01/18/2019
UNDER the SURFACE
I have that feeling today where I'm ever so slightly agitated. Restless. Dissatisfied, but not with anything specific. I now work for myself, and have the luxury, on a few days anyway, to work where I please. Today, I chose a place where there are people and dogs, cars and trees, hoping that the frisson of activity will snap the tension in me. I wonder. Am I the only one who feels this way sometimes? Ever so slightly crazy? Wondering if everyone can see my oddness?
Then, I remember my clients (I'm a leadership coach). Many are corporate execs, so beautifully polished, well-spoken, agile. Impressive, impregnable to the wide world. And, I remember what I learned, that first year I was coaching. What a surprise, to find two clients with the same sort of hidden challenges I had carried in my own successful executive career: occasional racking insecurity, and "outsider-ness." The feeling that who I was, wasn't quite the right sort of person for my job.
In the years that followed that first one, I discovered clients with lots of hidden struggles. I had clients who were living through horrible personal tragedies, at the same time that they were executiv-ing with apparent panache. Dying parents, dying children, dying themselves, and no one knowing. Loved ones arrested, or in mental health wards, or their teenagers in crisis. Divorces, of course, but maybe worse, marital miseries or marital abuse.
This wasn't just frantic "duck-paddling" below water level, while the duck glided above. This was having your duck-feet amputated, and it never showing above the surface. Not just unknown to coworkers, but actively hidden from those at work who swirled around them, always wanting more. More sales, more salary, more performance, more creativity. It's one thing not to share what you are going through. Quite another not to feel safe enough to share. One thing to want privacy, quite another to be very afraid of exposure. The latter requires an outlay of energy and willpower almost equal to managing the crisis, itself.
And, here's the thing I learned from my clients. These things aren't rare. They aren't aberrations. They are happening to us, almost all of us. I never knew that before my coaching career: that most people will have crises, and that, I suppose by default, senior leaders often aren't any better equipped to juggle them than the average population. It's not like sales management expertise prepares you to handle shameful credit card debt. Or that running a division equips you to stay by a friend's bedside, when everything in you is finding reasons to leave. Why should running a board help you with an unfaithful spouse?
The executives around you are either in touch with their own agonizing vulnerability to the precariousness of life, or else they will be. Or worse, they will live their lives in so much denial, that they will forever undermine their own best selves, and those they lead.
One time, I was giving asked-for career advice to my 20-something daughter. She said that she had made mistake after mistake that day, and had gone home feeling like she would never be good enough to do her job. I assured her that all of us had felt that way, particularly in the early days of a new job. That, in fact, those very confident people working around her had also felt like that, on some days. At first, she didn't believe me. When I had convinced her, that, yes, they had, she blurted out in frustration, "Well, why don't we all just tell each other about it, so nobody has to feel like it's just them? Or, why don''t we all get t-shirts that say what we are going through?" Ah. Why don't we?
More importantly, why don't we make it safe enough for them to tell us? Why don't we stop acting like people should "suck it up," when they are in the midst of one of those life-altering events? When "sucking it up" will cost them more energy and therefore cost the team even more lost job effectiveness? It's as though we think, if we make it okay to be candid about our miseries, our teams will devolve into sniveling weaklings, always looking for an excuse to slack-off. Really? What's our evidence for that? Do we know lots of experienced leaders looking for any excuse not to work? If one were to pop-up, do we have the tools to manage that, as the exception to the rule? Oh, I think so.
A compassionate workplace, with trusted teammates and leaders, inspires loyalty, creativity, extreme effort, and excellence. Very few people become their worst, in such circumstances. Very many people surprise even themselves, with the heights they can achieve in that soil.
So, maybe you're in the middle of a tough patch, and it's not safe where you are. Please take comfort from the fact that those around you, those cheerful, accomplished, driven people, will also have their turns, or have had them, or maybe are having them right now, too, right beside you. You are not the only one. We are all the ones, too.
Or, maybe you are a leader, looking to create a more trusted team. Impressive! Great news! You can go first. Be open about your own hard things. Be the example to your team of a leader who exhibits strong, bullet-proof, accomplished vulnerability. Find chances to share how you felt doubt, feel doubt, sometimes. About a time when life and work collided in a way that had you duck-paddling. Remind them that, as a team, you are strong enough to accomplish everything, even with those challenges. Ask your employees in their one-on-ones with you, about their whole lives, not just their work lives. Don't pretend that we are not them, that we never hurt like that.
And, if you just can't do it, if you aren't ready or able to be a leader of a trusting team, well, then, get a t-shirt. It could say, "I'm not brave enough yet." We'll understand.
