the team on information they’ve likely looked at for weeks now. Each executive knows this information backwards and forwards. That lasts 15 minutes. This is the kind of meeting these folks have endured more times than any of them can remember. It’s corporate, organized and lackluster. But nobody expects anything else.
And I’m saddened to realize that. “Nobody expects anything else,” my voice in my head mutters repeatedly.
The CEO is a brilliant business guy. He knows his stuff. Everybody respects his business acumen. And his experience in the industry. Like many CEO’s he’s often preoccupied. He can seem disengaged. Catch him at the right time, which most direct reports will tell you is “most of the time,” and you’ll see it.
At my suggestion he’s asked each direct report to bring one-big-thing to the meeting. As much as I enjoy working many different things, from many different angles – I’ve learned that focus on a single thing at a time is extremely powerful. And tough to do. Partly I suggested this to focus the group, but the bigger motive I had was to foster the CEO’s goal of getting down to it. When you have to narrow it down to a single thing, that cuts to the chase.
The assignment wasn’t complex, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Bring one-big-thing that’s the biggest elephant in the room at the moment. Not something down the road. Something present right now (that was also strategic to force people to be in the moment). It could be anything – a challenge, an obstacle, an opportunity, a worry, a specific problem…anything else.
“Don’t force it,” I told the CEO before the meeting. Let the game come to you. Ask for people to share if they’d like. And if they don’t want to, don’t get angry. The objective was to first share, then to foster collaboration among the group to help support the person with their insights and counsel.
When the CEO got to this part of the agenda he did well in presenting it. And he displayed patience instead of his usual antsy-ness. Within seconds one of his more seasoned direct reports volunteered to break the ice. About 6 weeks ago he had a health scare. He passed out in his office and folks feared he was having a heart attack. They called an ambulance and whisked him off to the local hospital. He spent one night in the hospital, running all the usual tests. No heart attack, but he was suffering exhaustion. MRI’s and other tests showed elevated cholesterol, but no serious life-threatening issues. He took 2 more days off, but was back at work sooner than the CEO even expected. Typical.
He addressed the group with a story of how he had wound up in the hospital. At least it was how he thought he wound up there. He talked of his family and his co-workers. The success of the organization was forefront on his mind. You could tell he was proud of their collective work. He delivered a heart-felt sermon of sorts to his co-workers thanking them and encouraging them to make whatever changes might improve their own mental and physical health. “I’m not bringing up a problem so much as I’m delivering a warning and asking you all to consider yourself as a resource. Not just for the company, but for all the other people in your life.”
He delivered his thoughts with enough emotion to stir everybody in the room, ending it with a challenge. “What you are doing – what are you going to do – to insure that the resource that is YOU is protected and properly invested?”
There was a pause. Everybody’s wheels were turning in their head, no doubt thinking of about their life and all the people who depended on them. I’m thinking to myself, “This is great. These people are really going to get going now.” Talk about getting down to it. Man, it was going to happen.
Then one word destroyed the moment. It wasn’t a word that was uttered. It was a word to describe the leader, the CEO. Now I can’t judge thoughts, but like you, I can judge actions. And words.
Before the pause grew too uncomfortable, the CEO said, “Who wants to go next?”
Just like that (snap your fingers), the moment passed. Energy left the room. Shocked back to the reality that this meeting wasn’t about people, but it was strictly business. Key metrics. Performance standards. Future projects. Current projects. Budgets.
Everybody made the same conclusion and assigned a single word to the moment, ascribing this word to the CEO.
DISINTERESTED.
That’s how you can ruin your leadership instantly. Be disinterested.
If you’ve not listened to the first episode of Leadership Challenges (a narrowed-down sub-series of the Grow Great podcast), go do that first. It’s on safety and the importance of establishing that before you can grow into a more effective, impactful leader.
Today’s subject is trust. Safety is first because if our people don’t feel safe with us, then we’ll never get them to trust us. The short command, “Trust me” won’t work. It’s not just a trite sales cliche, it’s baloney. It screams, “Whatever you do, DO NOT TRUST ME.”
Leadership is about relationships. This isn’t about styles of leadership. Those vary, just as much as personalities. Whether you roll like General Patton or Tony Dungy, your leadership hinges on being able to establish healthy relationships. There is a burden of leadership that requires you to show people the way. Forging the relationship is first your responsibility. Yes, all parties have to comply – to some degree. But somebody has to make the first move. That’s YOU.
And Houston, we have our problem. Too often leaders complain that so-and-so isn’t putting in the effort. They’ll complain how some team member isn’t cooperative enough, or reliable enough, or something else. If I had a buck for every time a leader or business complained about an employee who wasn’t proactive enough I’d be off lounging at a beach somewhere full-time. “I wish they’d show more initiative,” says the CEO. Well, duh. Yes, we want people to handle things, including relationships at work, in a more proactive, less reactive way. Unfortunately, when you hang around the place long enough you realize the top leader is often not demonstrating a proactive approach to building the relationship.
This was driven home not long ago when a top leader complained to me about one employee who was too passive for her tastes. She wanted her team to be comprised of assertive, “go for broke” type of people. This one particular person was more reserved and she was struggling to deal with it. Within minutes she was complaining about another employee who had overstepped her bounds. This mid-level manager had inserted himself in a meeting that the CEO felt was inappropriate. I had heard these kinds of conflicting stories before from this leader. She was hard charging, demanding and had lots of things going for her. Like all of us, she had simply gotten a bit blind-sided with her how frustrations. I knew how she felt ’cause every CEO suffers it every now and again. My job was to help her through her frustrations to find solutions that would help her grow as a leader — and help her grow her people, too.
She wasn’t paying close attention to the contrasting frustrations she had just expressed. So I held up a verbal mirror and restated these frustrations back to her. She leaned back, smiled and said, “Can’t win for losing, huh?” She was referring to how some of her people likely felt. I just said, “What do you think?”
“I think I probably need to own it myself first,” she said. Breakthrough.
Sadly, not enough leaders are as open-minded to accept responsibility to show their people the way. This leader had a strength – a humility and courage – to accept the responsibility to establish trust with people by first learning to trust them. Over time we discussed how our view of people can impact our culture and our organization’s performance. A CEO who suspects all employees are stealing time, materials and inventory will behave very differently than a CEO convinced that people want to get up in the morning, come to work and do a good job. How we view the world – and the people who occupy our space in it – impacts many things for us.
Proverbs 18:24 says, “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly.” Ditto for trust. If you want people to trust you, you must show yourself trustworthy. And you must first trust them.
A CEO may say, “Well, that’s stupid. People have to earn trust.” I get that. Again, we’ve got world views to consider. You can approach life from a no trust zone first, or from a trust zone first. It’s the difference in innocent until proven guilty or guilty until proven innocent. You decide.
I’ve heard tons of seemingly logical reasons offered by top leaders who talk of the negatives – the downsides – of trusting people. Words like “blindly trusting” people are used, indicating weakness and stupidity. When I press a leader to give me specifics of what they think those downsides may be they often aren’t able to list anything too terribly bad. Rarely have I heard a leader name an outcome that can’t be fixed or repaired after the fact.
Now, flip the exercise on its head and reverse it. What’s the downside of NOT trusting somebody? How much time do you have to investigate the negative possibilities? On and on we can go. Those typically far outweigh the negatives of trust. Yes, trust can (and sometimes is) betrayed. Husbands and wives betray each other, too. So should we not trust our spouse? How healthy would our marriages be if we all behaved like that? Same thing for our relationships at work.
The leader’s challenge is to first demonstrate trust in order to gain or facilitate trust. Show people the way. Behave your way to what you want. Yes, far easier said than done!
But true nonetheless.
It’s really not that hard — until people disappoint us. That disappointment can come when the person doesn’t do something we think they should have done, when they do something we don’t think they should have, or whenever we disagree or don’t fully approve of whatever choice or behavior they made. In short, when people do something we wouldn’t have done ourselves, or when people don’t do it the way we’d have done it — then our trust is tested. Sometimes it’s beyond tested. Sometimes, it’s broken completely. And some CEO’s have a really tough time forgiving people and letting people out of the doghouse. That won’t make things better.
Do you trust your wife? Sure you do, unless she’s given your reason not to.
Has your wife ever disappointed you by doing something you thought was stupid, or something you think you’d have never done? Probably.
Is she still in your doghouse because of it? Boy, I hope not. If so, your marriage is broken. And if I asked your wife the same questions she’s likely give me the same answers you gave. You’ve disappointed her with your acts of stupidity. But she still trusts you. Hopefully she still loves you.
We often have less harsh standards at home than at work – at least with some things. One mis-step by a team member and we may forever deem them untrustworthy. That’s it. One shot and you’re done!
If you’ve successfully raised teenagers you know how futile (and stupid) that is. Our kids learn trustworthiness because we train them, we trust them and we help them learn from their mistakes.
Guess what? It works the same way at work. As leaders, we owe it to our employees to train them, to trust them and to help them learn from their mistakes. Over time we can build stronger trust. Or we can handle it in more toxic ways and damage our people (and our relationships with them) making them less effective. How does that help us succeed as leaders? How does that grow our business?
Make your people safe. Train them. Trust them. Help them learn from their mistakes. Rinse and repeat.
During my years of running luxury retailing companies I was constantly urging employees to “be present” and “be in the moment” with shoppers and customers. How can you deliver remarkable customer experiences if you’re not paying close attention to the customer? You can’t. But neither can you deliver a remarkable experience to employees, friends or family without it.
People aren’t always honest with the CEO. His people. His trusted advisors.
They’re not dishonest. They’re just not always candid.
It was magnified the other day when the CEO dispatched a small group of people to survey the troops. He’d read a book about employee engagement and culture. It prompted him to find out how his culture was faring. He’s anxious to discover how things are going — confident that the morale will be fairly high, and that people will see the organization as he sees it. High performing. A winning team.
Three junior executives have been assigned to find out how people are feeling about their work, their leadership and their future. A few thousand bucks have been invested to get a survey from a consulting outfit specializing in employee engagement and organizational culture. There are just under 400 employees to survey, including about 50 part-time people. This is going to take awhile, but the CEO is anxious and schedules time with the 3-man survey team each Friday morning to get updates.
After week one the team has determined this project will take about 45 days to complete, but the initial results are in. They’re not favorable.
The 3 junior executives have been nervous about this project, but thankful it’s a survey purchased by the Chief. The results will be what they’ll be…and these junior leaders know they’ll simply be messengers of the news, whatever it may be.
Just 58 surveys have been completed and they have a universal theme. People are unhappy. They feel unappreciated. Most report that their leaders do nothing more than lean on them to do more, do better and work harder. The survey team huddles late Thursday because tomorrow morning is going to be the first report to the Chief. It’s not good. The CEO can become agitated, sometimes with little or no provocation. High anxiety washes over the survey team. They decide their best course of action is to present the survey results without commentary. Keeping one’s mouth shut just seems the safest course of action.
Friday morning arrives. They walk into the CEO’s office and take a seat around his small conference table. He offers them coffee as they settle in. It’s obvious he can’t wait to find out the early results.
The team selected one person, Billy, to lead the presentation. Billy is the right guy for this task. He’s well-liked by the CEO and knows how to handle himself well in live, real-time situations.
Billy prefaces the presentation – and handing the CEO a binder of early results – by telling the CEO just the facts. “We’ve surveyed 58 employees so far. All of them full-time. Ranging from supervisors to executives. All results are anonymous so we can obtain the most valid results possible, in accordance with the survey guidelines. These results represent only 15.07% of our total workforce, including part-time staff.”
With that, he hands the CEO the binder, which consists of a cover sheet with pie charts and other overall results. Individual comments and other details follow behind those first few pages.
The smile leaves the face of the CEO almost instantly. His brow furrows, his eyes squint and he now looks like he’s getting a headache. You can tell he’s completely surprised. Fearing he’s going to get defensive, the survey team has rehearsed what may happen next. They played out every conceivable scenario except the one that occurs.
The CEO asks, “Billy, tell me what you really think?”
Oh, crap. Billy is caught completely off guard. Janet and Brad, the other two members of the survey team feel sick at their stomach. They’re anticipating being asked to follow Billy in answering the same question. Hopeful it won’t happen, but fearful it will.
Billy says, “Sir, it’s too early for me to have any real valid thoughts.”
“Cut the crap, Billy,” says the CEO. “I know you’ve got a thought. And I know that a 15% sampling isn’t necessarily a full picture, but let me ask you – is this 15% representative of people in most areas of our company?”
“Yes sir, it is,” says Billy. “This 15% represents people from all sectors of our organization, except it doesn’t contain any feedback from part-time workers.”
“Then tell me what’s happening, Billy,” asks the CEO.
“Sir, I honestly would rather wait until we have more data,” answers Billy.
This goes on for a bit until the CEO has an epiphany – Billy isn’t wanting to tell him what he really thinks.
In a flash, the CEO asks, “Billy, what are you afraid of? You afraid I can’t handle what’s really happening out there?”
“Sir, I wouldn’t want to speculate. And I certainly wouldn’t want to give you incorrect data.” See, I told you Billy was good on his feet.
The group is dismissed from the CEO’s office and his Friday is shot. Emotions go from anger to frustration to resentment. All in about a 10 minute span.
Within 15 minutes of the survey team leaving the CEO’s office, he’s got 3 VP’s in his office sitting right where the survey team sat. He tells them what he’s learned, tosses the single copy of the early results onto the table in the middle of them and goes on a rant. During his rant they each briefly glance at the first few pages, attempting to make sense of the pie charts and other diagrams of the overall results.
“This is just 15% of the work force,” says one VP. “Let’s wait and see how things are when we have more data.”
The others chime in conceding that that’s the best course of action. It’s way to early to assume this represents the sentiment of the entire workforce.
Then it happens. The same thing that happened to Billy. “Gentlemen, I want to know what each of you think is happening? I want to know if you think this properly depicts what’s happening in our culture?”
They try Billy’s tactic, but it’s not working now. They’re not junior executives and the CEO isn’t going to let them off as easily.
The room grows quiet. Frank has been in the company for 6 years. He’s seasoned, even weather beaten. He’s about 8 years younger than the CEO, and he knows he’s well-regarded throughout the company, including the office of the CEO. He breaks the silence.
“Sir, if I might.”
“Please, Frank. Let’s hear it,” says the CEO.
“Let’s examine what we’ve done so far and what led us to this place. For over a year we’ve been wanting to improve our culture, fearful that we were headed in a direction that might steer us away from being the organization we’d most like to be. Employee engagement has been a constant focal point, rightfully so. We’ve questioned how engaged our employees are. We’ve questioned if our culture is fit enough to get us to the next level. So we invested almost $10,000 in this survey tool in order to at long last see if we could all get a better handle on what’s really going on. As leaders, we solve problems. First, we have to understand the problem to be solved. Else, we just act like bulls in a china closet and none of us want to damage the china. So we’re finding out what our people really think and how they really feel.”
“Sir, may I give you one word that I think may best illustrate what may be our initial problem with all this?”
“Yes, of course, give it to me, Frank.”
“The word is SAFETY. Sir, you asked about my thoughts. In my judgment we’re experiencing data that has somewhat blindsided us because our employees don’t feel safe. I don’t mean our workplace is physically unsafe, it’s very safe. But I mean emotionally safe where people can tell us the truth. I reiterate to our sales and marketing teams that our prospects are only going to become customers if we can first make them feel safe. After that, we must earn their trust. If we earn their trust, then we must work on having influence on them. Every time we short-circuit that process, we fail. We can’t make a sale if the prospect doesn’t let us influence them. That can’t happen if they don’t trust us. And the only way to trust is safety. Our prospects have to know we have their best interests at heart, even though we do want to make a sale. We want the sale to be what works best for our customers. I don’t see any difference between our prospects and our employees. First, we need to lead them in a way that makes them feel safe — and that needs to come from making them know we have their best interests at heart. It seems to me, we’ve failed on that front. The good news is, if the other results are consistent with these results, then we can begin today working on a plan to fix this. Isn’t that why we commissioned this survey to begin with?”
During his answer the CEO was quiet and attentive. You could almost see the wheels turning in his head. It was making sense to him.
He asked the other VP’s if they agreed. They did. Not much more conversation happened after that and the group was dismissed.
Alone in his office now, the CEO reflected on what Frank had said. His anger was gone. In its place, sadness. He was preoccupied. A few phone calls and another short meeting happened, but he couldn’t much remember what any of it was about. He was thinking about 15.07% of his workforce who felt taxed and under-appreciated. And he was confident 100% of the survey would likely reflect similar results. How did it get this way? It was never his intent. He just wanted a high performing organization. And he had one, or so he thought. Truth is, these people were doing great work. They were high performing. And he began to wonder how high performing people can feel so badly about their work and their organization.
He walked out of his office down the hall to Frank’s office. Knocked on the door and asked Frank if he had a moment. “Of course, sir.”
For 20 minutes the men exchanged no data. They just talked about what the CEO most wanted – employees who felt alive at work. People who felt supported to do the best work of their lives. And the CEO listened to Frank, the first person willing to tell him candidly want he needed to hear. Frank was encouraging and proactive. He suggested that the CEO allow he and his peers to take some time to figure out real-life answers – things “real people can do” as Frank put it. Before the CEO left Frank’s office, Frank said something that seemed to hit it squarely on the head.
“Let’s consider how valuable the truth is. If we can make our people feel safe think of the enormous benefits we’ll have in the market. When we know the truth we’ll be able to more proactive, more innovative and world-class. This may be one of the greatest days of my career here, sir. We’ve just discovered an untapped resource of power that we didn’t even know we had. I say we capitalize on it and make connecting with our people the priority of our leadership.”
Sometimes people need professional therapy. Our pain sometimes demands it. Our ability or capacity to process our pain often needs some shoring up. I’m not a professional therapist. I’m just a business guy with a lifetime of striving toward higher self-awareness. Spend your lifetime studying people – including yourself – and you learn a few things. Mostly, I’ve learned there’s so much I just don’t know. Today’s show is not intended to serve in place of a mental health professional. Some of the most successful people find they need help because success brings about its own pain and pressure. My best advice is, take care of yourself.
He was very small. Probably 4 years old or so. I don’t remember the specific circumstance, but I remember many conversations with him about the voice inside his head. I was probably 27 years old or so. He was my son, our first born. Patience, as with most 4-year-olds, wasn’t yet in his arsenal. My task was to help him discover it. Mostly, I was intent on helping him learn to develop resilience. My wife and I quickly realized that if he didn’t excel immediately, he grew frustrated and angry. His temper was mostly ignited at his own failure. We knew he was innately competitive.
I’m on one knee, bent down to look him in the face. The topic is the invisible little man who lives in his head and tells him, “You’ll never be able to do this. You’re an idiot for even trying. Look at you, you can’t even do it right the first time.” I worked diligently to help him understand that we all have an invisible little person living in our head who tells us lies, but we also have another little person telling us the truth – encouraging us, telling us we can do it, and urging us to silence the critic.
My son wasn’t getting professional help from me. I was a rank amateur with enough self-awareness and communication skills to know I didn’t want my little boy to grow up feeling defeated before he even began. Hitting a ball with a bat. Catching a ball. Anything like that frustrated him if he couldn’t master it immediately. Learning wasn’t acceptable. He was born with some wiring that compelled him to be instantly good, or worthless at doing something. To my wife and I, it went beyond the scope of childish expectation. Through the years we’d learn it was part of who he was. Our job was to equip him as best we could with the tenacity to understand it, manage it and harness it for his own good.
my son putting skates on his daughter
Today, he’s 35 and we couldn’t be prouder. Thankfully, we didn’t screw him up too badly. 😉 Now it’s his turn to avoid screwing up his own kids.
The other day I was remembering some of those down-on-one-knee talks with him, wondering where I got my stories about the “little man living in your head telling you all these negative things.” If I learned about it, I don’t remember. What I do remember is always knowing I had such a little man living in my head. He’s been there for as long as I can remember.
It’s likely where I first got my fondness for what was once called “self help” books. I’d read books, listen to audio tapes and consume quite a lot of that material, especially in my 20’s. It was interesting to me. I was mostly interested in the deeper stuff that had some scientific basis. I wasn’t so smitten with the rah-rah-sis-boom-bah stuff. That’s the stuff that jumped to the best seller list and I read too many of those, but mostly I found those trite and cheesy. I wanted substance. I wanted understanding.
In college psychology classes fascinated me. My library still contains a variety of books aimed at helping us understand ourselves and why we do what we do. Or why we fail to do other things we should. I wasn’t smart enough to pursue science, but I was highly interested. As a business guy – even as a hi-fi salesman during college – studying people was always the underlying reason for it I suppose. Finding out what people wanted and why. Listening to them tell their stories. Watching their faces as they talked of a favorite record, or band. It was all pretty interesting and I suppose in some small way I figured that if I could develop skills to better understand people, then maybe I could better understand myself. Maybe that was the point all along.
Understand Yourself Better
Doesn’t everybody have an inner critic? I suppose so. I can’t imagine somebody not having one. Or more than one.
I’ve already admitted my personal fascination with my own (and my children’s) inner critic and self-esteem. My children we born in the early 80’s and may well be the last kids to be raised by old-school parents who didn’t subscribe to participation trophies. We wanted our son and daughter to be independent, stand up for what they believed in, do the right thing no matter what and figure out what occupation would best serve them and their own families. They were experience driven. Much more so than my baby boomer generation ever was. We were materialistic and chased financial success. Our parents were part of what Tom Brokaw called “the greatest generation.” Our folks worked hard and we learned our work ethic from them. But was gave up quite a lot in the process. We worked a lot of hours, grinding away to climb the ladder and find success, which was mostly based on how much money we made. Thankfully, our children found a better way – a more balanced life.
Understanding ourselves often draws us back to our childhood. We’re all a product of our upbringing. My wife and I knew we were packing bags that our children would carry with them the rest of their lives. That’s how it goes. I was committed to making some of those bags I gave my kids as profitable and productive as possible. Time will judge whether I was able to do it as well as I’d hoped.
It all boiled down to helping them better understand themselves. Of course, first I had to better understand myself. That was always the hard part. Today, that’s the hard part for them now that they’re parents trying to pass on whatever lessons they’ve learned.
I keep reading, observing, writing and doing my best to pay attention. And of course, as always, trying to connect the dots and make sense of it all.
It’s a nice, plush quiet office. The CEO owns the business. He started the company 27 years ago. Slogged his way to profitability and things began to take off.
Around year 7 he started getting newfound and much needed traction. Business was good, but the growth was stressful. He was discovering new problems he’d never faced before. There were people problems. Capital always seemed too short. There were inventory issues. Systems were being taxed at every point. He was afraid. The growth has revealed all the things he knew were true – he wasn’t prepared.
So he did what most do. He dove in trying to figure it out along the way. Desperation is how he characterizes those years. He was desperate to figure it out so he just took action. Mostly, he admits, he got it wrong, but he tried to fix it as soon as he could. When he got it right, it paid off handsomely so he just assumed if he could win more than he lost, then everything would be okay.
That didn’t help him sleep at night. It sure didn’t help him build an organization, or develop a high performing team. No sooner had the euphoria of getting traction hit until it gave way to high anxiety. He had never been this afraid. He had employees. Payroll. Suppliers. Financial concerns. He was eating, drinking and staying awake at night fretting about the business.
Here we sit, two decades later. It’s in the middle of the afternoon. He’s troubled. Today, he’s lamenting a few opportunities he’s had to develop a key right-hand person. There was the young man he hired 22 years ago, before the traction took hold. A diligent young man with a high degree of willingness. Rough around the edges sometimes, but plenty of horsepower to work with. He just never took the time to really mentor the young man. Eventually, he left, telling the owner that he needed a new opportunity. The CEO figured he really meant that he wasn’t growing as he wanted — and they both likely understand the fact of it all.
After that, he figures there had been at least two more. He’s got a strong team today, but he can’t seem to get past the lost opportunities to have grown talent that would likely be serving him now in his latter years. Talent that might best help him achieve what he most wants now.
There’s regret on his face as he’s telling me the story. I asked him about himself. He’s telling me about past employees, but he’s not saying a lot about himself. “What’s the issue for you?” I ask. “Me?” he barks back. “It’s my business. It’s all an issue for me,” he retorts. Spoken like most business owners I’ve encountered through my career. I know how he means it, but I also know it can camouflage what’s really bothering him.
I ask him to help me understand how he’s feeling and what he’s thinking. His mood grows increasingly reflective, and pensive. He removes his glasses, rubs his eyes and says softly, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
It’s a bolt out of the blue. Catches even me off guard and I’m almost always on guard — that is, I’m pretty prepared for most things people tell me. I ask him to talk to me more about that. For the next 20 minutes or so he laments his life, organizationally and personally. He’s trapped by his success. Trapped by his business. Trapped by having to do it all. Trapped by making every big decision.
As the CEO of a mid-sized company with millions of dollars of revenue, just under 100 employees and a staff of about 7 direct reports, he’s surrounded by people. He speaks fondly of most of them, but continues to lament that he’s never fully developed a person capable of replacing him. Somebody who can help him ease into a new role that he longs to achieve – a wise mentor capable of providing historical context, industry know-how and other insightful service to a leadership team capable of soaring higher. Always higher.
“What are you most afraid of?” I ask, knowing it’s the time I can now ask and get an honest answer. He looks at me. Puts his glasses back on. Looks at some papers on his desk. Then looks up and peers at me with his eyes slightly squinted as if he’s got a headache. “Being alone,” he answers. “But that ship sailed. I am alone.”
His marriage ended shortly after his year of traction. One daughter is now off to college somewhere up north. He has confessed that his wife and mistress are one and the same – his business. He’s got many friends. Well, people with whom he can socialize. His calendar is full of activities. At work. At home. He’s surrounded by people. But mostly, he’s alone.
All the trappings of success are just that – trappings. He’s said so. This is no longer working for him. He’s a miserable man. Successful by all accounts and miserable.
Part of providing the opportunity to shell it down and be transparent is giving leaders the release they’ve longed to have. He seems to be breathing. I mean really catching a breath. Not just physically, but emotionally. I remind him that I’m not a therapist and my work isn’t therapy, but it is therapeutic. “Boy, don’t I know it,” he says.
He’s in his 60’s. He’s not the 4-year-old little boy I talked to when I was 27. But there’s still a little person inside him telling him things. Surrounded by talent and expertise in his business, he’s mostly listening to some unnamed little person living in his head. This trusted advisor has no name, no credentials and only one mission. To nag him into misery. Well, that seems to be the impact.
Over time it’s clear to him that he’s refusing to get too close to people. He wants to, but he’s afraid. Afraid it won’t work out. Like his marriage. Or those early employees who abandoned him. That’s his word: abandoned. No matter that they were willing, hard working and devoted. No matter that they likely weren’t feeling valued by him. He sees it the way he sees it. Clear or not, it’s his perspective.
Talk turns to our inner critic. That voice that sometimes wants to serve us, but has the opposite effect.
He concludes his inner critic is likely trying to protect him from being hurt, but those good intentions aren’t working. Instead, they’re causing him to repel against the very things he needs to do to get out of under this life he no longer wants. I’m here to help him with his business and professional life. But I care about his entire life and urge him to consider finding a professional capable of serving him in ways I can’t. He finds a professional and just after one session tells me what a gift it is to have two people serving him – me and a mental health professional, a therapist. I’m humbled.
Age Doesn’t Matter – Intentions Don’t Either
Whether we’re old or young, our inner critic likely never goes away. I’ve concluded maybe the best we can do is to understand it.
I’ve learned that often times my own inner critic is seeking my best. Or he thinks he is. “Don’t try that, it won’t work. You’ll only embarrass yourself.” Good little voice, trying to protect me from embarrassment.
Freedom From Your Inner Critic is a book written by Jay Earley and Bonnie Weiss. Part of what the authors point out is that our inner critic has old ideas about us. We listen to these antiquated images of who we may have once been. Our inner critic pushes us to remember an outdated version of ourselves. The problem is, that doesn’t fit our current circumstance. Or our current skills or experience. According to Earley and Weiss, our inner critic then goes to work to protect us, causing us to doubt ourselves. That makes us feel insufficient, often growing more miserable. That’s where our CEO business owner is at.
I encourage you to read and study about this more, but I’ll share with you three things Ms. Weiss points to as ways to tame this inner critic.
Step 1: Separate
That little person living in our head is just one of many. It’s one voice among many. The inner critic isn’t entirely you, but it’s only a part. Weiss says that voice has its own motives and world view. The way to tame it is to distance from it. Make a decision to listen, or not listen.
Sometimes you need to tell the voice to back off. She argues that we all need to find and get in touch with our higher Self (yes, it’s a capital S). Google IFS or internal family systems therapy and you’ll find more. I’m not saying this is the end all, be all. I am saying I’ve found elements of this helpful in better understanding myself and in helping others better understand themselves in the professional dynamics at work.
Like any voice or advice we get, we can choose to listen or not to the inner critic. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s possible. Some people may be able to figure this out with a bit of reading and study. Other people may require or want more structured help.
Step 2: Update
Weiss encourages us to ask our inner critic an important question, “How old do you think I am?” Most often we’ll find out that our inner critic thinks we’re still a small child. It’s as though our inner critic is stuck in time. All the effort expended to protect us is by a small (but loud) voice aimed at protecting a child, not a grown adult with the skills and experience we now possess. The more you’re able to show this part of yourself who and what you really are today, the more likely you’ll be able to update the inner critic into letting go of the dated concerns that little voice expresses to you, trying to protect you.
Step 3: Mentor
Weiss and Earley use a term I’m rather fond of, Inner Champion. That can be your new mentor. You need help in dealing with your inner critic. Weiss finds it helpful to give your Inner Champion some human qualities. She admits her own Inner Champion is part Katherine Hepburn, Margaret Mead and others. The job of the Inner Champion is to give you strength.
The Inner Champion often sounds like the voice of a good mom reminding you of your value and capacity. It encourages you to take reasonable risks so you can get what you most want.
The Inner Champion also has the courage to take a stand against your inner critic, telling it to leave you alone. The Inner Champion is the other voice in your head telling that inner critic that he’s not being helpful.
The value of the Inner Champion is in helping you develop a process or system to achieving what you want. When you lack a process, your Inner Champion helps propel you forward to devise a plan.
And the Inner Champion takes care of the fragile parts of you that are being protected by the inner critic. See, the inner critic is really intending to help you. It just doesn’t always work out that way.
Clarity
I’m a fan. Seeing things clearly doesn’t mean the news is always good. Or that the outcome is what we wanted. It just means we’re seeing it for what it really is. That provides us with an opportunity to make adjustments, fix what ails us and figure out what we’ll do next.
Life is about adjustments. It’s about learning. The CEO was learning some things for the first time in his life. He was putting in the work to avoid going it alone, thinking he had to be strong enough all by himself. Trapped by success, surrounded by people – he was already alone. And that’s what he most feared. When he saw it more clearly he was able to devise a plan he could own. Professional therapy helped. I hope I did, too.
He got some strategy in place, which drove his hopes higher. In time he got some optimism because he could see a positive outcome. Hopelessness gave way to optimism.
I encourage you to seek clarity for yourself. Leaders can get so busy and allow their lives to become more hectic than is profitable. “I’m too busy,” is a steady refrain I hear from every leader. I’m the guy who’ll ask, “Do you think Benjamin Franklin was a bit brilliant? How about Ernest Hemingway?”
Ben Franklin is quoted as having said or written, “Never confuse motion with action.”
Ernest Hemingway is quoted as having said, “Never mistake motion with action.”
Pick your brilliant guy. Their quotes are the same. And they were both right.
Today, right now, do something for yourself. Face that inner critic. Read a book (or four) on it. Confront it and seek professional help if you need it or want it. Some of us are out here ready to help you do the heavy lifting.
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I keep reading, observing, writing and doing my best to pay attention. And of course, as always, trying to connect the dots and make sense of it all.