Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Who or what is leading your life? The approval of others? Pleasing your mother or father? Others' expectations of you? Proving yourself to others? Maybe proving yourself to yourself?
This chapter is about taking on some deep work—the kind of work that needs to be done for us to be leaders in our lives. And we really mean being a leader in all aspects of our lives, including at work, in relationships, with family, with community, even with all of society. Warren Bennis captures this idea in the first few pages of his self-reflective book, An Invented Life. He writes, "I believe in self-invention, have to believe in it.... To be authentic is literally to be your own author ... to discover your native energies and desires, and then find your way of acting on them."
The phrase "native energies and desires," as Bennis uses the words, captures the essence of the best part of a person. When we build our lives around these, every aspect of our lives transforms.
Here we face a fork in the road—carry on as before, or invent ourselves anew. Most people live a "thrown" life—thrown like dice—finding ourselves caught up in the situations of our lives, but never really calling the shots.
If we take on this challenge of self-invention, we will find ourselves walking down an unfamiliar road. Rather than being led by what has been important to us in the past, we will find ourselves "being" what we are committed to, what we are standing for, what our vision is. We will come across to others as charismatic, wise, self-confident, and at ease in situations. We will be ready for leadership roles in our relationships, groups, organizations, and communities, even society.
This chapter is about what it takes to reinvent ourselves and to be the leader in those areas of our life that matter to us. The required work will include looking at the not-so-pretty pictures of our lives. This exploration will bring up issues that have been hidden from our view or at least issues that we have been putting off resolving.
To repeat a theme from this book, most people have something important that they'll get to "someday." This illusion of "someday" is very pervasive, soothing, and even tranquilizing. But life doesn't fit into this illusion: the daily newspaper offers reports of people dying in car accidents on their way to work. These people didn't wake up expecting that to happen. They were certain that it was just another day at work. Reality can be very rude in its surprises and nasty when it intrudes on our hopes and dreams. Every now and then Lady Luck will smile on someone who wins the lottery, but it never seems to be us.
When we put pictures of our dreams, hopes, and wants into the category of "someday," we separate ourselves from the immediacy of living. Someday never comes. There is only now.
Think of the immense job of a leader. Imagine every aspect of her work. This chapter is about building our leadership around our "real" self. Only then will we be ready to lead others, organizations, and even society, to new places.
There are many models that explain how we became the person we are. See whether this one fits.
We all have defining moments in our lives that set us on the path we're on. Here are two of ours. The first is from Steve:
On the first day of seventh grade, I sat in my classroom, and didn't see any of my friends, but instead saw that the tough kids were my classmates. At lunch, I met up with my friends and asked which class they were in. Some said "7-1." Others said "7-2." I was in 7-3.
It took only a moment for all of us to figure out what the class designations meant. Smart kids went to 7-1. Dumb kids went to 7-3.
Clearly there had been a mistake. I should have been in 7-1.
At the end of the class day, I walked to the door of the school's guidance counselor and knocked. A tall man—very tall, particularly to a seventh grader—pulled back the door, leaning forward to hear my question. I said, "I'm in 7-3 and that must be a mistake. My friends are all in 7-1 or 7-2."
The counselor said, "Do you remember those tests you took at the end of sixth grade?"
"No."
Testing, studying, doing well on homework were items that had not been important to my life. Playing in the courtyard—that was important.
"Those tests determined which class you went into. So no, there was no mistake. You are in the right classroom."
And then he closed the door. I stood there for what seemed an eternity, staring at the door and thinking, What am I going to tell my mother? To this day, I can remember the color and pattern of the wood.
After several seconds of staring at the now closed door, I came to a crashing realization: Something is wrong here, and there is something wrong with me.
I said to myself, I'm not smart enough. This was the kind of news that I had to keep quiet, particularly from my mother. After all, she was counting on me becoming a doctor. Instead of succumbing, not being smart enough, I decided to do something about it—study. Studying had never been a concern of mine—but it was now. The strategy was this—since I wasn't really smart, study, study, and study. Perhaps hard work would make up for not being smart enough.
Partway through the year, the school tested its students on math and English. I scored 100 percent in math and 95 percent in English. I was moved from the 7-3 classroom to 7-1. The kids now thought that I was really smart. But I never really felt that way.
In the privacy of his mind, Steve had fooled them. Under the nagging doubt of I'm not smart enough, he kept studying, getting great grades, being in the honor society, standing out from others. But regardless of the academic success he obtained, he could never remove how he occurred to himself: not smart. No matter how much he masked his insufficiency through hard work, he occurred to himself as the seventh-grade boy standing in front of the guidance counselor's door. Years later, with a degree from Cornell (with honors) and a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Chicago, the same nagging feeling remained. Steve continues:
When I would go into a new class, I wouldn't say anything until I had assessed that I was at least as smart as some of the others. My freedom to express myself and provide leadership roles in the class was diminished by this nagging doubt.
In all of our lives there are moments when we make critical decisions about ourselves that give us an overriding sense of who we are, not just in the present moment, but from then on. Based on the special self-defining nature of these decisions, we see ourselves in a way that limits who we are and what we can do. For us to find the path to something greater, we first need to see the road that's brought us to this point. Dave Logan's critical decision happened over dinner when he was about eight years old:
I was eating dinner with my parents, who had a startling resemblance to Ward and June Cleaver in Leave It to Beaver, with my older brother and sister. We were talking about Ronald Reagan running for president. My liberal father was outraged, my conservative mother was delighted, and a family debate raged over chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, and broccoli.
In the midst of a heated discussion about whether the world would end, I said in a squeaky voice, "It'll be OK." My sister, who I always thought was brilliant and cool, shot back, "Why don't you just shut up when you don't have anything to say?" Under her breath, she said, "God! You always do that!"
Time slowed down as the "truth" settled in. I said to myself: I always do that ... I never have anything to say. And even deeper, I concluded: There's something wrong with me ... I must be worthless.
I wouldn't give up. Scrambling to recover my dignity and my sister's admiration, I said, "Well, my teacher told us that Reagan could get the respect of the Soviets."
After I said that, the most amazing thing happened: everyone actually listened. Even my sister. So I now knew that quoting authorities was a way to make up for my lack of having anything useful to say.
My right to say anything became tied to saying what the experts said.
This view of myself persisted for years, even after I got my Ph.D. In media interviews I would quote the experts instead of saying my own view. My ability to be a thought leader was suppressed. In lieu of having something to say, I was willing to settle for credibility instead of expressing my points of view. The cost was that I had lost my voice.
The decisions that shape our lives live in a conversational environment that includes There is something wrong here and Something is wrong with me. For Steve, something was wrong about being in a class with the tough, not very smart kids. And something was wrong about him—he wasn't smart enough. For Dave, something was wrong when his cool sister shot him down. And something was wrong about him—he was worthless and had nothing to say.
See if you can recall those pivotal moments when you experienced something is wrong here, and something is wrong with me. If so, look and see what decision you made to deal with these kinds of situations in the future: a decision specifically about being a certain way, now and in the future, a way you could be that would produce results and make up for what's wrong about you.
The decisions we make that deal with what's wrong about us form the basis of our persona—who we consider ourselves to be.
It's important to realize that these are not ordinary decisions, like which movie to see or where to go for dinner. These kinds of decisions are life altering. It is as if you are at a trial, and the trial are about how well you are dealing with life. You are playing three roles at the same time: the accused, the jury, and the judge. That you are going to find yourself guilty is almost preordained. Otherwise, why is there a trial? Once the evidence is in—that is, once you have reviewed what you said is wrong about you—a sentence is proclaimed. This sentence is the decision you make about how to deal with the future in a way that makes up for what is lacking in who you are. This is a lifelong sentence with no reprieve. These life sentences limit and narrow how you occur to yourself, and even how life occurs to you.
Steve's life sentence was to study hard to make up for not being smart enough. Dave's was to capture what the authorities said, so as to make up for not having anything to say for himself.
The life sentence works exactly according to the design—it helps you survive and gives you a pathway to achieve success. Steve would study with an obsessive work ethic, and Dave would channel research to give insights on whatever problem faced him.
Many leadership development approaches build on the attributes of the persona we created in that moment of stress and survival by virtue of life sentences. But let's take a hard look at this approach. What happens if we build our leadership on top of these life sentences? At best, it's limited and inauthentic, a persona, hiding what we believe to be the real truth about ourselves. Steve wanted to be seen as smart, but whatever he did was on top of not being smart enough. Dave wanted to be seen as having something to say, but whatever he did produce was on top of having nothing to say. See whether the same may be true for you: are you trying to be seen as other than you are?
Look around at people trying to be leaders, in all walks of life. If you look closely, you can see the persona they became in a moment of crisis long ago. You can see the life sentence they imposed on themselves, and often you can get a sense of what it covers over. For example, imagine some people that are (for themselves) shallow, or unpopular, or unattractive, or unlovable. Imagine the kind of compensations that they would have developed: becoming innovative (on top of shallow), stylish (on top of unpopular), hardworking (on top of unattractive), service oriented (on top of unlovable). You can see the glee of having pulled it off, and deep resignation (often in lines on their faces) that it's not real.
One of the consultants in the Lonmin engagement is Larry Pearson. A big 240-pound ex–football player with a master's in social work, he is formidable in presentation, comfortable and easy to be with in reality. He shared with us how his persona developed during the course of his life. As he tells his story, notice the decision he made, the persona he created, and the limitations that came with both:
I grew up in a pretty tough African-American neighborhood. In junior high school, I was in the locker room. A guy came up to me and put a knife in my throat and said, "If you don't cry we're going to cut you." After thirty minutes, I thought, "The only way I'm going to get out of here is to cry." So I did. I decided, I will never let anyone mess with me again. I will be stronger than they are. I will always find a way out. I will not get trapped again. I'll be smart enough, cunning enough.
Pearson also had a form of dyslexia; as a result, he had trouble reading. After this incident, he decided that he would find a way out of this reading problem without being trapped by depending on others to read for him. "I couldn't read street signs, so I learned to recognize the kids who went to my school, and I followed them. When we were a few blocks away, I was OK." No one knew he couldn't read, not even his teacher or his mother. "When we'd talk through a book in class, I would wait for someone else to go first, because I hadn't read it. I learned to elaborate on what they said, spinning a story, and so no one ever asked if I had read it. I became a quick-talking, inauthentic liar, but I was really good at it. Unfortunately, I didn't have close friends because I can see now that people didn't really trust something about me."
As Larry learned, people are good at "smelling" inauthenticity. Whenever someone picks up on a lack of consistency in what you say and how you say it, it triggers a sense of distrust and a gut feeling that you're not being straight with them. People can even detect the little unconscious movements our bodies make, and though they can't explain what troubles them, they can see that something is off.
Of course, people don't talk about other people's inauthenticities. It is as if there is an unspoken rule: Don't call me on my crap and I won't call you on yours. But if you call me on mine, I'll call you on yours! So everyone walks around pretending not to see the obvious.
The fork in the road we spoke about earlier can now be seen as a choice between fitting in and standing out. We are about to take the fork of the road called "standing out," and it's not for people who are committed to comfort. It involves transforming ourselves, altering the very sense of who we are for ourselves. Doing so will allow us to bring forth abilities, capacities, and intentions that will put us in the driver's seat of our lives.
Let's do a thought experiment, right now. Reflect on your leadership experience.
In what situations do you see yourself as being most capable of exercising leadership? Add as many situations as you can to this mental list.
In what particular situations do you see yourself as being least capable of exercising leadership? Make another mental list.
Pick a situation in which you pictured yourself as capable. It's probably in line with the persona you invented in a moment of crisis.[16]
Pick a situation in which you pictured yourself as not capable. It's probably a situation in which your persona would be ineffective.
Look back in your life for an incident that was wrong, in which you decided that something was missing or wrong with you. This will likely be when you were young or at least still growing up. Somehow you managed to survive and deal with this "bad" situation by doing something new, something that covered over what was wrong about you.
Can you recall what you decided to do and how you decided to be to deal with this "wrong" situation? See how you sentenced yourself to the life you are now living—having to be a particular way to make up for "something wrong" about you.
The purpose of this exercise is twofold. First, to see the persona you created as clearly as possible—including where it's effective and where it will fail. Second, to begin to experience the life sentence that gave birth to who you are now. You found a way to survive, and in doing so formed who you are today.
Notice, too, that just as there were two Colin Wilsons, there are really two of you. One is the persona. It seeks to survive in a world in which something is wrong here, to look good, to fool others—even to fool yourself. It's built on the foundation of your life sentence.
The other person is who you really are, not bound by the persona. But how do we get beyond the limits of our life sentences?
The good news about the life sentence is that you aren't just the accused, the judge, and the jury. You can also be the court of appeals. You can reverse the conviction and release yourself from the prison of limitations. The bad news is that there is serious work to be done.
First, you have to tell the truth about your life sentence and what it is designed to hide. This step requires reexamining the evidence you used against yourself at trial, and in the light of your present-day adulthood, bringing some compassion to the little person who was just trying to deal with life. Only when the complete case is presented to the court of appeals can it be thrown out.
An obstacle is that most people aren't aware that the trial ever happened. We tend to move on and cover over these incidents. They fade into forgetfulness, so that we survive the moment intact. Afterward, we don't remember the decision; we simply say, "This is who I am."
But you can remember what you forgot. It's a matter of bringing the incident from the background to the foreground. If you watch the incident like a movie, you'll often remember the script. Here is a list of questions that will support you in finding the incident to work with and then to uncover the script that led to your life sentence:
How do you want people to describe you (for example, smart, funny, articulate)?
When did you decide to be this way? Did you have a moment when you realized, Something's wrong here? Can you recall a moment when you said to yourself, Something's wrong here with me? What happened in that moment?
What decision did you make in that moment about how you would act in the future?
As in a court case, motive is important. What was your motive—your intent—in making that decision and in forming a persona? Was it to survive? To look good? To avoid looking bad? Or something else?
Notice how this persona or identity developed. It probably felt like you were just accepting reality. But in fact you were actually responding to how that situation occurred to you and how you occurred to yourself. You then created a new role to play in the future. When Steve said to himself, I'm not smart enough, he was both imposing an interpretation on the situation and authoring a future for himself. A different interpretation might have been I didn't take that sixth-grade test seriously or I don't test well, but I'm smart in other ways. When he said to himself, I'm not smart enough, he was making a declaration in the form of a decision. When he said to himself, I will study hard, he was making another declaration and decision. In these types of declarations, he was creating for much of his adult life. These weren't merely the actions of a child accepting reality, but rather those of a child creating a reality that stuck with him.
Once the life sentence is revealed for what it is—a decision about how to be in the future, albeit made under a moment of stress—you have a choice. Given that any decision is itself an action requiring language, you can renew or revoke it. But until you see the situation for what it is, you don't have a choice to say anything else about who you are.
Some people's decisions are dramatic, as are the incidents that lead to them. Arunaraje Patil, a soft-spoken woman from Mumbai, India, told us of a situation that happened to her later in life:
I was happily married with two children, working making documentaries and feature films. Then my daughter got cancer when she was nine, and despite going to New York for treatment, she died, about a year after diagnosis. Within twentyfour hours of her death, my husband asked me for a divorce, saying he didn't love me.
I became profoundly sad, but resolved to give my son everything—an education, a good life. I decided I was a reject, but I had to hold on for his sake. Inside, I was crying all the time.
Patil's life sentence was that she could never be happy again, given that she had lost her daughter and her husband, both of whom she loved so much. She revisited this incident, and the decision she made, in a Landmark Education course. She told us: "As I went through the program I realized that suffering could be looked at as a choice, and that hit me like a bullet. I realized that I had chosen to suffer for the sake of my son, but that my sadness prevented me from giving him the thing that mattered most—a happy mother." She continues: "My spirit soared. I could laugh. I decided to no longer be a victim of circumstances. It all changed, suddenly and dramatically."
Patil was able to create a new interpretation for her suffering. This new interpretation, although unusual, was one that allowed her to create a future of power, one without suffering. It wasn't an interpretation made up to make her feel good (like positive thinking), but one that both fit the facts and left her with a choice in the matter of her own suffering.
Notice that rewriting her future required future-based (generative) language. Prior to that moment she was using descriptive language, trapped by her situation.
Only when you see that it was you who made these decisions and judgments about and on yourself can you then overturn the life sentence. If you believe another person did it to you, or the circumstances did it to you, then you have no power. But if you are the imposer of the judgment, then you can revoke it.
Extraordinary leadership emerges from the following question: "If I'm not that persona, who am I, really?"
The following story illustrates what we call creating a crisis.
This notion is different from how we think of crises, which are usually circumstantial. Lose a job, survive a tornado, get a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness—these are crises of circumstance.
We aren't referring to a crisis you have, but a crisis you create, by confronting what really matters to you. It's a crisis of the real you against the persona and the life sentence. Or, in the words of the Cherokee chief, between "anger, envy, sorrow, regret ..." and "joy, peace, love, hope, serenity."
The idea of intentionally creating a crisis is counterintuitive. Who wants a crisis? Isn't life about avoiding crises? Isn't life about fun and going to the beach? But if you want to transform who you are—how you occur to yourself—then you need to create a crisis of identity, one in which the only way out is transformation.
To return to an earlier theme, consider your life a three-act play. The life sentence happened early in the first act, followed by hard work and success, but with a nagging realization that it's not fulfilling. Imagine a third act in which the life sentence has been reversed, and you have your life renewed, free of resignation, regret, and pretense.
In the last one hundred years, many scholars have studied the stories we love to hear and tell. From The Odyssey to Long Day's Journey into Night to Hamlet to Star Wars to Gone with the Wind, every major story follows a similar path. There is action, complication, crisis, climax, reversal, and resolution. The secret to rewriting your play is a crisis of your own creation. From that flows climax, reversal, and resolution.
How do we create this kind of crisis that moves us into transforming ourselves? We do it by focusing on the areas of our lives in which we are inauthentic, those times when we are pretending. Inevitably, these are the areas of our lives in which we have resigned ourselves to a lack of freedom, joy, and full self-expression. We create a crisis by giving up the resignation and standing for a life in which we experience being ourselves, fulfilled and empowered.
In the 1970s, a man took a program Steve was leading. On the first day, he stood up and said: "I was in a concentration camp thirty years ago. I got out, moved here to New York, but I never really got out. Every day I wake up with anger and resentment for the guards, what they did to me and my family, friends, and their fellow human beings."
He asked, "Can I somehow get free, get out of the camp?" Steve tells the story of what happened next:
I said, "You can, but you're not going to like what I tell you is the way out."
"What's the way out?"
I responded: "Forgiveness. That's your way out."
The man was very upset. He shouted, "No way! They killed my family!"
I really felt this person's horror and his turmoil. It was beyond anything I had experienced before. I had enormous compassion, but I still had to deal with his request for freedom. "I said you wouldn't like what I told you. But look at what your anger and resentment is costing you. You live with it every day. I am not talking about what you should do. I'm only responding to your question about how to get out of the concentration camp. You are obviously free to do whatever works for you.
"If you could find a way to bring forgiveness to what happened—and I do know that what happened was ugly, brutal, senseless, crazy—then you would be free."
I added: "I didn't say 'condone' what happened. There is no way what happened can be condoned. I did say 'forgive.' To forgive is to give up resentment. It can be a blow for freedom."
The man sat down, crossed his arms, and didn't say a word for the next three days of the program.
On the last day of the program, he walked in with a radiance and light that was startling.
He said: "I've been dealing with what you said all week. I thought back to those days in the camp and looked at the people involved. I also looked at my life and the trap I've been in. I realized that if I could get out of this trap, it was worth examining my views, my certainties about the way things are. I saw that I could authentically create another interpretation of the people and the times. I could see my captors as people were as lost and dominated and frightened as we were, only they had the guns.
"That doesn't excuse them. But remaining their 'victim' forty years later is not worth my life. It doesn't give me any satisfaction. I forgive them. Let them deal with their own demons. I'm not willing to live my life in the space of guilt and resentment."
He actually smiled and sat down.
In a short period of time, this man created and then resolved a crisis that turned his life in a new direction, from a default future to something else. If he can do it, with all he suffered, I realized that anyone can.
To create your crisis, you need to locate where your foot is nailed to the floor. Here are some questions that can support you in creating a crisis of identity in which the only way out is transformation:
Where in your life is something not working or not working as well as you want?
In what areas of your life do you feel a loss of power, freedom, fulfillment, or self-expression?
Consider that wherever you experience a loss of quality in your life, there is some inauthenticity at play. Simply said, there is something about which you are pretending, avoiding, something you are not taking responsibility for. Or you've made a decision that makes you right, that gives you justification. In doing so, you give up power, freedom, and self-expression. We hide from others and even from ourselves the game we are playing. This self-deception is at the heart of the trap.
In those areas of life you just identified, how are you being inauthentic—what are you pretending, avoiding, not taking responsibility for?
What can you see has been the impact, the limitations, of your having been inauthentic in those areas?
The purpose of the life sentence is to produce results through making up for what is wrong with you. But it hides from others and even from yourself who you are afraid you are. It has you pretending that you are different from who you think you are. It even has you pretending that you aren't pretending. This is what the crisis calls you to face.
The way out of the trap is to create a crisis over being in the trap. Tolerating any loss of freedom, power, contentment, self-expression becomes unacceptable.
To resolve the crisis, you will have to give something up.
In their book Fox on the Rhine, Douglas Niles and Michael Dobson[17] tell a story about Mark Twain:
It seems that Mark Twain caught pneumonia. When the doctor visited, he saw Mark Twain smoking a cigar. He asked, "How many of those do you smoke each day?" Twain said, "Oh, about a dozen or so." And the doctor said, "I see a bottle of whiskey. How much do you drink?" Twain said, "I'm a moderate drinker, only a bottle or so a day." The doctor said, "If you'll temporarily give up drinking and smoking, you'll recover quickly." Twain followed the doctor's advice, and got well. Later, a woman he knew got pneumonia and Twain told her that if she temporarily stopped drinking whiskey and smoking cigars, she'd get well. She said, "I don't drink whiskey, and I don't smoke cigars." And you know, she died.
Mark Twain's conclusion was that his friend died because she didn't have anything to give up.
Every life sentence carries a benefit. Otherwise, it wouldn't have the hold that it has. As the Cherokee chief said, the "evil" wolf is alive because you're feeding it. Consider that we feed only what we value.
What there is to give up is the certainty you obtain from the life sentence. The life sentence does provide a reliable way to deal with the risk of life. It may be limiting your quality of your life, but at least it seems to work.
Consider the following story from Eraldo Tinoco in Brazil:
I was about sixteen years old, and I lived in a neighborhood where some families had a lot of money and others didn't. Mine didn't. In fact, we were one of the poorest families there.
I had to start work at an early age, delivering telegrams. The position required that I wear a uniform with a hat, and every time I left the office I had to have the hat on. I had the feeling that everyone in the neighborhood was looking at me.
One day, I delivered a telegram to a lady and she asked if she could have the information about my hat, so she could get one for her daughter to wear for Carnival.
I told her to take the hat and I would come back and get it later.
In that moment, I felt on display, alone, isolated, and different from people my age. I decided to become someone worthy of respect—someone who would work hard for the poor.
I never went back to get the hat.
Throughout his career, he did work hard, earning a doctorate, entering politics, and becoming the secretary of education and, later, vice governor for Brazil's state of Bahia. But the life sentence he imposed on himself exacted a price. Wanting to never be alone or different, he would make only safe decisions. He would hand off risky decisions to others, so his ability to make an impact was lessened. He lived in fear of being revealed as the person who was different, alone, and isolated.
In 2001, Tinoco told the story to people he worked with, including the part about the hat. He resolved to give up the life sentence and instead fashion his life around quality education for everyone, no matter the risk or how much he'd have to act alone—at least at the start.
In the years that followed, until his death in 2008, Tinoco started several bold projects that required his personal leadership. He did so without the anxiety and "safety" that were part of his life sentence. Today, he is known for instituting the certification of school principals in Bahia, ensuring a greater quality of education for everyone.
When he told us the story shortly before his death, he added: "One of the people who heard my story went to a local store, bought me a hat. He had it stitched with the name of the project I was leading. Today I have this hat, and prize it deeply."
To experience the kind of transformation that we point to here—overturning your already-written future and writing it anew—there's one last matter that needs to be addressed: What are you willing to give up? Tinoco had to give up safety and risk avoidance. Pearson had to let go of always having a way out. Dave had to give up the fear of having nothing to say. Steve had to give up the fear of saying something stupid.
A fallout for people and organizations using applications derived from the Three Laws of Performance is an improved quality of life for employees and people in surrounding communities. One story illustrates the point.
When Magma Copper first acquired its Peruvian Tintaya copper mine, the operation was a fortified camp with private guards carrying AK-47s. Adjacent to the mine was the community of the workers' wives and children.
The rate of drug and spousal abuse was so high that the total population of four thousand people needed a hospital with three fulltime doctors and five nurses. Within two years of applying new processes derived from the Three Laws, the drug and spousal abuse had decreased by almost 90 percent, allowing the hospital staff to decrease to one doctor and two nurses.
The change in behavior of the workers was so dramatic that a number of their wives requested a "town meeting" where they could find out what was going on with their husbands. The first meeting took place in the local movie theater. Eight hundred employees, wives, and children attended. Dogs ran around looking for dropped cookies or other nibbles.
The president of the mine, Lee Browne, along with the two presidents of the local unions, started the meeting, but they were soon interrupted by a woman who demanded to speak. She said, "What have you done to my husband?" Before anyone could answer, she went on, "He came home last night and took the garbage out. He never did that before." She paused and smiled. "I actually don't care what you did to him—I just want you to do it to me."
So many people made the same request that the company sponsored a program for nonemployees, including spouses and teenagers.
The point is that applications derived from the Three Laws of Performance can take companies to that elusive next level. Equally significant, they can take people's personal lives to a level of effectiveness that many didn't think was possible.
During work with Reebok in Japan, Steve noticed something odd. He tells the story:
As we neared the end of the initial program, we were creating the conversational environment in which the Reebok employees could create a new Third Act for their work. We distinguished the nature of future-based language, and the power of declarations, commitments, and promises.
I invited people to write down what they were committing to and were promising to do as leaders for the future of Reebok in Japan. As people wrote, some raised their hand and asked, through the translator, if they could share what they were writing. As one after another rose to speak, I was surprised by how long it took them to convey a commitment or promise.
I asked Ueda-san, my translator, "Why is the English way of saying a commitment so short and the Japanese translation so long?"
She said, well, "We don't really have a simple way of saying future-based language in Japanese."
I pressed on because the whole thing didn't make sense. I wondered, How could a society as successful as the Japanese not have a way of making declarations, commitments, and promises? I asked Ueda-san to tell me what people were literally saying, word for word.
As the next person spoke, she translated: "From here on and into the future, I would very much like to be proactive in communicating with my colleagues at work."
This was an expression of a wish, a hope, something to be desired, some way to become. The person was not coming from "This is the way it is because I say so."
In what was perhaps a moment of insight pushed along by exasperation, I asked, "Who here tells people the way it is because they say so?"
People lightened up. One person shouted out, "The shogun, of course. If he says 'it's a good day to die,' it is."
I got it. In the Japanese culture, the right to call it the way it is was relegated to the authority, the shogun, the boss. That person had the authority and therefore the power to make declarations.
I said, "In this part of the program, you now need to use the language of the shogun. Are you willing to be the shogun in your own life?"
Immediately someone stood up and said, "Here I declare, I am someone who communicates new possibilities." His tone was short, focused, and powerful. He spoke as if it mattered.
This shift in power spread through all the participants. One after another, they spoke in a new way: short, powerful, declarative.
This issue of the right to declare is not an issue just in Japanese society. It plays itself out in other cultures in different ways. The underlying theme is, Who are you to make declarations about the future? Who gives you the right?
Ultimately, you need to be willing to appoint yourself the shogun in your own life. If you don't, you turn that power over to others and to your circumstances.
Let's return to the moment of your life sentence, the moment when you experienced that something's wrong here. You will see that you, not others, authored who you are. The power is in what you said about what happened, not in what happened. In this reexamination of your self and your life, you can use the same power of language that you used as a child to create a new person, unconstrained by the limits of the past. As an adult who is not trying to survive something but who is inventing a life, you can be guided by wisdom.
While in Japan to update our research, we met with some of the executives of the Polus Group. Dave tells the story about what happened:
The man said: "Early in my life, I decided that I would be the one to make decisions, because I could only rely on myself. That didn't work so well when I got married." (Here he laughed.)
"We recently bought a house, and I wasn't letting her decide anything. It was stressful for her, because she was going to be there most of the time while I would go to work. I remembered that in the work Steve did with us. I declared, like the shogun, that I was one who listens. So I listened, and it was hard because it was like there was a battle in me between the person who decides and the commitment I made to listen.
"In the end, I listened." He laughed, "And she became a better wife!"
Steve said, "I think you are saying that you listened, and just by listening, she occurred to you in a new way."
He added: "Yes, she occurred as a partner."
Steve said, "I'll bet that you also experience yourself differently."
The senior executive from Japan, who rarely showed emotion, paused, wiped a tear away, and said with a deep nod, "Yes."
While I was an administrator at USC, I represented the university in several dealings with Japanese companies and with the government. I never saw that kind of authentic vulnerability, or that level of respect, shown to someone who wasn't Japanese. As I watched the interaction, and heard the English version through our translator, I felt touched by our common humanity.
When we alter how we occur to ourselves, everything around us shifts. Our business associates, our families, even life, show up in a new way. With that new foundation, anything is possible—even a new future.