Good afternoon and I hope this edition of Leadership Notes finds you well. From the "you never know what'll happen" file, I was recently facilitating a conversation about "Leadership Brand". Our discussion was focused on building and enhancing what we might call the 'brand" of a particular leader. I've built a process to begin the dialogue for a leader or leaders so that they can recognize and build what it is that they are good at and what people count on us for. This was work I began working with the Canadian National Young Leaders conference in Saskatoon last May, and I really enjoy the process and the conversations that surface.
One of the questions that I ask folks to think about, among a number, is "what haunts you?" I was introduced to this question some years ago at the Whidbey Institute's Powers of Leadership program, and it has frankly haunted me since. I invite you to have a think about your answer, before you go any farther, and in the best tradition of a good question, it is ambiguous, so just answer it the way you wish. What haunts you?
I've heard answers in the past like, 'I'm haunted by a divorce', 'I'm haunted by a lost opportunity', 'I'm haunted by a choice I didn't make,' and a number of similar answers. The answers more often than not, help us get clear about what is vital for us, what is very important for us in the past, and to begin to explore the implications of the past on our present and futures.
This particular session was going very well, and during the section where the participants were answering "What haunts you?" one guy was quieter than usual. I didn't think too much about it, as the questions in this section often cover the session with silence as people reflect for themselves. Even after the small group dialogues that followed though, I noticed he was still quiet. (I always say that people can 'pass' on answering this question in a group). I thought little of it, and then we went into a break. He came up to the front of the room, and said, "I just wanted you to know that I was doing the exercise, I just didn't want to share what haunts me with the others." Handing me a piece of paper he said “here it is.” On the paper were the words, "haunt" and "Yugoslavia." I was stunned.
For those of you not familiar the story that word represents for Canadians, here is a link to a story from late last year from the Globe and Mail talking about a recent documentary film about what happened to the former Yugoslavia and to the Canadian Peacekeepers who went there in 1992. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/a-tale-of-sarajevo-so-grim-its-must-see/article15318447/
The participant in this session had been there.
I was reminded that we don't know the depth of the stories of the people with whom we work. In the words of Jean Vanier, "All of us have challenges, some of us more visible challenges than others." It behooves us therefore to know that we are all haunted by something in our past, and for some, that haunting is very, very close to us every moment of every day. We can bring ourselves to work, we can leave our "stuff" at home, but eventually we need to deal with that which haunts us. My wish for all of us is to be aware of that which haunts us, and to bring it into the light.
And if you know of a veteran who is haunted and the haunting is damaging him or her, I might recommend this very important project out of UBC run by my friend Dr. Marv Westwood. https://startanevolution.ubc.ca/successstories/veterans-transition-program/