One of the keys to my contemplative journey over the past 18 months or so has been journaling. This morning, I looked at a journal from a year ago to the day, while I was on Heron Island in the Great Barrier Reef. It was not only fun and quite profound to read my innermost thoughts from that place and time, I also came across a comment that linked immediately to a conversation yesterday. Both conversations were with people in their 70’s and elders in the deepest sense of the word. On Heron Island, the elder was cautioning against what she called ‘moral vanity’ and yesterday the elder said that he tended to react negatively to “righteousness.” I think the two are saying much the same thing. And certainly here in Canada recently we can and do fall into the trap of righteousness and moral vanity. (Please note that there is a certain irony inherent in the next couple of sentences) Of course, we know that our health care system is far, far better than the US’s and we are in fact quite sure that everyone needs to know about how much better it is. Or after this tragic massacre in the Colorado movie theatre, we Canadians know that access to the kinds of firearms used is largely impossible here, and we are in fact quite sure that everyone needs to know about our gun control laws.

Now, it may or may not be that our health care system is wonderful. And it may or may not be that gun control is directly related to fewer deaths by gun shot in Canada. My concern is the second part of the above sentences, where we are in fact quite sure that everyone needs to know about how good we are.
Now, of course this is not simply a Canadian trait; it seems to me to be quite common to lots of people around the world. And this trait is what I believe the two elders, from a year and 12,000 km apart are getting at; moral vanity.

I wonder too about the impact of moral vanity on our roles as leaders. It might show up if we believe that simply because we’ve had 20 years experience, people should listen to us. Note that there is a very important distinction between 20 year’s experience and 1 year’s experience repeated 20 times! Or that simply because we have an MBA (or a CA or a PhD or any other letters) we are automatically leaders and or experts. An old friend of mine, who was CEO of a very successful bio-tech engineering firm by the time he was 40, was asked by his Dad about what made him good as CEO? He replied, “I think I listen really well.” And I think that is the key to pushing back against our moral vanity. Yes, we may well have learned a great deal in our 20 year’s experience, and some of that may well be worth sharing, when invited. And equally powerful for us is to ask younger people, or newer people in the organization what they think, what they see, what they observe, believe and think important. Or if we have a new graduate degree, or a new professional designation, then there may well be some great learning there that may well be worth sharing, when invited. And equally powerful for us is to ask others, the folks from the School of Hard Knocks, what they think, what they see, what they observe, believe and think important. And as wonderful and “right” as we are on our own,  by listening to each other, we might just find that the ‘right’ answer lies somewhere between our experience and our expertise.

May this week be a listening week for each of us.