A few years ago, Jacob came to talk to me about his struggles to experience himself as a strong, effective leader. He was the CFO in his company, a 1500 person, nationwide consulting firm. He had been with them since graduating college and had worked up from associate consultant to his current position as chief financial officer. He had been CFO for less than a year was, 40, married and with one son.
He was not concerned with money or job security- he had both. But inside himself he felt he was not taken seriously by direct reports and often found himself ruminating on conversations he had with them.
“I feel like they take what I say with a grain of salt, though nobody really differs with me…it’s just a feeling I get.”
“What do you think you should do about it?” I asked. He had been reading books about seven habits and etc. but he couldn’t quite connect with them. He said it seemed like fixing a car that wouldn’t run by polishing the paint.
I believe that every new leader faces this test or similar ones when they are first named. The demons of self doubt leap out from behind whatever camouflage or compartment has hidden them since early life and they act to undermine their host. One of the primary tasks of any effective leader is to know him/herself, to know where the demons hide and how to handle them. By the way, I believe an effective leader is one whose people follow because they want to, not because they have no choice.
I believe no leader is demon free. One’s demon might be self doubt, another’s might be an aggrandized view of himself and inability to hear what a worker has to say. Jacob’s demon whispered to him that he would soon be outed as not deserving the job. It doesn’t always happen this way, but in my first hour with Jacob, I sensed that fear, shame, and anger were at play in a powerful way, forcing him to constantly be on guard against them, which in turn caused him to be unable to relax and hear what his workers were telling him. One of the most powerful tools a leader has is the ability to really listen to what he is being told. This means being calm and centered, refraining from acting on any cue not originating in his own heart. He is like the Zen archer who holds his arrow in the bow until it releases itself.
This does not come easily or without practice. Leadership in fact is a practice, one that is cultivated every day, through listening, service, awareness. It is not a doing, the application of force, or a set of commands. Jacob’s difficulties came from a belief that leadership was about forceful strength; he had been raised in a home like that. Since he didn’t feel comfortable pushing people around or making threats, he thought he was being, as he put it, a weenie.
We began to dig into this problem by asking Jacob to do little more than listen to his workers and to thank them for the communication, and to refrain from offering instant solutions that were motivated more by nerves than by authentic understanding of the problem. He resisted this at first, doing nothing seemed counter-intuitive. But he gave it go.
In the interest of brevity, I’ll close for now but invite the reader to try and imagine how this shift might have worked out for our friend Jacob. But, here is a hint: Jacob is now CEO of his company.