Good morning from a still overcast Vancouver, a bit of a change from the east shore of Ohau, where I have been for the past 8 days or so. This break gave me some time for the hardest part of leadership, ‘inner work’. Amongst other practices, I found myself picking up “What Matters Most” by James Hollis http://www.jameshollis.net/books/matters.htm. Hollis, is a Jungian analyst with a string of very readable and helpful books. One of the chapters this book is “That We Live Verbs not Nouns.” In it, Hollis argues that our ego:

“…naturally has a preference for certainty over uncertainty, predictabiity over surpise, clarity over anarchy, decision over ambivalence, and so on. Thus this Nervous Nellie ego flits about trying to make everything work, slapping her head, boxing her neighbours, obsessed with staying in charge. As part of her agitated agenda, Nellie seeks to live in a world of nouns, comforting nouns, that is fixed identities, counters on a table to be moved at will, predictable entities that can be controlled, maneuvered, and contained. And all the while, Nelly really swims in a sea of verbs. That is not things fixed, but things happening. And Nellie, tripping over this fact time to time, grows all the more unsettled, anxious, kerfuffled and flits about even more.” (Hollis 95-96) 

As part of our collective and individual leadership journeys, Hollis challenges us to live into the sea of verbs, because to my thinking, to try to lead in a world of nouns is kind of like trying to control a surfing wave!

So what might that look like in your organization? Well, first we human beings are not simply human doings. We are nouns and there is the grace and vitality in each of us But we must be so very careful of having our naming of something or someone restrict them to a particular role for our benefit, in Hollis’ profound image, “counters to be controlled, maneuvered and contained.” My colleague or direct report is not my pawn because they have a particular title or noun in the organization. In short, my ability to ‘order’ an individual is severly limited. I can have clear expectations and accountablities, but I cannot order someone around without it causing great harm to the all important relationship. In a particularly embarassing moment in my own development as a leader and manager, I once said to a direct report, quite seriously, “make it so”, trying to emulate Captain Jean Luc Picard from Star Trek The Next Generation. Thankfully he came to me later and gave me some feedback, and asked that I never do that again! (So far, I have not.)

Our team mates, our work partners, even our competitors in the organization are all people, and in that sense are nouns, but they are also verbs, people that behave and happen, grow and develop. So, when a direct report is not meeting the agreed upon standards, our focus is not on making them behave in a certain way, as if they were a monopoly piece, they will behave as they choose to behave because they are a person. Our focus must be on creating the environment where they are more likely to choose to behave in a way that adds value to the organization and the people it serves. We do that by caring, inspiring, challenging, pushing back when appropriate, setting clear boundaries based on our organization’s mission and values, and holding each other accountable for our behaviours. We do that by listening more than advocating. We do that by building trust and respect by giving trust and respect. We do that not by being our ego’s Nervous Nellie trying to control the world, but by living into a world where people will behave in honourable and healthy ways when we treat them honourably and healthily.

Here’s to a week of action and honour!

If you found value in this edition of Leadership Notes please forward it to colleagues and friends who might be interested. They'll thank you and so will I!