The Conversations We Avoid

What are the conversations you tend to avoid? 

A few years ago I was teaching a group of MBA students at Chapman University.  The session was on self-awareness and this particular part of the conversation was getting pretty dry.  So I changed my approach:

"Raise your hand if you've ever criticized a boss behind their back?" I said.

Their eyes lifted from notebooks, and they all stared at me for a second. Then hands went up.  All of them.  Fast.

"Okay," I said.  "What are some of the things they do that drive us crazy?"

The room exploded with an easy list of dozens, hundreds, millions of criticisms about their bosses.  "He thinks he's listening but he's really just working on something else in his head!"  "She comes to us with some idea from some meeting and doesn't even bother to ask if it's possible to achieve."  "He asks me to do something and then I find out later that he already did it himself."  "She's too insensitive!"  "He's too sensitive!"  "He talks all the time and calls that 'development'!"  "She never talks to us at all!"

On and on. Similar issues. Contradictory issues. A few weird issues (ear hair?  Really?). Never was it so easy to develop resonance in a room. The camaraderie was sweet...if a little toxic.

So once I had got them into a nice mob mentality and foaming at the mouth I asked:

"So when YOU are a boss someday, what are people going to complain about you?"

Silence.

"Oh, c'mon," I said.  "You think that every boss of every person in this room is worthy of criticism but you won't be?"

A few laughed.

"If you want to get rid of the sideways energy produced by backroom criticism you have to at least know what you're being criticized for.  If you're aware of how your unique personality, giftedness, etc. is going to naturally drive some people crazy you're a long way to being able to own it, apologize for it, diffuse it and create a more self-aware team."

This is also true for friendships, family, any type of community.  Focus on your strengths, but at least be aware of the way you unintentionally damage others.  Do this and you're ahead of the game.  It will humble you and inspire your community.  It creates the context to forgive and be forgiven – two essential aspects of any healthy relational environment.
 
So how do you find out how you affect other people? The answer is as easy.  You ask.

An example from my life: a while ago I met with a campus leadership team on a regular basis.  At a meeting with one of the student leaders I found myself asking the question, “So what do people say about me when I'm not around?”

He looked me square in the eyes and gave me two bullet points:

1.  We joke about how you talk about numbers all the time.  You always want more people to come to our stuff.

2.  We joke about how you make us bring our laptops to meetings.  A few of us hate doing that.

What followed was a conversation about how my leadership wasn’t achieving my desired results.  Now, if you’re a leader you’ll realize that I had a bigger problem than numbers or laptops.  We had a cultural problem of not wanting to serve more students – a problem that wasn’t going to be solved by me harping on the numbers or forcing students to invite their friends.  

At any given moment there is information, perspectives and thoughts that can help us move forward faster and healthier if we’d only have the courage to challenge ourselves and ask.  The fact is, our lives are shaped more by the conversations we avoid than the ones we are usually having.  Practicing the art of self-challenge in this way helps us gain the clarity we need to go where we want to go.
 
So, let me ask you: Are you ready to find out what aspects of your leadership aren’t working the way you’d like? How might having that conversation with others help you in your leadership?