I asked myself, “What is the myth you are living?”
and found that I did not know.
So . . . I took it upon myself
To get to know “my” myth,
And I regarded this
As the task of tasks. . . .
—CARL JUNG
During the economic collapse of 2008, I worked with a leadership group at a large manufacturer. The highlight of the weeklong training session was a visit to the group by their CEO. The group looked forward to the speech, expecting some insight into the company’s current position in the downturn and future corporate strategy. Instead, when the CEO came to speak, he shared the personal journey he’d been on since the recession began.
“What I have come to realize this past year,” the top executive told the audience, “is that I need to cope with myself—and with what I call my ‘evil twin.’ In meetings, I sometimes lead with the ‘Good Andrew,’ and sometimes with the ‘Bad Andrew.’ ” Under the intense pressure of the financial crisis, the CEO explained, there was a higher tendency than usual for “Bad Andrew” to take over. “Bad Andrew” did things like lose his temper, cut people off, or blame and shame members of the team.
The CEO had come to see that “Bad Andrew” could wreak havoc on his top team. In these very tough times, it was more important than ever for him to bring “Good Andrew” forward. “Good Andrew” listened to people, gave them the benefit of the doubt, and instilled hope and energy into the team.
At the heart of his message to this group of leaders was an appeal to recognize what he called their “good” and “bad” sides. He asked them to try hard to bring their “good” sides to work, particularly while everyone felt the squeeze of the recession.
In your day-to-day life—when you’re not reading this book—you probably give little thought to your different sides. When you do think about them, you might muse along the same lines as this CEO. You like your good Dr. Jekyll self, and dislike your bad Mr. Hyde.
Let me tell you something. This is not the way to go if you want to close your Performance Gap, or get better outcomes in your leadership and your life.
Judging Your Big Four Gets in Your Way
By the end of this book, I hope you don’t think about parts of yourself as good and bad. At least not as a general theory about who you are. I don’t think anyone can escape this binary thinking all the time. But it stinks as a way of life.
I know it’s tempting to love what seems good about you, like your generosity. Then you can despise what feels truly awful about you. For me, that includes my neediness, my weakness (dare I say it, my vulnerability). I’m guessing you know a part of yourself that you’d like to take a hike and not come back. Ever. That’s your version of “Bad Andrew.”
The problem is that when you judge a part of yourself like that, you conclude you’re best off by getting rid of it. And that’s the opposite of what’s going to help you generate more success and deeper satisfaction. Psychologist Robert Johnson put this well in his book Living Your Unlived Life: “Becoming whole is a game in which you get rid of nothing; you cannot do without these diverse energies any more than you can do without one of the physical organs that make up your body. You need to draw upon everything that is available to you.” There’s also the practical dynamic expressed succinctly by Carl Jung himself: “what you resist persists.”
You can certainly change the way you express parts of yourself. You can recover from destructive patterns that have hurt you, or other people. You can adapt strategies from your past that don’t work anymore, and develop new ones in their place. But those processes relate to transformation and integration, not rejection and elimination.
Let me ask you a question. Which of the following are better, and which are worse: North, South, East, and West? Hard to choose? How about these—which are worth keeping, and which should you throw out: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall? I don’t mean which season do you enjoy more. I mean intrinsically, which of them is better or worse? Which can stay and which need to go?
These aren’t meant as trick questions. My hope is that, seeing them in this light, you can appreciate that forces of nature aren’t better or worse. They’re just part of life. I believe that you and I are like that, too. North, South, East, West. In, Out, Up, Down. Dreamer, Thinker, Lover, Warrior. Forces of nature. Consider the affirming words of Chinese Zen master Wu-men Hui-k’ai:
Ten thousand flowers in the spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
This is the best season of your life.
You will be healthier, more effective, and more helpful to the people and causes you care about, to the extent you let yourself access all of the Big Four and bring them into balance with each other.
Of course, you do need to use them wisely and well. You can direct these natural forces in a number of directions, creating a range of results.
■ The endless Dreamer can bankrupt his family chasing windmills. The Dreamer can also bring a neighborhood together to build a shared vision for reducing violence in their streets.
■ The aloof Thinker can scar her children by never showing them love. The Thinker can also find solutions to vexing problems that will save lives.
■ The callous Lover can break your heart. The devoted Lover can bring you a sense of home for the first time in your life.
■ The Warrior in a relationship can scare you, even hurt you physically. The Warrior can also protect you, taking a vow to never let anything or anyone harmful come near you.
The Big Four can be used to different ends. It’s up to you to apply them thoughtfully.
To sum up:
1. You need all of the Big Four to develop and deliver a well-rounded skill set.
2. You’ll reject and push away parts of the Big Four that you judge as unworthy.
3. You won’t be able to perform the skills that belong to parts you reject.
4. You’re better off adapting old strategies into new ones, rather than trying to eliminate parts of yourself that you don’t want around anymore.
All for One and One for All
As you know, the Big Four enable your visioning, thinking, feeling, and achieving. They make it possible for you to take four approaches to leading and living: inspirational, analytical, relational, and practical. They each care about different things. They draw on unique strengths. And most important right now, they enable different skills.
Table 3.1 provides an overview with more detail.
Table 3.1
In my travels consulting to companies big and small, the skills enabled by the Big Four are the ones I see people getting measured by in their jobs. If you look back at the sample competency grid in chapter 1, you’ll see what amount to the Big Four categories. That’s no accident.
People are typically evaluated on their capability in these four areas: Vision, Analysis, People, and Execution. Of course, the emphasis varies according to role and responsibility. But time and again, it comes back to the Big Four.
How you’re evaluated on these scales impacts a lot, including: getting hired in the first place; selection into high-potentials programs; getting raises and year-end bonuses; winning promotions; landing prized opportunities; keeping your job in a reorganization; and entering and moving up in leadership.
So Much to Do, So Little Time
As you can imagine, your Dreamer, Thinker, Lover, and Warrior can do lots of things. To keep this manageable, I’ve highlighted three “sweet spots” for each of the Big Four. These seem most valuable for people, both at work and at home (see Figure 3.2).
Figure 3.2
To close the loop from earlier, you can still decide to judge one of the Big Four, or decide you don’t want it around. If you do, be aware that you’re likely to hit a wall when you need to perform the skills it enables.
Take Bella, who’s closely identified with her Lover side. She thinks Warrior energy is evil (see Figure 3.3). Bella needs to lay people off, but she can’t bring herself to schedule the discussions. The company is losing cash every month on extra overhead because Bella can’t bear the thought of delivering the bad news.
Figure 3.3
In theory she’s right that Warrior energy can be used in harmful ways. But as a natural force it’s neutral, and right now, her inner Warrior is what she needs to do her job. Having banished her Warrior, she’s not only hurting herself, she’s harming her organization. It isn’t evil to terminate employees when you can’t afford to pay their salaries.
Or Jared, highly practical, who embraces only the Warrior side of himself. He doesn’t think his grant writers will get the application done in time to fund their mission to Rwanda. He hasn’t seen the timeline for implementation of Phase One and Phase Two before the pilot program. He doesn’t have the budget, which needs to spell out exactly how the funds will get allocated and spent. And as far as he can tell, no one has finished the written instruments they need to include with the grant for monitoring and evaluation of the program. Disaster.
Given the situation, Jared sees the need to push even harder. He starts leaving urgent voice mails everywhere he can think to call, demanding documents. He emails the team with an expedited schedule for producing the application, despite not knowing how far along the documents are, or what’s required to meet his new deadlines.
Unfortunately, his messages felt to the writers like adding insult to injury. They’re professionals. They had every intention of meeting the original schedule. They weren’t lacking in deadlines. They’d slowed down because in focusing on each of their individual pieces of the grant, they’d lost the grand vision. All of them cared deeply about the Rwanda project and wanted to see it succeed. They just needed a reminder of the aspirations behind their mission.
Ironically, Jared was drafting the Impact Statement for the executive director to edit. He needed to prepare answers to the questions “What is the change you envision as a result of this program?” and “How you will measure progress toward this change?” He’d written things like this many times, so this section was a no-brainer for him.
Had his Dreamer been truly engaged, he might have thought to circulate his document to the writers. Reading about the potential to change the lives of the people they’d met, and the empowerment of the local community they’d see after the program, would’ve refueled their motivation. Jared misread their behavior entirely: the slip in momentum reflected a need for him to excite the team, not beat them up.
Trouble was, he’d decided long ago that “soft skills” were useless for getting things done. Telling an inspiring story is a skill that belongs to the Dreamer—a part of himself he drew on almost despite himself when describing the goals of the program. With only his Warrior available for managing the grant writers, he had only Warrior skills to apply (see Figure 3.4). And that was not what the doctor ordered.
Figure 3.4
As I hope is clear by now, you need all of your Big Four available to you, so their respective expertise is there when you need it.
“All or Nothing” Gets in Your Way, Too
Let’s imagine Bella and Jared reached their year-end performance reviews. Bella got feedback about stepping up to the plate. In the face of a difficult but important set of conversations, she’d chosen to avoid them as long as possible. That behavior had directly impacted the bottom line. Jared got a lecture on his blind spot about inspirational leadership.
What did they do with these evaluations?
Bella sent a text to her two best friends. “Review today was not good. I’m too soft. Need to grow up. Business is business.” That night she promised herself that starting tomorrow, she would “check her heart at the door” and become a “real” professional.
Jared met his friend Alexander for a drink at Tavern on the Square. Over cocktails he complained about the “stupid feedback.” He wondered out loud, “What do these people want from me? We applied for three large grants this year. We got two of them, and one is still pending. That sounds a lot like leadership to me.” By the time they’d left the bar, Jared was looking up executive search firms on his phone. He was done.
This Isn’t Win, Lose, or Draw
Bella and Jared are stuck. Their reactions look different. But they share an outlook: all-or-nothing.
When Bella hears her feedback, she determines that to follow the advice, she needs to abandon her previous tendency and reverse it completely. She had a profile with a High Lover and a Low Warrior. Now she aims to flip her profile the other way, to a Low Lover with a High Warrior.
For Bella, it’s up or down, left or right, Lover or Warrior. But that’s a false choice. Bella can use both—Lover and Warrior—at the right time, in an effective way, for a constructive purpose (see Figure 3.5). Why choose one?
Figure 3.5
Think of the way parents give kids a time-out. They often affirm the child while at the same time they disapprove of his behavior:
“Sammy, you cannot hit your sister. Tell her you’re sorry. . . . Now, you have a time-out for five minutes. You know I love you, and you’re a good person. But hitting is not allowed. Not in this house, or anywhere else. You go sit on the stairs and think about that. And when you come back, we’ll finish making cookies.”
Appreciation and boundaries. Yes and no. Relationship and rules. Lover and Warrior.
It’s Not a Zero-Sum World
Jared sees a similar choice. Give up his style completely, and satisfy his organization. Or stay exactly the same, and leave. “This is me,” he told his friend Alexander. “They can take it or leave it.” Alexander agreed. “Oh well. It’s their loss.”
What does Jared think they’re telling him? That he shouldn’t care about meeting deadlines? That it doesn’t matter if the documentation is complete? Does he really think the executive director wants him to inspire his team at the cost of getting grants done well, and winning them? I highly doubt that.
Jared has an opportunity to develop, personally and professionally. He’s been asked to expand his repertoire. Only in his mind does that mean giving up what he already does well. No one’s asking him to trade in his Warrior in exchange for taking on his inner Dreamer. Again, that’s a false choice.
Given his track record for winning grants, it would also be a dumb choice. His Warrior is very good at pulling everything together and fulfilling all requirements. He’s a good leader of projects: he implements well. To go to the next level, Jared needs to retain his excellence in execution, and grow capacity in another category on the competency grid: vision.
His Dreamer happens to have some skill. He hits all the right notes when he answers questions about the purpose of the program and the benefits it can provide. Now he needs to bring that visionary Dreamer into his leadership of his team.
As long as Jared believes he needs to choose between them, his Warrior will take the day. That’s okay, but it will keep him standing in the same Performance Gap he knows all too well—the distance between how he wants to contribute to Rwanda, and the document management he’s doing now.
This is a Gap that Jared can close. Doing that would change his life.
If Jared closed this Performance Gap, he’d feel more fulfilled by playing a more substantive role. He’d earn more money, gaining better financial security. He’d make a bigger difference on the ground for people he cares about, deriving more meaning from his work. He’d develop a reputation for expertise in shaping international missions.
Who knows what doors would open?
The land of opportunity awaits.
But getting there means Jared needs to stop shutting out the information that he has a bit of work to do to grow as a leader. Advice to develop ways to harness his Dreamer’s strengths is the farthest thing from “stupid.” It’s exactly what he should do to close his Performance Gap and achieve more of his potential.
It’s a Path, Not a PowerPoint Deck
Can Jared snap his fingers and release his vibrant Dreamer power? Can he attend a one-day seminar on Leading with Vision and turn a lifelong pattern around? No, we all know that he can’t. Does that mean the change is impossible? Not at all.
This is why people talk about the “path” to self-mastery. It’s not a “tool” you gain by attending a webinar. A path is a set of practices, based on the structure of a journey, designed to help you move forward.
Of course, as anyone who’s ever tried to follow a path will tell you, “moving forward” is trickier than it sounds. In real life, exploring a developmental path often feels like you’re moving backward. It can feel like going in circles. Human beings are a messy business. There are no straight lines to heaven.
Like learning anything new, you’ll progress faster and more deeply if you take a class, work with a partner or small group, find a coach or teacher, or engage in an experiential learning program. However, even if you do all that, a word to the wise: Expect the sense that you’re moving forward and backward. It happens to everyone.
Also, though you might sense backsliding, you could be right on one level and wrong on another. The inner journey sometimes operates by reverse rules: moving forward can look and feel like moving backward. So, while you’re busy ruminating that your process “isn’t working,” somewhere outside the reaches of your perception, you’re on the move.
How do I know? Because I’ve accompanied thousands of people on such journeys. I recognize the highs and lows. I’ve seen the cycles again and again. I know if you’re aiming to “fix” yourself, you’ll get frustrated. And I know that if you’re open to some surprises—even a few mysteries you can’t explain—your possibilities are enormous.
I’d simplify a common experience this way:
■ You’re going along fine in life, unburdened by your hidden Performance Gap.
■ Something happens that puts your Gap on your radar screen—sometimes big time.
■ You commit to doing something about it.
■ You learn about your inner world—perhaps you start a self-exploration with your Big Four.
■ You practice a bunch of things at home, and at work. You see a few changes, mostly subtle. Maybe you start to handle a specific interaction differently, and that feels good.
■ You’re not sure much is happening.
■ Then, out of nowhere, you face a significant challenge, maybe one you didn’t see coming.
■ You surprise yourself by how skillfully and wisely you handle it. Now that was different.
■ You’re amazed that you’ve closed a Performance Gap that you’ve repeatedly fallen into for years.
■ You might not repeat that success all the time. But you gain confidence in your new approach, and you start to integrate it into your core way of operating.
■ People around you notice. They start to comment that “you look good” and that “you’ve changed.” Often they can’t quite put their finger on it: they ask if you’ve got a new haircut, or lost some weight. While they’re not sure exactly how to name what’s different, the people around you will experience the shifts that have taken place. And you know it’s not the haircut.
The good news is that if you start down a path, and commit to it, you will see results in the outside world of your inner development. Others’ perceptions of you will change, and your self-perceptions—your profile—will, too. The way you get there might be different than you’d expect. Or different from what you would’ve liked. But you’ll get there.
There’s another reason why I know how these cycles work. I’ve been down this road more than a few times myself. More times than I can count. I’ve embraced the Big Four, rejected them, and lived them in every combination. I’ve had wonderfully successful long-term relationships. I also called off my first marriage with my fiancé one month before our wedding. I’ve managed money well, and lost a valued role over doubt about my ability to do just that. I have dreams that I’ve fulfilled, and others that will never come to pass.
And so it goes. We’re human. We succeed. We fail. We try to learn, to grow, and do better next time.
To journey is a fundamental act of living.
I have a little plaque on my desk in Boston. It has an axiom of Hebrew wisdom on it. It says: “It is not upon you to finish the task. But neither are you free to desist from undertaking it.” I think there’s truth to that. Backward, forward; forward, backward. We’ll never “finish.” But we can’t desist from undertaking it.