I was around a leader recently who didn’t seem to have come home to themself. They were smart and polite, but I thought to myself, “I wouldn’t want to follow them anywhere.” A lot of head energy, unskilled in connecting with their team, missing the heart of the matter.
And what is the heart of the matter?
The heart of the matter is always about the risk of relationship. It is about the dynamic created when two or more people are open to discovering something together. I frequently have a feeling like, “I don’t know much about this.” Then a client is in front of me, they are being honest about their life or leadership, and something is created between us. Everything starts firing, and something changes for the better. Insight and transformation show up.
I’m reminded of some foundational things I learned about consulting from Peter Block 20 years ago. He says a few things about the heart of the matter that I’ve returned to over and over again:
Choose learning over teaching. It’s scary to be in limbo. All the time, I come up against clients who want me to rescue them. They want a formula, 10 steps. They have forgotten how to trust their inner teacher, their inner wisdom. It’s my job not to let them off the hook—to help them stay in the uncertainty, in the wobbly place of learning in public—learning something instead of knowing it.
The struggle is the solution. Peter says, “In the face of paradox, we make a serious mistake if we choose one or the other or try to find middle ground. The best outcomes emerge in the effort to understand the truth in both sides…Our task is to evoke an exploration of the polarity, to postpone the quick answers, the make sure the complexity is acknowledged.” Of course, if you’re an engineer designing a solar panel, you can’t just sit around and say, “The struggle is the solution.” But in anything involving people, things immediately get complex. Our power is in learning to embrace that, play with it, explore together instead of wriggle out of it by settling for answers.
Culture changes in the moment. “If we want to see change, we had better not wait to leave this meeting for it to happen.” Wow. And “Our action plan is what we do in the next hour.” A sterile list of action items won’t go anywhere unless people in the group know how to handle uncertainty, unless they know how to ask for help, unless they know how to approach the “undiscussables” in their work. And unless they are prepared to start practicing it now.
Leadership development is the same thing as personal development. How we show up is everything. “In the end, it is our authenticity, the way we manage ourselves…that is our methodology.” And we can’t lead where we haven’t been. Our first job is always to be faithful to our own evolution. We can’t lead well from any other place. And our constituents can tell—we can’t fake them out. Resmaa Menakem, in his book My Grandmother’s Hands, talks about how, despite all his degrees and certifications as a trauma therapist, all the things he KNOWS, what people are paying for is to be around his settled nervous system. And we don’t get that without being on an intentional, lifelong, liberating path and getting feedback from others along the way. There’s no shortcut.
I have a list of heroes on the wall in my office, and what they have in common is they understand and practice the heart of the matter—Jane Goodall, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Tutu, Alicia Keys, Bernice King, Richard Rohr, Rob Bell, Julia Turshen, Mirabai Starr, and many others. Of course, I don’t know them personally, but their essence spills out. And their work and relationships in the world are prolific because they’ve paid attention to their own development. It tends to work like that.
Our employees, our families, neighbors, friends, indeed the planet need us to come home to ourselves. I’m on the road with you.