#129 Gratitude, Balance and Acceptance

"Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."

Taken from the Desiderata...

This is a post about being thankful. Finding ways to see the balance in things. Taking a larger view and accepting that things are unfolding in exactly the manner they should be.

This has been an very exciting couple of weeks for me. The Marksmanship program I run had it's most successful week finish up last Friday and we set a new mark on the wall for future programs. An article JD and I wrote together has been selected for publication in a military journal sometime down the road and for presentation at the annual Army Ethics conference in the Fall at Ft. Leavenworth, KS. I have been asked to review and offer comment on a fiction book being written set in Afghanistan. And last Sunday, a reader called me and told me he had forwarded some of my work to the Human Resources director of his company to possibly see if there was any interest in having me come in and do some guest speaking. Everywhere I turn, good, and positive things have been happening in my life both personally and professionally. I have every reason to be incredibly proud, happy and thankful for my good fortune. It has come honestly and through a lot of hard work and perseverance.

And yet, this week I learned a powerful lesson from a friend of mine. Throughout the week, little things would pop up here and there, and all I would do is complain about them. Someone would pay me a compliment and I would qualify it to reduce it's significance. I would not accept that I had worked hard to get my work to this level and that something was good enough. In fact, throughout the week, as good fortunes kept piling up, I got more and more critical of my world. Finding fault everywhere. Belittling people and I had a feeling of mean-spiritedness. Highly critical. Questioning and finding ways to not believe that good fortune could, and should, come my way. The attitude I was taking was so negative that at one point my friend asked me who I was. She asked me why I couldn't just be grateful, and thankful, and happy for all the positive things going on in my world? Why did everything get mitigated down to a negative and distrustful place? Why did it get belittled? The changes in me were profound. My voice took on an edge, the sarcasm that is part of me anyway took on a sharpness that wasn't funny, but mean. I wasn't enjoying anything, but only looking for things that weren't going exactly perfectly. I had a very negatively focused intensity. And that is not in keeping with my true nature. It was as if I was afraid of something being good and right and positive. I was on unfamiliar ground for me without even really recognizing it.

My friend's questions stuck with me.....Why can't I be happy with the good fortune in my life? Had I really come to expect that only bad things could happen in my life? Why can't I be grateful and thankful for what I do have instead of focusing on what I don't? Why can't I accept that there is a balance in the world and that nothing will ever go exactly as planned? Why can't I relax into the moment and then open myself up to the possibility of other successful outcomes? What is it about good fortune and compliments and events unfolding as they should that drives me to another place? An unhealthy place. A place where I am not truly being myself. I have ranted on these pages in the past about toxic leadership and it is a hot topic in the Army today. What I found out this week though, is my own ability to become exactly what I have been railing against all these months. I found my own toxicity. It was not a pretty picture.

The point I want to explore here, is that in order to see the our whole world clearly, we have to actually see all of our world. And, we have to see it clearly. By choosing to only view mine negatively throughout the week, I missed out on the possibility of really enjoying the positive things that were happening. They had to be pointed out to me. I was limiting my own experience of the world, shutting myself off from seeing the whole picture. When I do that, I am really only putting blinders on and not stopping to look around and really see what is happening. As a leader of an organization, I was painting a picture for my subordinates and that picture wasn't one of success - even though that is exactly what was really happening. In reality, I wasn't giving them their proper credit and due for the hard work and effort they were putting into each day. The effect of which was to disrespect and disregard their efforts. And no one wants to serve or work in an organization like that for very long. I saw a headline this morning about the CEO of Zappos shoes who's title is CEO and Chief Happiness Officer. I thought to myself, no one would ever make that claim about me, and I couldn't even see me claiming that title for myself. That web seminar that he will be part of is about organizational culture, and it struck me how large a role a title or responsibility like that can be.

In a larger sense though, this is a question of attitude and balance. Something that every leader no matter how large or how small the organization they lead is, has to be aware of. If you choose - and it is most certainly a choice - to be negatively focused all the time, then you can never see success and goodness and hard work and the positive contributions you and those around you are making in that moment. You cannot make the most of unforseen opportunities that are presented. In effect, you cannot OODA because you cannot correctly Orient yourself. You don't have a complete picture. Think about that for a moment. It's important. The attitude you choose in the moment severely affects your Orientation and will very strongly influence your Decide which will directly effect the Act. You will set the loop spinning in a whole new direction. Once you start the cycle, it is very hard to break since each new Observe is predicated on the Act of the previous cycle. By choosing a negative Orientation, I was almost guaranteeing the negative Act which will inform the next Observe in a negative manner. Not good. Attitude is everything. The cycle will work in any manner you want it to. The choice to set it in motion positively or negatively is yours. For leaders, recognizing that can be key to achieving the outcome.

On a more personal level though, the baseline questions still remain. Why isn't anything short of perfection (the outcome I have predetermined in my mind) good enough? Why do I always hold out a percentage of myself to guard and be watchful for failure? Why not invest totally in my own positivity? Why not create the world I want to live in instead of allowing my world to influence me so strongly? Why do I still let other people's opinions have such a strong influence on me? I have learned throughout my journey over these last months a lot of those answers, and while they are important, they are not important here. What is important however, is that I can now see how limiting and confining all of those things are. How small they are making my world. If I want to truly lead myself, my family and my organization, it will take confronting all of those things head on and making substantive changes in my personal Orientation to get there. I offer to you to do the same thing. Look hard at yourself and figure out how you are oriented. How and why you filter things the way you do. Understanding that will have a marked effect on how you lead. The work of behavior change will not be easy for me. I have already found out painfully how quickly old habits and patterns can be to slip right into. How something seemingly innocuous and small can rush and totally upset the balance I have been working to achieve. Ultimately though, the hard work is worth doing. Mostly for me and my family, but also for the organization I lead now, and those I will lead in the future. Every step on the journey to self awareness and self acceptance is important. And that importance has a lot of second and third order effects. Someday, actually everyday, a Soldier is affected by my actions, my thoughts and my behaviors. Whether I am aware of it consciously or not, I role model the world I want to live in. Because of my position, Soldiers look to me for guidance and answers and judgment. They will absorb a lot of the world I present to them. That role modeling could arguably be my most important contribution to the unit and to Soldiers. It's influence goes well beyond numbers and percentage points on a rifle range.

So today, I am grateful. I am grateful for the good fortune that has come my way recently. It is nice to have people recognize my work and find value in it. More importantly though, I am grateful for having had my world expanded a little bit more. For being shown how much I was limiting myself by living in fear and worry and doubt and lack of acceptance. Ultimately, that will be the much more profound goodness of this time. I am becoming a more full person each day. More able to live in my world comfortably. Seeing myself, my abilities and my limitations more clearly. Laughing more and worrying less. Recognizing how my choices have a direct effect on those around me, family or friends or co-workers. I am most grateful for having my self-awareness expanded. That is the key to both my personal and leader development. I am learning to live my life in balance, recognizing how the good things help protect against, and provide strength for, the moments of adversity. How being able to balance the two ultimately provides a solid, centered person able to lead, love, learn, and live a hell of a lot more comfortably. Slowly, I am coming to an acceptance of who I truly am. That knowledge, my growing awareness, and that balance all work together to allow my authentic self to show up. If the Army is serious about leader development, driving each of us to discover our authentic selves may well be the most important first step.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

#128 Seizing the Moment

"To be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing it's best night and day to make you somebody else means to fight the hardest battle that any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
e.e. Cummings

Five years ago, my life began a slow unraveling. Subtle at first, and not very noticeable, things began to slowly slip away from me. The clarity of my life, the self-assuredness that I had possessed earlier began to erode. I withdrew slowly. I worried more. I felt less in control of myself and my surroundings. I no longer impacted events, events started impacting me. I was letting other people to define me instead of defining myself. Instead of trusting my instincts. The events in Iraq had just happened, but I also had a 1 year old at home. Great pain and great joy ran into each other daily and I couldn't balance the two. Couldn't get things to match up cleanly. Having a baby at home is a challenge all by itself. Children always make the world a new and sometimes scary place - especially for new parents. For the first time though, my professional life was also uncertain. And that was new for me. Up to then it had always been a bedrock thing. No matter how crazy my life at home might be, I could always go to work and make it all come together. Personal or family setbacks were often offset by professional gains and successes. I hid myself in my work. And began slowly pulling away......Slowly began believing the labels that people have attached to me over the years. Slowly moving away from my authentic self.

That drift continued for a long time. The current of it was so slow at times as to become unnoticeable. But it was there and I was moving. I was functioning but not living. Slowly but surely losing my definition of who I was. Without any labels or titles or history. Losing sight of those things those things that make me, me. Questioning and searching and looking and hoping for a day when it would all come back again. That I would wake up and somehow I would still be who I was from '95 - '05. Of course, you can never go back to that well more than once. Life is lived forward and the days drifted by since I stopped living it.

All of that is over now. Gone. Done. It left in a rush this week. As slowly as it all crept into my life, the leaving was incredibly quick and powerful. No doubt a lot of introspection and thought and work and loving support and care and an amazing friend helped get me there, but on a rifle range last Friday, about 2:30 in the afternoon, in an absolute rush of intensity, I came full circle. I stepped back into the light of my life. Doubt and worry and questioning departed so quickly as to almost leave an empty space behind for a moment. The truth of me filled that space quickly and I was literally shaking with the energy.

I have written a million times about the importance of leaders knowing themselves. You must know who you are at your core. Your bedrock truths. Those things that are always present and real and speak to you. Those things that make you completely and totally you. A you no one else on the planet can be. And that is still true. All of those things are requirements if you are to be an authentic leader. If you truly want to lead anything, you first have to learn about and lead yourself. Accepting yourself completely - without guilt or embarrassment or false modesty or worry about what others might think. You have to do the hard work of discovering yourself honestly - the good and the bad. In equal measure. Without self-judgement. Continually stripping away at all the layers of self deceit until you reach an absolute truth that can no longer be denied. No excuses for who you are. Not accepting labels put on you by others and not denying your own true self. For many people, this might come easily, for others it will not be as simple. Some people as as self-aware as they can possibly be, they accept themselves with a clear understanding of their strengths, their limitations, the places they excel and the places they fall short. Most of us do not have that internal mechanism built in. For most of us, a journey like mine is incredibly instructive. I will be forever grateful for this period in my life. The chance to live completely and fully and with intention has been offered to me. My job is to take it.

There comes a time though when you have to act. When you have settled everything that you can for that moment and have to move. For the last 4 months, I have been steadily stripping away at myself. Pulling layer after layer of my life off and looking at it and examining it and finding out its' truth. Seeing it without self-protection. Raw and pure and uncovered. The amount of time involved in this has been staggering. But that is also part of me. A dogged determination to understand and reconcile and learn. I will not quit until I get what I want. I am a very driven and very bright man. And I will continue to push until the goal is achieved or the mission accomplished. That is just part of me. I am not laid back. I am not superficial. I do not believe that it will all simply be here tomorrow. Things must be done now. They must be done completely. They must be done with purpose. And Friday afternoon, the floodgates opened and Fenlason showed up again. Burst into the world with a clarity and sense of purpose that I had not known in a long time. It felt good to see me again. Very good. Very real and very true and very powerful. A moment had come, and in a rush of clarity and with all of my being present, I came back to the world again. I could not stand by and watch anymore. To be a passive participant in my life. My life requires me to be present. To be me. To be exactly who and what I am. To seize the moment.

A few weeks back, somebody asked me what all of these recent posts concerning my life and my journey had to do with leadership. Specifically, military leadership. What does all this introspection and searching and questioning have to do with leading Soldiers? And many of you may be asking the same thing. What the hell happened here? This guy used to write about everything he thought was wrong with the Army or some article he read or some idea he was kicking around. Now, all he does is talk about some journey towards the truth, towards authenticity. What the hell is all this about? Why do I care about his issues? I've got enough of my own. And to be honest, I haven't even confronted mine, so why get wrapped up in his?

Fair questions all. Why should you give a damn about me? Why should you care about my journey? Why should you read about my thoughts and concerns and worries and fears and failures and successes? This isn't a diary, it's a leadership blog. Why is there all this stuff about finding the truth about yourself?

Here's why. Leadership requires authenticity. It requires the real and true you to be present every day. It requires that you know exactly who the hell you are. That is the only way you can completely lead Soldiers or anyone else. They must have no doubt about who and what you are, who and what you stand for, and who and what they are placing their faith and confidence and maybe even their lives in. That is why it matters. When you are authentic and true to yourself, no one else can move you off of that place. You are so sure of your own self that you no longer spend any time wasting energy worrying about anyone else's opinion of you. It simply doesn't matter. And when that happens, when you live your life with that kind of purpose and focus and direction then you can truly lead and care for others. Care and lead and love them in a way absolutely particular to you. All fear and doubt and worry is removed. You can focus all your energy on the issue and the people around you. You do not have to spend time wondering about you.

The Army is spending considerable time this year looking at leader development. There is a recognition that somehow we have gotten a little off track. A recent poll said that over 80% of the respondents had worked for or knew someone they considered a toxic leader. That is very alarming news. 80%! And the funny part of that is that if you asked each of them if they thought they were toxic, they'd probably all answer no. So the number is 80, but it's everyone but me. That just doesn't add up. Somewhere in there are a bunch of folks who aren't seeing themselves too clearly. Could you be one of them? Could I? If you wonder why my journey matters and why I share it on these pages, just think about that. The premier leadership organization in the world is seeing an issue with authentic self-awareness. Suddenly, I don't seem all that far off track.

As I re-enter my life with energy and clarity and focus and determination and a much stronger realization of all those things that are me, opportunities are presenting themselves every day to further succeed and capitalize on the things I have learned so far. My journey will never be complete. There is no end-point to something like this. Living your life completely requires you to look at it daily, to remain engaged and present at all times. To not complacently accept anything that doesn't ring true for you. A thousand moments a day will offer themselves to you, the thing you must do is seize them when they do.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. The blog went over 7,000 page views this week and I am grateful beyond measure for your support. If you find the work worth reading each week, please feel free to pass it along to others. Thanks.

#127 A Lesson From The Coffee Pot

It’s amazing what you can learn from a coffee pot…

I am a very rigid person. I like order, structure, and routine. I like ordinary and predictable outcomes. I like going to bed at night knowing that the coffee pot will turn on at a particular time and there will be a fresh pot awaiting me 12 steps across the kitchen floor when I roll out of bed in the morning. I get the same amount of sleep each night and use the alarm clock even when I don’t have to. I like neat and orderly. It’s how my brain is wired. There is a place for everything and everything in its place. There is an efficiency and effectiveness to order and rigidity that makes sense to me. If time is a quantifiable asset, then structure and order all contribute to the effective use of it for me.

The important thing about all this though isn’t what I do to produce those things, but rather the feelings doing them produce in me: Calm, peaceful, centered. In control. I feel better imposing structure on my world. Working each day in the most efficient manner possible. Getting things done quickly and with the least amount of distractions or challenges or unexpected interruptions. I have less worries when things act exactly the way they are meant to. There is no friction or stress, or having to react to the unexpected. Everything in it’s known place and order and location doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing. No risk and very safe. I am in control. There is no fear because I limit the inputs to only things that I can control and predict and order them in such a way that they produce a comfortable outcome for me.

A lot of how I became this way has to do with my raising and the Army. The Army is a very structured world. Time is a huge influencing factor in the Army. You do something from exactly this time to exactly that. There is a set, established standard for everything. We have customs and requirements and rules and structure and discipline and all of those are important things that help ensure an outcome that is successful. We plan and resource and build and work to a precise standard that ensures that everyone knows their part and how all the parts come together in a way that accomplishes the mission. We spend a lot of time ensuring that each part of the Soldier is checked and re-checked until there is very little margin for error. He or she becomes reliable and predictable and a known quantity. And that is exactly what happened to me. I became a reliable quantity. A person who could be counted on. Efficient and controlled and known. Then I sought to impose that control and structure and discipline on my entire life. That is where I went wrong. I became a very rigid thinker and participant in all aspects of my life. There is a best way to do something and I know what that way is. No one else’s way ever got any real consideration.

Up to there though, it sounds pretty good, right? Sounds a lot like what most of us try to do. We try to structure our lives in a way that produces the greatest amount of calm and peace in our world. But what happens when it doesn’t work out that way? What happens when our need for our world to act in a certain way is disrupted by outside influences? What happens then? More importantly, what happens when the need for order, and structure and control actually start interfering and cause the very distress you're trying to avoid? That probably happens to more people than just me.

As I continue to look at my life one thing that has become most evident to me is that in many ways, I am the greatest limiting factor in it. I am the one holding me back. Not the Army or anyone or anything else. I limit me from creating the world I want to live in. And I have done that most often by never considering any other way of doing things except my own. Never looking at, or valuing, any other possible solution. By trying to impose my need for rigidity and control over my life and the people in it, all I really did was lose the opportunity to see them as they really are, and to participate fully in the experience of my world. If it wasn’t going to be done my way, then I didn’t want to play the game. Time to take my toys and go home. I was focused on the trees and lost the forest entirely.

Things have changed a lot for me lately and I am learning to value seeing other points of view. Learning to keep my eye on the outcome and not the process. Slowly I am learning to relax a little and keep my eye on what the end state is. What did I want to have happen? Trying to keep my eye on the forest instead of bumping into every tree. Now it is less important that I be right all the time and a hell of a lot more important that the objective is achieved. And that’s an important thing to consider. Do you want to be right, or win? Do you want to prove your point, prove that your way is the best way, or do you want to actually get something done? Those two things are not the same.

Rigidity and control are actually signs of fearfulness in me and are extremely hard to put down. It has been one of the major challenges of the last 4 months. To let go of a powerful need for control and to relax into seeing the opportunities being presented to me. To take the time to look around and instead of seeing something as failed because it's not being done the way I would do it, actually seeing whether or not it’s working. Is it achieving the end state? If it is working, then why not embrace it, even if it isn't the way I would go about it? Why remain so wrapped up in my particular way of accomplishing it?

All of this was taught to me at 4:30 yesterday morning when I rolled out of bed. I struggled the 12 steps across the kitchen floor and looked at the coffee pot. The little green light that should have been on wasn’t. The pot that should have been filled to the brim with the magical brown elixir that turns my brain on in the morning was still just clear glass. I had neglected to put the pot together the night before. This was officially a crisis!. I would now have to clean out the pot from the previous day, and then fill it with grounds and water and then turn it on and wait 10 minutes before I could take my first sip of the liquid jet fuel that wakes me up each day. This was bad! I stood there for a second in the light of the kitchen stove in shock. I felt a little tiny wave of anger and frustration well up in me…..I had not followed my proscribed routine the night prior and now something bad had happened. Now the outcome was different than I wanted. And then suddenly the anger and frustration disappeared. Poof. Gone. And I started to laugh…quietly because it was 4:30 am, but laugh nonetheless. Something I wouldn’t have done before. I laughed at myself for forgetting, and put the pot together and set it to doing it's thing. About 10 minutes later, sipping my first cup of the day, I had to smile a little at how far I had come. I had found humor and laughter where I used to find anger and frustration. I had my coffee and life was good.

How do my coffee woes apply to leadership? The Army has gone through a large sea-change in how it develops leaders over the last 10 years. There is a recognition that the very rigidity and control and attention to detail and meticulous planning and slavish adherence to only one way of thinking that I grew up with also has some serious limitations. Now the idea is to build adaptive and creative thinking Soldiers and leaders able to take advantage of opportunities as the arise, and not get so locked in on only one way of doing things. Leaders able to see the forest through the trees. Leaders able to look at multiple courses of action and truly find the right one for the situation they face. While the baseline requirements of discipline and attention to detail and focus on the skills and requirements of the mission remain, we are now seeing adaptability and flexibility of thought and an understanding of the big picture that this war has required. So maybe the lesson learned standing at the coffee pot does have some merit. Leaders need to be able to see beyond the immediate problem and not get wrapped up in the minutia. That's what managers do. Leaders need to have a vision and an end-state. And then they must remain flexible enough to keep track of it when the plan or routine changes.

All of which came to me very very early yesterday morning as I watched my coffee pot slowly fill up.....

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

#126 The Truth Part 2

Three weeks ago in post #123, I wrote about discovering your own truth. A kind of 'step one' in the process of self-awareness and understanding. Breaking away from opinions and ideas and thoughts just because they have been handed to you and starting to really discover your own truth. Your own ideas and thoughts and opinions. Things that you value and will stand up for against all odds and all dissenting opinion. Finding your absolutes. And then trusting them. Trusting yourself first to know what is best for you and for the situation you find yourself in at the time. It might look different tomorrow than it does today, but for right now, in this moment, the way you perceive your truth, the way you understand your world, is as absolutely clear and valid as anything else in the world.

There is another side to finding the truth though, and that is expressing it to others. At some point, we are all confronted with something where we have to take a risk and tell our truth. Put it out there and speak it plainly. To let others know exactly where we stand. It could be your boss, your spouse, a friend. It could be anyone. And to do that takes a whole other set of behaviors and understandings besides merely figuring out what the truth is for you. To stand up and clearly articulate exactly what it is that you are seeing, feeling and understanding takes a form of courage and clarity and self-trust that sadly, most of us do not possess in full measure. To tell others plainly what it is you are thinking. To tell them your truth regardless of how they receive it. To bet the farm on your understanding of the world. So, first you have to have the idea or thought, to take the time to develop your understanding of something, but then you have to share it with others. You have to express it. And that can be much harder than it appears on the surface. Have you ever stopped and thought about how often you consider (or don't) someone else's feelings, or worry about how something you say might be misinterpreted or misconstrued by another person? Ever taken notice of how much content or opinion you adjust or suppress or keep to yourself because you don't want to hurt someone else's feelings, or have them attack you for your own ideas? Most of us do this so regularly that we don't even know when it happens. We have practiced the benign behavior for so long that we no longer realize how little of our truth that we are actually presenting. It's like there are two of us: The public person who is agreeable and accommodating and wants to get along with everyone, and our private self that carries the truth of us around and we only pull out and look at it when we are all alone. This impact of wanting to get along and be agreeable mutes and dulls us even more from being able to see the truth within us, but it is that plain truth inside that is the essence of both self-respect and true leadership.

Consider this....

I recognized at some point that who and what I am was no longer working or feasible for me. Personally or professionally. I was unhappy and found myself searching for answers. So I took some time and began a journey of discovery to see who I really am and to find those things within myself. To search for my bedrock truths. And I did all of that.. I looked and searched and listened for the truth of my life. I listened very quietly to see if I could hear it. And sooner or later, I did hear it. I felt the truth and recognized it as the new reality for me. That whatever it is...my actions, my behaviors, my relationships with others, all of those things changed and morphed a little, becoming just a little bit more clear because I could now see them as my truth. No one else's, just mine. But now I ran in to part 2. I have to express them. Now I have to tell them to someone, my boss, a spouse, a co-worker, a subordinate, a friend. Now, whatever my truth is, has to be expressed. Except that I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to tell my truth to someone else, especially if that telling may cause them or me a little pain. Especially if it's hard. Maybe not physical pain, but maybe emotional pain. Maybe I have to tell my boss that he or she is wrong, or offensive. But I worry about the repercussions. Maybe I have to tell my spouse that I do not agree with this or that decision. But I worry about angering them. Maybe I have to tell someone I love that they have a problem. But I worry about them no longer associating with me. All of these things make me uncomfortable because I need to tell my truth, but have with no language to do it, No way to stand firm in my personal belief without worrying about harming another person. And most of us spend a large portion of our lives trying to avoid conflicts just like that.

But there is another way...

I have a friend who can do nothing but tell the truth. It is how she is wired. Ask her a question and you will get her truth. Each time, every time. No matter how hard that truth may be, it is hers and she is solid in it. I asked her about it one day, how she could be like that, and her answer was deceptively simple. The truth is the truth and you should not be scared of it. You should not be afraid to speak it. It is yours. Do not be afraid of your own truth. It is a measure of your own self-worth. Once you know what it is, there is no value in hiding it from others. Do not worry about how they will receive it, that is outside your control. They will hear it the way they want to. But, if it is yours, then ultimately, you are being authentic. And being authentic, both personally and in a leadership role is a key to establishing successful relationships.

As we were talking about it, I asked her over and over why the way it was received was not something to worry about. I had been raised and cultured to pay very close - extremely close - attention to how others might hear or interpret my words, my thoughts, my actions. I had become so good in fact that even when I thought I was telling my truth, the words were being structured and delivered in a way that already presupposed the other person's reaction. I was using language to predict and plan their responses without even knowing it. I was not only failing to tell my truth accurately, but also failing to respect them enough to allow them to form their own understanding of what I was saying. In the end, I was presenting half-truths and shaded truths and then not liking the answers and responses I got from other people. She asked me one question. "What's the worst that can happen?" And that stopped me cold. If you can figure out and come to grips with "What's the worst that can happen", and take the fear of the unknown off the table, then telling your truth clearly and plainly becomes much easier to do. And interestingly, since I have started to present my truth, not worrying about how it is received, not worrying about the 'worst that could happen', not one of those worst case scenarios has come true. In fact, the opposite has happened. In each case, speaking clearly and honestly and truthfully....thinking only of what I am feeling and expressing, and trusting in the power of the truth itself to be correct, the outcome has always been positive. Once I stopped worrying about your reaction, I haven't had half the issues I used to. Once I took the time to discover my bedrock truths and then articulate them clearly and honestly, no matter how hard they have been to hear, they have always been received openly and fairly. Interesting....

As leaders, we all have to help our Soldiers navigate their world. It is our responsibility to do that. How can they have faith in our leadership if they cannot trust that what we are telling them is our truth? How can they believe in us if they think we are withholding from them how we truly feel or see the situation? How can they follow us if they think we are shading the truth from them? Take the time to figure out what your truth is, what you know to be true for you about how you see them and you and the situation in front of you. And then tell them. Tell them plainly. Clearly. Not hurtfully, but honestly. In the end, they will hear you more clearly, there will be less misunderstandings and a hell of a lot more clarity. They will not worry about your motive or intention and can focus on the mission and their part in it. And that is why they joined in the first place. Not to have to spend time trying to decipher you and wonder about what you are 'really' saying. They joined to hear your truth. How they receive it is up to them. But, if it is yours, if it is honestly held, and if you have the courage to say it honestly every time, then they will follow you. Believe me. It took me a long time to find my truth, and even longer to speak it fearlessly. Now that I can, it is absolutely amazing to me how it makes life simpler.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

#125 Ones and Twos

"For the strength of the Wolf is the Pack, and the strength of the Pack is the Wolf."
Rudyard Kipling

The world is essentially broken down into 2 groups, leaders and followers. Number Ones and number Twos. In practical everyday terms, a lot of people are both. They are the leader of a group, but they are followers in some other larger group. I am a leader of an organization that is part of a larger organization which issues directives and policies for my smaller part. In that sense, I am a leader and a follower. And so isn't just about everyone else. But don't get wrapped up in that....that is mostly about titles and roles and positional requirements. We all live in that world. Contract the words just a little bit....See the idea of leadership and followership in a much much smaller and more focused way. See you.

True leadership and true followership is much more personal. Much more powerful and quite honestly, much more compelling to think about. It is a fundamental question. Which are you, a leader or a follower? What is your instinct? What does your core tell you each and every day? Which settles your heart in it's most comfortable place? To lead, or to follow? To be a One or a Two? Neither is better than the other, and both must have the other to survive, but there is a real and true difference. Recognizing that difference in yourself will have a lot to do with your personal happiness, and sense of peace in your life.

Leaders and followers both have an equally powerful place in the world and each must be respected for what they provide for the group, but the basic question still remains. Which place suits you more? To decide, to set the course, to lay out the direction and then see it through? To accept the risk of success and failure? To accept responsibility for both the gains and the shortcomings? To stand alone if necessary to see the mission accomplished? Is that your strongest instinct? Or are you more apt to let someone else do that? To work diligently and faithfully and completely, in support of someone else? To go to work each day only wanting to give everything you have in support of the mission or the plan? Taking complete pride and enjoyment and fulfillment that you contributed importantly to the success of the organization by supporting it's goals and by doing your part. Both are deserving of respect and appreciation and places of honor. One is not better than the other, they are different. They both work together to achieve something. It's the differences that must be sought out, understood, and valued.

The more I listen to my heart these days, the more junk I strip away and really look, the more one thing is becoming very abundantly clear to me. I am a leader. My gut tells me so. My instinct is to lead. To take charge. To accomplish. To decide, direct, and see through. To be a One. That is an elemental piece of who I am. Not boastful or arrogant, simply true. To be fair, I have fought against this for weeks now, trying to see myself as some sort of hybrid. Someone able to lead and follow. Someone comfortable in both places at the very personal level. I too, got wrapped up in the simplified definitions that I cautioned against above. I wasn't looking hard enough, carefully enough, small enough. It isn't true. You cannot at the most personal level live in two worlds like that. I have hidden and shied away from seeing myself as a leader, a One, for many years and tried to see myself as a faithful Two, but ultimately I cannot live that way anymore. My instinct is to lead. To plan and decide and delegate and accomplish. To see what needs to get done and why and then start doing it. And here's how I know....

I have been a complainer for most of my life. When I am not in charge or leading I become a blamer and a person who always thinks he knows better what should have been done and why. Someone who would criticize anyone and everyone else for they manner in which they tried to get something done. Always believing that "If they'd only done what I told them..." then everything would have worked out fine. Check out most of my early posts here and you will see that model outlined brilliantly. "The Army should do this..." "The Army got it wrong..." "The Army failed me..." etc etc etc. Post after post of that. And while most of the arguments have strong merit to them, that doesn't really mean anything. What does is that, I was always Monday morning quarterbacking. Railing against this or that policy or person or idea, but never really offering one of my own to replace it. Never saying, "Here is where I think there is a shortfall, and here is what I think we ought to do about it." I was backseat driving. Being that way, being a complainer and blamer here and in my personal life, made me bitter and spiteful and mean to others. Especially towards those closest to me. They have borne the brunt of this rather gutless mean-spiritedness and bitter derisiveness, and for that, I am truly sorry. It was unfair, unwarranted and inexcusable behavior. No one likes to be attacked harshly by someone who thinks they know better what should be done, but didn't have the guts to step in and take charge to do it. It is not my nature to be that way and when a friend of mine pointed that out, I couldn't understand it's genesis. Now, a little bit at a time, I do.

It has taken me awhile to see this part of me, and it is still uncomfortable territory in many ways, but the truth is that I am happiest, most content and most settled when I lead. Leading doesn't scare me. Hard choices don't bother me. Crisis don't worry me. I am pretty damn solid in the leader position. It is where I am most calm, and most content. In the heat of the moment, my world gets very still. Time slows down and things get pretty clear, pretty quickly.

It's when I am not leading that things start to get squirrely. When for one reason or another, I either willfully surrender my natural instinct to lead to someone else, or start acting untrue to myself to try to provide a position player as a Two for someone else. I have done both of these personally and professionally and in some cases, I got so used to doing it that I formed whole language and behavior patterns to support being a Two all the while harboring an internal anger, resentment, and belittlement of those who had to step up because I didn't or wouldn't follow my instincts.

A few weeks back, I received a note from someone who said he saw a lot of "Untapped potential in me...", and for a little bit that bugged me. I'm 43 years old for God's sake! How much potential could there be that hadn't been already tapped by a 22 year career? And truthfully, I have heard that before. That somehow, I still had more to offer. I would be doing everything I could to support the organization and help out others, but somehow there was still more to me that others were seeing but I was not. And then, with a lot of help and patience from a friend, it became clear to me. The 'untapped potential' was the part of me that was refusing or denying my natural instinct to lead. Always settling for being a Two instead of fulfilling my true nature and ability to lead.

There are a lot of reasons for my becoming this way, for pretending to be a good Two, when what I really am is a One, and honestly, none of them have any relevance here. What does though is that it has taken me a long time to see myself clearly and to accept myself and respect myself enough to say clearly, that I am designed to lead. That is what I am most comfortable doing. It is my nature to be this way. To not shy away from it anymore. To not be afraid to step up and do what I know is best. To accept my place at the table comfortably. To be authentically who I am, and stop role playing.

There is absolutely nothing wrong or less about being a Two either. Twos are really powerful people and actually are the folks who get things done. Twos make realities happen. They move entire organizations - even the Army - forward. Two's have an equally important seat at the table. Equal. That is critical to understand. Ones and Twos are equal. It is not a hierarchical totem pole with leaders at the top and followers at the bottom. It doesn't work that way. In the truest sense, Ones and Twos coexist in a harmony that cannot be replicated anywhere else. The Wolf needs the pack. For the Wolf to achieve everything he/she is capable of, to live up to their truest self, to fulfill their truest potential, they must have a Pack. And the Pack requires the Wolf. They must have him/her in equal measure to reach their full potential. There is a perfect harmony between them. It is a marriage. And the best and strongest marriages work when both people recognize, accept, and respect the natural role of their partner in their lives. Not asking them to be what they aren't and accepting completely what they are.

Last week I wrote about the language we use and the effect it has on our world. That's actually pretty important to this week too. I often use the negative, dismissive, derisive and belittling language of a Two who is secretly a One, and not living up to the responsibilities of accepting that place. As I move ahead, that language will change because I am no longer playing Monday morning quarterback. No longer sitting in judgment. No longer heckling the choices made when I wasn't making them myself. The language of judgement gets replaced by the language of leading. Positive, inclusive, respectful, purposeful and in many ways loving. Language that recognizes the inherent value of both leaders and followers, of One's and Two's. Language that recognizes and respects the harmony.

The only issue then is for each of us to take a square look in our hearts. To listen to our souls, and to search very hard for what speaks to us so loudly. The same ways that I was shown my true nature, the same questions that were asked of me, you can ask of yourself. Where is your true place? Where are you most fulfilled? I know now where mine is, and the acceptance of that has brought a peace and comfort to me that hasn't been present for a long time. Take the time to look hard at yourself, the journey is worth it and the place you end up may surprise you.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

#124 It's How You Say It

I learned a couple of incredibly valuable lessons this week, lessons that ultimately will rearrange a lot of how I think and interact with the people in my life. It has a ton to do with leadership too. The way a leader connects and communicates with those around them.

Have you ever thought about what you say and then how it is received? Ever actively considered how many times you decide things for others without their consent or even consultation, just by the language you use? Ever wondered if what you say to people even has any value to them? These are interesting questions to consider.

I found out this week through two different examples that most of the time when I say something, I have already assumed that my thoughts are more valid than the other persons. That my considerations and viewpoints are the only ones and that theirs are less valuable if they do not coincide with mine. The language I use, the way I stack words, the very order of them, is designed to do one thing only: validate my point to the exclusion of any other. It is a very limiting way of seeing my world.

I also found that I often use superior language that actually devalues the other person in the discussion. A phrase like,"You're right." can have two vastly different meanings. You probably mean, "I agree with you.", or "That's true.", but when you use, "You're right." what you are really saying is, "I am hereby validating your thought process and that you have a right to your own independent thoughts." The point being made is no longer being valued. What is, is the conference my approval on you. Because we happen to share a common opinion, I have now deemed you good and valid, which implies that if we had not agreed on the point that you would be less of a valid person because of our disagreement.

A leaders job is to accomplish something, a mission, a task, developing their subordinates, all of the above. That is what we do. We take our experience, our knowledge and our understandings and make the best decision we can using all of them and we communicate using language. We provide purpose and direction. We talk. We explain. We outline. We send a message. And most of us never consider the message we are sending. Is it one of inclusion or exclusion? Is it one of respect or belittlement? Is it one of value or judgment. Do we hear our subordinates, truly respect their inherent right to see their world independently from us, or do we unconsciously believe that we alone hold the keys to success and their point of view does not matter? Is it possible that someone could have an equally valid, and equally valuable viewpoint as we do? Hardly. We are the leader, they are the subordinate. By that measure alone, what we think and our interpretation of something is inherently more valuable than theirs is.

As I found out this week, my intentions and my actions, my thoughts and my words, my personal biases often get interpreted much differently by even those closest to me. And it is not their fault. The fault is mine. I am miscommunicating simply by the
way I speak.

My wife says, "I'd think we ought to...." I reply with, "Why? What good will that do?" By the time she has finished her statement, I have often times already formulated my reply. Never pausing long enough to even consider why or how she came up with her reasoning in the first place. Never considering that her point of view is as equally valuable as mine. Not respecting her enough to consider that her opposite view carries as much truth as mine does. What I have really said to her in that exchange is, "I don't value the way you think because it is not exactly the way I think." Very disrespectful and very limiting. It never even provides the opportunity for me to learn to see her completely because it already imposes my judgement. Even worse is when I simply assume and never even consider her ideas before acting.

Now it is not my intention to do this. I love my wife and respect her immensely. She is a strong, independent and smart woman. She is entirely capable of running our family and her world all on her own. She has her own points of view. I do not ever intend to belittle her. In fact, until it was pointed out to me by a friend of mine this week, I was never really aware that I was doing it at all. I only want the best for her and for my family. I only want to ensure that what we do, and how we do, it serves to enhance and grow and bring happiness and love to our house. The problem is that the words I choose and the manner I communicate often totally discounts that she wants exactly the same things as I do. I am too busy telling her my views or opinions to stop long enough to listen to hers.

And the Army is full of leaders like that. Full of people who love to hear themselves think and talk and tell you how it all works. There is their way of interpreting the Army and no one else's. We all know people like that. The guy or gal who walks around speaking in denigrating or belittling terms about everyone around them. Immediately discounting any other opinion or viewpoint except their own. The more senior they are, the more prevalent it becomes. They never take a moment to pause long enough to even consider that someone else's view is as equally valid and as equally true as their own. Most of us can easily recognize that trait in others. As I found out this week though, it is immensely difficult to see it in ourselves. Quite clearly, it is a lesson I needed to learn.

The language you use as a leader is critically important to the success of your organization. By listening and respecting the views of those around you, by using inclusive rather than exclusive language, you can demonstrate that each Soldier is inherently valuable. That we, each one of us, have our own point of view, our own understanding, our own interpretation of all that we see. By learning to suspend our own filters and really listen, we get a much more concrete picture of the situation or problem we face. We also get the opportunity to really know who are Soldiers are. What they value. What matters to them. Why they see their world the way they do. All of these things are important leader tools. It's not whether I think something is important or not, it's whether my Soldier does. It's not whether I think the Soldier's issue amounts to a crisis, it's whether they do.

We talk about respect all the time in the Army. We talk about dignity and respect. And we all swear that we treat Soldiers that way. That we treat the people in our lives that way. That we value them and care for them and hold them in high regard. As I learned this week though, often times, the very way we communicate with them, the way we share ideas, is sending a wholly different message. We may be acting out of love and care and a desire for the best outcome. But what we are often saying is exactly the opposite.

To change the way I communicate will not come easily. Just being aware of it this week has shown me how often it appears in my interactions. It is a hard habit to break. But breaking it, really considering the thoughts, ideas, and value of others is something we all need to learn to do. I am only sorry it took me this long to figure it out.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.