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Leadership as Improv
"Prediction is difficult, especially about the future."
Yogi Berra
With all of the surprises in the news these days, financial and otherwise, one thing is increasingly clear. Yogi Berra was right. Prediction is difficult. In the midst of the anxiety surrounding us, it is tempting to retreat into a particular pattern or routine. It is comforting to know that we can count on something. We find ourselves hungry for a plan - anything that can simplify our task as leaders and provide some clear direction through the fog of change.
I know the "change" lecture has been done to death. "The only thing we can count on is change." We have been inundated with these corporate clichés until we are numb. And even numb feels better than anxiety.
But numbness doesn't make for effective leadership. In fact, it is often the plans into which we mindlessly retreat ("In Tom Peters we Trust.") that squelch creativity and deprive us of the benefits of innovation and true problem solving.
With all that has been preached to us from the leadership development pulpit on change, we have mindlessly fallen in line with a particular posture or response to change - we have to learn how to cope with change. Change is considered to be a challenge, an enemy to effectiveness and planning. The unexamined question that is planted in our minds is, "How can change be managed and controlled?" For me, these days, with all of the "fruit-basket-upset" events in my life, I find myself challenged with a different question. "What would happen if I gave up trying to control change and started encouraging it?"
The great Louis Armstrong was once asked to define jazz. His response? "Man, if you gotta ask, you'll never know." Recovering from my "near death experience" of surgery for kidney cancer, I have been confronted more and more powerfully with the ambiguities of life. I am forced to depend less on my plans and live out of an intuitive knowing. I have had to learn to be lighter on my feet and more flexible. Many of my life plans have gone out the window. My brush with death has caused me to realize that I can't even plan on being around tomorrow. The truth is none of us can. Life happens or it doesn't. We can't do much about either. In the moment when life is present, we are force to live life as improv. The marches we memorized must give way to jazz. Anything else is an illusion. Armstrong's advice to other musicians becomes the mantra of modern life - "Never play a thing the same way twice."
So, if we are forced to live and to lead in each moment and our plans become more of a barrier than the change they were designed to control, does it mean that plans are useless? I love the familiar quote from General Eisenhower in preparing the Allied Forces for D-Day. "Plans are useless, planning is essential." There is a great difference between a plan and planning. A plan is a spontaneous process that has gotten frozen. Planning has to do with bringing a clear intent to a situation while remaining flexible in how we manifest that intent.
In more stable times, leadership was able to succeed by successful execution of a plan. I believe these times are past. Instead of offering some superficial plan as a leader, we must now offer our clear intent. Maybe that's why I get so uncomfortable with the demands on our presidential candidates that they come up with a plan for our economy or for the war in Iraq. (I get even more uncomfortable when they presume to offer one.) What I want from them is not some trumped up (and soon to be obsolete) plan that is made to help everyone feel more secure. I want their clear and steady unchanging intent. I believe that is what leadership is all about.
Steve Geske |
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A Riviting Truth 
Images of hurricanes surface a memory for me. It was my own experience with a storm, a conversation with a wise old man, and an insight with many lessons.
As a teenager, I crossed the Atlantic on an ocean liner. I was returning home after a time of exploration and schooling abroad. Our old ship, the North German Lloyd Company's Berlin, spent three days slugging its way through a powerful North Atlantic storm. Elderly passengers spent their time confined to cabins, protecting themselves from injury as the ship pitched and rolled. We younger people embraced the experience with some recklessness moving around the ship and watching the weather have its way with us.
We felt a mixture of adventure and anxiety. My own anxiety was nourished by a lack of knowledge of sea worthiness in ships.
During a brief period of sun shine, but with seas continuing to run high, I walked on the promenade deck for an open air view of the ocean. Nearby, an elderly German stood looking out over the water. He appeared to be observing a freighter in the distance on a course similar to ours. He and I drew closer together and continued to watch. He moved his gaze and pointed to a row of rivets holding a portion of our ship's steel together, saying to me, "Do you know why we will survive and she may not? (meaning the freighter). It is because of the rivets used to the build this ship. This ship was built before welds were used. The rivets allow for flexibility. Our ship bends in the seas. We are safer."
The old man was teaching me about more than ship building and storms. He was sharing a metaphor for living and, I would come to conclude much later, a way of being for leaders.
Leadership fails when it is practiced as a rigidly structured process required to follow invented formulas in order to succeed. This may be why so many management seminar binders gather dust on office bookshelves.
Leadership succeeds when it is understood to require flexibility, adaptability and the ability to bend to the needs of the moment.
We at Healing Leaders believe leadership is about rational innovation and improvisation in the moment. This means reducing personal anxiety in response to moments of stress. Anxiety reduction invites creative and imaginative thinking. Great leaders adjust to the moment by instantly assessing the emotional triangles they occupy. They make use of their knowledge of triangles to self-define and stay the course. These leaders reference an internal compass which leads them from self-aware to self-care and self-dare. Like the ship, great leaders are well built and confident of their self-definition. They flex and bend in situations (no two of which are ever alike!) calling for their calm and inventive presence.
Our well-built ship weathered the storm. She arrived at port behind schedule, but intact. Those of us aboard her understood that how she was built and functioned was crucial to our journey's success.
Howard Hansen
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From Our Readers
In last month's (the August) newsletter I asked, "How toxic is your workplace"? I suggested using the exit interview to learn about levels of toxicity and included some questions to ask departing employees to gather information. The article triggered email from two readers whose experiences and additional suggestions are worth sharing.
Art Held wrote to suggest another "do" and 2 helpful "donts" for the list of "do's" to follow in an exit interview.
1) Be sure to assign the (exit interview) task to someone of stature and whom people respect. They must care about the responses, and understand confidentiality well.
2) Don't email a form to the departing employee and ask them to fill it out
3) Don't present it before all significant financial transactions are complete."
Another reader, who obviously must remain anonymous, writes;
"Many managers and leaders don't have one on one's with their employees or they spend their one on one time getting updates on tasks instead of having real conversations about what is happening in the work place. This reminds me of my relationship with my boss. Our one on one time is spent on us updating each other on various tasks that are happening in the business, but we never have a real conversation. The reason is because he doesn't want to know about toxicity, because he doesn't want to change any behavior and he is extremely challenged when it comes to conflict".
Thanks for your emails. If you read something you feel worthy of comment, email me at
hhansen@healingleaders.com
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