Chapter 25
The Focus-Wise Leader
We are in an ocean of more than just distraction. The full force of the storm with all its winds directs its force at you. And that's just what is on the surface. Beneath, there is another force, often ignored by amateur navigators, but no less powerful—the undercurrent.
Jessica took the job at a small chemical manufacturing company because of the opportunity. The salary was lower than she could have gotten on the open market, but the owner, Tom, was 75 years old and promised to sell the company to her in time. She quickly learned the challenges the organization faced. In particular, the COO was a problem. Tom texted Jessica often, expressing his frustration with the COO on topics ranging from communication style to work ethic (even citing his weight as clear evidence of laziness).
One day, while Jessica was getting pizzas brought up to floor workers for meeting production goals the previous month, she overheard Tom tell the COO that she was being selfish and trying to purchase the company.
She learned that day what others had known for years. Tom is the kind of leader who thrives on keeping others smaller than him. Tom worked actively to keep the COO and Jessica at odds with each other. He created an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend culture. Of course, the result was dysfunction and a stagnating bottom line.
Jessica's story is an example of the undercurrent in action. The undercurrent is a force that drives how you respond to what life throws at you. It's the outcome of your experiences and beliefs. Some might call it attitude or mindset, but it goes deeper than that. Much like in an ocean, you can't see the undercurrent, but if you've ever been sucked up in one, you know it's a powerful force you must always be on guard against.
Organizations have undercurrents. So do people. They can both be dangerous. The undercurrent of your life is perhaps the most powerful because of the way it influences everything—your leadership decisions, your goals, what you pay attention to, what you ignore, what makes you laugh, what offends you, what you can't let go, what you can't remember, and so much more.
It's never been easier to ignore the undercurrent. Why would you focus on what's under the ocean when there is a massive storm in your face? We live in a world that allows us to not only consume endlessly (thus avoiding the space required for introspection) but to also consume only the information that reaffirms where our undercurrent has led us (fake news, anyone?).
The problem with ignoring the undercurrent is that, as a leader, it profoundly influences your team, your family, your friends, your spheres of influence, and your personal growth.
This is now the time to examine your undercurrent, to be honest about how you naturally respond to others. If you ignore it, you'll never get off the raft, no matter how many tools you provide yourself and your team.
There are two key areas where we will find undercurrents that effective leaders must be actively aware of: power and perspective.
Power
How much power do you feel over your past, present, and future situations? In my work with leaders across the globe, I've seen the following raft mindset approaches to power.
The Victim. It's always someone else's fault. Who can we blame? We didn't get the deal because of Rick. I once challenged someone on this mindset, saying, “You tend to blame others for anything in your life that doesn't work out.” Their response? “Yeah, I get that from my mom.” This type of leader always seeks to take credit and give blame rather than giving credit and taking blame. The victim believes they have no power.
The Puppet Master. I will take control over all things and all people. I use every available tool to manipulate, coerce, shame, confuse, and cajole to get what I want. The puppet master wants power over everyone. Ironically, this undercurrent is the same as the victim leader's. They assert control because they remember a time they had none and are terrified of that ever happening again.
How much power do you have to change yourself?
The Talented Underachiever. We are who we are. I am great at certain things. I am bad at certain things. This will not change. Carol Dweck, a professor at Stanford University, calls this the fixed mindset in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.1 And it's devastating for your future.
The Toddler. This leader throws tantrums, screams, and loses it often. Then he is happy again (and thinks everyone else should be too). The toddler leader believes his emotional state is something that makes him who he is. And he can't control it. So why would you be offended by it?
Perspective
Much like with power, there are common types of raft mindsets when it comes to perspective.
The Narcissist. Everything is about them. So when a colleague works late, the response is, “Always gotta make me look bad.” Folks are late to a meeting because they don't respect the leader, not because they hit traffic. The narcissistic leader is incapable of imagining a world outside themselves.
The Jealous. For the jealous leader, your success is her failure. Tom got the day off before a holiday! That should be reserved for veterans! He's only been here 14 years. For this leader, it's always you win, I lose. You won the big client—the one I have never spoken to and didn't know existed? How can that be?! For the jealous leader, everything is a zero-sum game. They see the world as a pie. Anytime someone else gets a great piece, that's less for them.
The Don Quixote. This leader is always right. The other side is always wrong, stupid, evil, manipulative, nefarious, corrupt, and worthy of death. None of this, of course, is true. They're just the windmills he's constructed so he'll have something to fight.
The Aggrandizer. For this leader, nothing is ever small. A client complained? We now have a global crisis. Did you see what Amy did? She sent the doc to the client in Times New Roman. We use Arial font! Get the whole team together to meet on this! Everything is an excuse for an explosion. This leader believes whatever they are currently engaged in is the entire world.
The Pessimist. Best quarter ever? Doesn't matter; it's going to get worse.
The real secret? These raft mindsets are knee-jerk responses to losing one's sense of control. In every case, they are fundamentally about focusing on the wrong thing—and they are all inherently self-focused rather than people- and organization-focused.
The focus-wise leader can see the world and circumstances for what they really are and, in the process, easily steer out of dangerous undercurrents of power. They aren't afraid to ask themselves questions like, “What parts of my past am I allowing to dictate the way I view the world and the things I choose to see? Am I consistently negative? When have I walked around with negativity, suspicion, and pessimism?” To a hammer, everything is a nail. And to a nail, most things are perceived as hammers. Do you see yourself as a nail—and everything else as a hammer trying to hit you?
The focus-wise leader knows something else about undercurrents: When one is not taking us where we want to go, we can find new ones. That is the power of getting off the raft and onto the sailboat. Perhaps the core of being a focus-wise leader is being aware of the undercurrent and using every tool at your disposal to ensure it's taking you in the right direction.
What Are Better Undercurrents for Power?
Instead of feeling powerless or needing to be all-powerful, we can accurately gauge where our power begins and ends. We can take control of ourselves and our response to a situation. We can also know what isn't ours to control. We can help other boats, too, without trying to commandeer them. We can give them the parts of the sail, but we can't make them sail.
For perspective, we can direct our boat toward helping others rather than being destructively self-focused—toward an abundance rather than poverty mindset. We can remind ourselves that comparison is the thief of joy (as my old choir teacher would often say) and that a rising tide raises all boats. The focus-wise leader values a diversity of views and experiences rather than being Don Quixote fighting enemies that don't exist. A better undercurrent with perspective spotlights both the importance and triviality of any particular moment and reminds us that, though our work deserves full effort, our kids will be happy to see us no matter how the client meeting turns out. The focus-wise leader is an optimist rather than a pessimist.
How Do We Shift Undercurrents?
We talked in Chapter 6 about how our past experiences shape our current perspective. The more we do something, the more we think about something, the easier and less exhaustive it is to continue to do and think about it.
I once heard we have as many as 100,000 thoughts every day (I have no idea how that can be measured). Most of them are mundane. Cool shoes. Where's the soap? That steak smells great. Bad clothing choice.
What we consistently see, hear, and think about—what we focus on—becomes what we believe. What we believe then dictates the way we behave.
To change our undercurrents, we need to move from passive thinking to active thinking. Here are some great ways to do so.
Manage Your Inputs
I watched way too much Murder She Wrote, Unsolved Mysteries, and Matlock as a kid. Add in that I grew up during the era of “stranger danger” and I came to believe every car was going to kidnap me, every knock at the door was a robber, and any crime could be solved in 30 minutes by Angela Lansbury (that is probably true; she is amazing). My parents once came home to their fourth-grade son holding a steak knife just in case. This all changed when I stopped watching crime dramas.
It's amazing how much what we put into our brain shapes what comes out of it.
If you want to become a sail mindset leader, you need to change your inputs. Listen to growth-oriented podcasts. Limit your news updates to summaries rather than constant downloads (which is made to expose anxiety and fear to keep you watching). Intentionally read intelligent perspectives from “the other side”—and actually contend with those perspectives rather than dismissing them. Surround yourself with people who exhibit sail mindset mentalities.
When you do this, you'll find that, just like when I stopped watching crime dramas, your view of the world will radically change. And so will the effectiveness of your leadership.
Exercise the Gratitude Muscle
My daily journaling process takes fewer than 10 minutes. It starts with 10 gratitudes. It's amazing how much easier it is to see the good of life when you start every day reminding yourself of it. Optimism is an undercurrent you want to be in if you want more success (for more on this, check out Shawn Achor's book The Happiness Advantage). My wife and I also include three gratitudes from the day during meals together. Research shows this can noticeably change your undercurrent in a mere month.
Consider the Model
Who, honestly, is your hero? Your hero is the person you think about when you think of success. It's the person you most want to impress. This person is the model of cool. And whether we realize it or not, we will start looking more and more like them.
I spent a period of my life thinking someone was the coolest guy in the room when, in fact, his life was nothing like what I actually wanted. Brilliant? Yes. Confident? For sure. Who I wanted to become? Not remotely. Yet, my behavior started subtly looking more and more like his. I unconsciously set him up as the marker that then shifted my own projection of my future. Actively consider who you truly admire, and actively decide whether to accept or reject that choice—or risk ending up places that wreck potential.
Get Rational about the Emotional
Hansel says he's overwhelmed by the exam; Gretel says she's excited. Hansel and Gretel have the same IQ, same GPA; they even studied together using all the same resources. Guess who does better on the exam. Here's the thing: Positive excitement and negative anxiety are, in most ways, the same biochemical reaction. Turns out the story we tell ourselves about that biochemical reaction has a pretty big impact on our performance. You can't control that biochemical reaction. You can control how you interpret it. And, like magic, anxiety becomes energy.
We can make choices that label and reappraise so that we can capture our emotions rather than be victims of them. Is your emotional state of being helping or hurting you?
Step 1: Label It. Literally acknowledge the emotion you are experiencing. By simply becoming aware of it, you are actually reducing its power. Like Harry Potter using Lord Voldemort's name when the other wizards lived in fear of it. The science behind this is fascinating. When you label an emotion, you activate the part of your brain used for rational processing (prefrontal and temporal regions).2 In doing so, it reduces the power of the emotional part of your brain (amygdala), setting you up for step 2.
Step 2: Reappraise. Put the emotion in its proper context. Emotions bring focus. And typically, whatever you are focusing on at the moment is less important than you feel it is. By simply recontextualizing the experience, the arousing emotion no longer controls you. For instance, “I'm angry right now because a situation is costing me $400. These people don't really know me. It's not personal. It's a bad business practice. And it's not worth my time.”
This is particularly critical for you as a leader. Your people pay attention to your emotional cues. They react, often unconsciously, to signs of anger, sadness, excitement, and joy. As the late iconic Stanford researcher Clifford Nass says, “The human brain is so exquisitely attuned to emotion, so obsessed with it, and so good at detecting it, that even the slightest markers of emotion can have an enormous impact on how the brain behaves.”3
Ultimately, Know Thyself
As Edwin Friedman writes (fittingly, using a sailing analogy):
The ocean of today is not easy to navigate. It's filled with distractions, temptations, and assaults on our worth—a perfect storm. Being the captain at sea is not for the faint of heart. It's far easier to sit on a raft and let the ocean take the lead.
But you have the right vessel, the right equipment, the wind, and the right undercurrents. You know the conditions, and you are not alone. Join us as we journey together in this exciting, chaotic, distracting, noisy, wavy, stormy, constantly connected workplace. And amid all of life's distractions, sail on.