Being an Unmessable-With Leader - What Are You a Leader For?

This is part 3 in our series on being an unmessable leader.  Here’s a link to part 1 and part 2. 

Here’s a quick recap of what you missed.  Being a leader is being someone who communicates so that others imagine a future that matters to them and then act in service of that future’s fulfillment.  Being unmessable with as a leader involves having the capacity to do that in a way that meets the needs of the situation and the people involved.  It could mean being direct and demanding.  It could mean being gentle and nurturing.  The situation decides.   That was what we covered in part 1.  What often gets in the way of being flexible and adaptable is when we get defensive.  That was part 2, which also included some useful practices for letting go of that.

So let’s say you’ve built a little flexibility around where you tend to go sideways as a leader and get derailed from what matters. 

The next useful thing to do is this: get clear on what matters. 

This is where I see would be leaders trip themselves up over, and over, and over again. 

Here’s why: while most people think they’re focused on what matters, where they tend to put their attention is on what they think in the way of what matters.  More on why I underlined “they think” in a moment.

This will help illustrate.  My wife and I are exploring a big change in our lives.  It’s exciting.   We each see a lot possible.   

At the same time, it’s risky.  What if it isn’t what we really want?   What if it is but it doesn’t go the way we want?  What if we don’t like each other when we’ve made this change? 

There’s a lot that could go wrong, and we both have a sense of it.  The difference between us is that I like to suppress all that stuff and pretend it isn’t there; she deals with it by talking about it and expresses her worries. 

About 24 hours after we started discussing it, the worries came up, and she started getting out loud with it.  Immediately, I saw the worries as a problem – something in the way of this big possibility. 

I went to work on the worry.  Not long after that, we were fighting, and the big possibility felt farther away than ever. 

Here’s why I said, “they tend to put their attention is on what they think in the way of what matters.”  Because the worry wasn’t in the way of what matters.  It was part of it. 

Irritation, complaints, and the experience of “something wrong” only show up that way because there’s a positive commitment that isn’t fully realized yet.  Floods and tornadoes only occur as a problem against a commitment to health, well-being and whole communities.   Take out that concern and no one would pay attention. 

So, how do you spot what matters?  The first place to look is simple: what are people complaining about?   That will tell you that there’s a commitment buried there somewhere. 

The next step is to ask: if that were resolved, what would it provide?  What would it make available?  What would it be like? 

Iterate those questions until you or your team has stated something you would want to move toward, and you’ve got it. 

When my wife and I moved our attention to that, the answers started coming and we started finding a lot of creative ways to include our worries while moving toward what we really care about – a life where we’re both excited, engaged and fulfilled.