Author and improvement leader Kevin Cashman believes there is a leader in all of us. In his book, Leadership from the Inside Out, he posits that the distinction of leaders from non-leaders is the courage to assess and negotiate internal strengths and weaknesses. Leaders continually apply their strengths and simultaneously push back against the weaknesses and bad behaviors that run counter to their values and undermine the genuineness of their leadership. This creates the internal environment that is necessary to revitalize external relationships with intimates, family, colleagues, friends, and employees.
Leading from the inside out is hard work. Pushing back against weaknesses, notably those passed along a family tree, and unlearning bad behaviors take discipline, self-sacrifice, and vulnerability. And, while it is challenging to recognize that you have to first change in order to see changes in the relationships and social structures around you, implementing this change and practicing it for a lifetime take greater courage. Mr. Cashman writes that leadership breakthroughs occur along three interrelated pathways: Awareness, Commitment, and Practice. All must be operating in concert for the leader’s control over her weaknesses and bad behaviors to be truly transformative, mindful, and sustainable.
Inherent weaknesses and learned bad behaviors are unique in range and depth to each person. One may lack motivation and has learned to let small situations spin wildly out-of-control, while another may struggle to feel optimistic and has a habit of avoiding conflict. As an illustration of Awareness, Commitment and Practice, I have a story about one of my own leadership breakthroughs that I work to put into practice every day. This one has to do with authentic listening, which Mr. Cashman writes,
Is about being generous – listening with a giving attitude that seeks to bring forth the contribution in someone vs. listening without limiting assessments, opinions, and judgments (Cashman, 97).
As is often the case, you never know a behavior is bad and undermining your leadership potential until someone tells you. My Dad let me know in my case, on a Saturday morning when I was 10-years-old, a time for Tom & Jerry cartoons, and certainly not for an awareness that I stunk at authentic listening.
That Saturday, I sat down to cereal with Mom and Dad. Dad sat eating a bowl of cereal, too; I remember thinking how neat that we both liked Cocoa Puffs. This, at the time, was the size of my analytical thoughts – were it possible to have stood up, after having had fallen out of my head and into my cereal bowl, they surely would have drowned in the milk. What I was unable to notice about my Dad, however, was the way he ate. He bowed his head over his bowl while my Mom talked. He seemed to be studying her words, as though he could see them rearrange in the milk and spell out everything she was saying.
(photo by meddygarnet)
I blame my gargantuan consumption of corn syrup for not seeing how my Dad, clinging to my Mom’s every word, encouraged her words. Colas, Entenmann’s crumb cakes, and Friendly’s ice-cream clogged my 10-year-old head. Authentic listening was no match. It dipped below the quicksand of my synapses, doomed without the spirit – and bullwhip – of Indiana Jones, and laid victim to the mustache-twirling deceit of my inner Egomaniac, which tiptoed across the quicksand on the sinking head of my Authentic Self. I was a punk kid, for sure. I routinely interrupted my Mom and pushed aside her every expression as though it was merely a swinging door to another conversation about me. Seeing my Mom as a real person was impossible. But, how could I, doped up on such toxic levels of corn syrup? However long I justified my bad behavior with this Corn Syrup Defense came to an end that Saturday morning. I interrupted my Mom and hijacked her conversation for the last time. I don’t remember what I said. I’m certain that, were the words to have been weighed for substance, they wouldn’t have registered. But their effect on my Mom reached my Dad deeply, like a cancer, because every cell in his body rallied against me.
“You are not the center of the universe! She was talking! About something important to her,” he screamed, Cocoa Puffs firing from his mouth like exploding shrapnel, “Your job is to listen! To understand it! And to make it important to you!”
My Dad cut into his cereal, as though it had been heated with his anger to the consistency of oatmeal.
“You don’t know how lucky you are to call her your Mother. No idea. But, Cory,” my Dad stormed, his temper rolling back, “you’re going to learn.”
This moment always projects onto the backdrop of my unconscious whenever a situation requires me to authentically listen. Through hard language and tough love, my Dad let me know that if I continued to dismiss my Mom’s contributions, the downside consequence of this behavior was a cracked relationship, both of us acting civilly to each other to keep it from completely breaking, until we grow weary and distant and it does break without anyone even noticing. I didn’t want this, not for any of my relationships, but particularly not the one with my Mom. So, once my Dad Indiana-Jones-ed my Authentic Self from the quicksand, I committed to getting to know my Mom. I read what she read – Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Carol Burnett’s One More Time – just to hear my Mom talk about them. Then, I watched what she watched – Victor Victoria on film, Knot’s Landing on TV – to keep hearing her opinions on things. Eventually, I learned to fit into a dialogue with my Mom so that my contributions did not stifle hers, but rather encouraged them, and we began to have real, substantive conversations.
Decades later, I continue to build this practice. I make a point of spending time with my Mom, just the two of us, going for a long walk for instance, where I quietly and authentically listen to what’s important in her life. I yearn to hear from her always, and am grateful daily for my Dad raging at me – it made all the difference, for so many of my relationships.