The age of conspicuous consumption, the transaction-accumulation age of the deal has culturally birthed the age of the empty suit, lost leaders in search of identities. Our societies and citizens are stuffed full of emptiness, and too many leaders are largely unknowable, distant and unaware. Leaders have become as good as the deal they strike, the payoff they receive, the package they negotiate. Actions, even lives, are crafted on alters of cosmic vending machines in hopes of many happy returns. In all this phenomenal success, meaning is more marginalized, purpose more diminished. Integrity was not on the shelf as often or priced as cheaply before the age of the deal. It is now rare to find someone who has not been infected, a leader who is the proud owner of everything that cannot be bought, a soul who is not for sale. The flawless leader has rejected the seductions that 1) people are objects, 2) control trumps trust, and 3) identity is based in accomplishment. An unfortunate side effect of our quid pro quo culture is the commoditization of our integrity.

Objectification

Studies tell us the shelf life of the average CEO is less than four years. Integrity priced too cheaply and made too widely available is too often the culprit. The primary symptom of bread-and-milk integrity pricing is leaders viewing people as the means to their ends and not ends in and of themselves. Viewing people as means is equivalent to viewing them as objects, not equals. Objectifying people is rampant in our societies and is a projection of low self worth and self-hate. The narcissistic CEO who objectifies others as means to their ends typically suffers from self-hate and low self-esteem. People with high self worth do not prostitute themselves or others so easily.

Control

Between the rooms of fear and faith there is the door of choice. On that door is the doorknob of control. Our affinity for control locks us in fear, separated from the possibility of a powerful life of faith. Control is the enemy of trust. Trust is not the answer to everything, but for relationship to occur it is essential. Leadership is relationship. Leaders who believe control trumps trust tend to be isolated micromanagers, devoid of depth, and lacking powerful relationships. Control is often necessary and effective in organizations and societies, but it’s often misapplied to leadership. Flawless leaders sequester control in favor of trust in relationships.

Identity

We are human-beings not human-doings. If you are what you do, then when you don’t you aren’t. Accomplishment is important – hey, we need to get stuff done, but it is not who we are. Who you are is your answer to the question of life. It is the only appropriate answer to every question we face, especially the tough ones. What you do flows from who you are. The age of the deal has glorified competence over identity. We now have empty suits that can condescendingly execute complex tasks, but have no idea who they are or what is right and what is wrong. Our ethics and morality have been summarily sacrificed on the alters of our missing identities.

Flawless leaders have struggled with the wrenching question, “What will I do in this life with no expectation of a return?” They can discuss the question, “Who am I” without talking about where they work and what they do. The solidity of their identity creates depth in their relationships, synchronized convergent effort by willing followers, emblazoned service to worthy purpose, and a sense of deep-water satisfaction that is lacking in the kiddie pools full of empty suits.

Adolf Hitler was undoubtedly an influencer, but he was emphatically not a leader. He was a manipulator, a coercer, and a consummate extortionist, but he was not a leader. It is high time that we distinguish between tyranny and leadership. To define leadership as mere influence is to emasculate its inherent morality and disrespect the intrinsic willingness of followers.

A leader is a disrupter, a fire-starter, someone who goes around turning things right-side-up. This natural disturbance arises from beneficial internal unrest and anxiety, from an innate need to build purpose and right wrongs in the world.

The notion of leadership is best described in comparison to tyranny. We all struggle against the toxicity of tyranny. We all also participate in the venom of despotism and its many disguises. It started at birth; we are all born tyrants. We are born with an innate desire for unilateral control over everything around us, and if you are a parent, you have witnessed the shadows of tyranny from the front row.

Tyranny takes many forms. Sometimes it is outright forced compliance; sometimes it appears as benevolent dictatorship; sometimes patriarchy; sometimes paternalism; sometimes colonialism. In whatever size or shape it assumes, tyranny is undeniably the manipulative forcible coercion of others’ free will.

Tyranny can be a phone call from the lonely grandmother covertly dripping in guilt, the drill sergeant’s demeaning scream intending to help keep you alive when you face battle, the selling of a human slave to be owned as property by another human, the state government requiring every person to buy health insurance, the boy who buys flowers and dinner hoping to have sex from his date at the end of the night, the business owner who raises commodity prices during a natural catastrophe, the minister using guilt to extort more money from parishioners, or the wife who uses sex with her husband to manipulate his actions or decisions. Regardless of tyranny’s profile, to be an instrument of someone’s will other than your own is dehumanizing. Human exploitation is the hallmark of tyranny.

Leaders are an irritation and an affront to tyrants, representing a more restorative and enduring form of maturation. They stand in strong and subtle opposition to tyranny. Their lives project unforced rhythms of healing and humanization. To be a leader is to be a force of nature, a power to harmonize, a balanced treaty of peace. Hierarchical position, coercion and adoration give a false sense of pseudo-power, and collude together to support the lie that power is a scarce resource to be hoarded. Power comes to those who bring others power. Power comes to those who bring hope. Creating power in others is one of the primary duties of a leader. Power comes not to those to whom others have surrendered. Power comes to those who have surrendered to a greater purpose. At the core, a flawless leader is a living picture of restoration, responsible healing, and lavish service.

The supreme quest of the flawless leader is to surrender to purpose, and worthy purpose is unknowable apart from seeking God on God’s terms. This fact presents a perplexity for many leaders. Searching out a personal God-connection, striving to relate one-on-one with the mystery that is God, appears to fully engage a leader’s deepest, most powerful and most relevant self.

Leadership is foundationally a relationship, not a position. Leadership is more philosophical than scientific, more mysterious than obvious, more complex than simplistic; and unavoidably, yes, leadership is imbued with spiritual aspects. Whether the spiritual is currently culturally acceptable or politically correct is irrelevant regarding its impact in leadership. If the prevailing public opinion dissuades leaders from being spiritually adept, this merely presents additional facets to this perplexity. There will always be times and situations where greater purpose will call leaders to live counter-culturally. The leader who avidly avoids seeking God will most probably and eventually frustrate and denigrate followers into ridicule by giving them, in terms of one of Thomas Paine’s favorite fables, an ass for a lion.

To be sure, just seeking God in no way guarantees purpose. It is the only soil in which the seeds of significance have a chance of growing. Contributing to this conundrum further, there are thousands of shallow religious institutions supporting tyranny, terror, exploitation, and abuse littered across our planet. God in a box is not God at all. When you meet God on God’s terms and no one else’s, the richness of purpose’s soil is enhanced greatly.

History is clear: attempt to bind God to an organization or legislate holiness and you are connected to God no longer. Constrict leadership to an institution’s boundaries or to the confines of one person, and you convulse it to oblivion. Construct leadership in a factory and relationships in a laboratory, and your calculated control mechanisms become your demise. Assemble the god you desire, and you become just another abusive despot plundering possibility and significance with the bile of shallowness. The uncomfortable concrete reality is that leaders “playing god” through extreme command and control are meaningless, toxic tyrants.

How we view people matters. Our relationship to God impacts our view of people. The tyrant views people as a means to their ends. The leader views people as ends in and of themselves. If human equality is holy, the elitist exploitation of other people as less than equal is evil.

In addition to leading others as equals, relating to God enables leaders to love more effectively. In their book, Encouraging the Heart, Kouzes and Posner interviewed Major-General John H. Stanford on his secrets to developing leaders and he said, “The secret to success is to stay in love. Staying in love gives you the fire to really ignite other people, to see inside other people…I don’t know of any other fire, any other thing in life that is more exhilarating and is more positive a feeling than love is.”

This type of love is key to leadership relationships. The mature know this instinctively. More importantly, love that is enduring and significant is not a mere feeling; it is an act of the will that just happens to be accompanied by occasionally enjoyable feelings. M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled, brilliantly defined love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” So mature love is simply a spiritual commitment to yourself or another.

The fruition of the focused commitment to love is a spiritual manifestation of flawlessly leading. Furthermore, love, seeking God, and submission to worthy purpose are inextricably linked to leadership and each other at many levels. Leaders who struggle in these areas struggle proportionately in their leadership. Navigating this perplexity successfully is principally dependent on a personal, healthy relationship with God, as the utmost source of meaningful love and significant purpose.

Even the healthiest of organizations produces toxicity and is debilitated and damaged by a lack of compassion. In general, most organizations and communities are suffering from a lack of leadership, a scarcity of love, and lackluster purpose and meaning. Flawless leaders are unquenchably called to stand in this gap. As Henri Nouwen said, “Beneath all the great accomplishments of our time there is a deep current of despair. While efficiency and control are the great aspirations of our society, the loneliness, lack of friendship and intimacy, broken relationships, boredom, feelings of emptiness and depression, and a deep sense of uselessness fill the hearts of millions of people in our success-oriented world.” In this dark milieu, flawless leaders shine brightly.

Seeking God, worthy purpose, and love is a level of human maturity that creates challenging conundrums and perplexities for leaders. Do it anyway. Don’t ask how; just dive in. You won’t drown. When you feel as though you are drowning, dive deeper. It will take time: fruit matures throughout an entire season, not overnight. It takes a lifetime to mature fully, and only a moment to restart the continual process. Emotional and spiritual maturity are lifetime processes of replacing lies with truths, hate with love, doubt with faith, disingenuousness with authenticity, and closed-off self-protection with trust and vulnerability. Only the strong mature. The weak use their highchair as a platform to whine and blame.

Even though I just came out with a new book, here is a peak into the next volume of The Flawless Leader Papers. It’s about the incredible leadership power that emerges when a leader embraces their irrelevance.

“The truth about our own modest contribution might immobilize us: much easier then, to tell ourselves a story about how much we make our own reality.”

-David Whyte

Gary is a successful President in an insurance company. He was previously known as the “execution guru” because there was just no one better at getting things done than Gary. He had made a name for himself over the years in the industry as he climbed the ladder to President by moving anywhere he was asked, and by fixing all the broken areas in the company quickly and efficiently. If there was a part of the organization that needed to be brought back into line and up to snuff, that was where Gary was headed. He had accomplished much and had much to be proud of, and until recently, that seemed to be enough for Gary. I started working with Gary after his wife of twenty-eight years left him for the landscaper that cut the grass and worked in the gardens of what was now his former home. This shock caused Gary, the ultimate provider, to stop and take a long look at his life. He came face-to-face with his previously unknown reality that the ladder he was so sacrificially climbing through all this accomplishment was leaning on a wall filled with emptiness. Gary had been living with a governing assumption that strenuously surrendering his life to the shallow cause of “getting things done” would eventually give him fulfillment and enjoyment. When he stopped and took stock of his entire life, some rudely painful awakenings happened to surface. He had just lost a twenty-eight year marriage to a great woman, he was virtually estranged from his three wonderful children, he had sacrificed a great deal of his health and well being to excruciating work and travel schedules, and he had managed to alienated himself from everyone at work except his superiors. In the dictionary under self-sabotage, it said to see Gary.

Essentially, Gary woke up from his façade dreams of largess (that he assumed to be reality) and found he was actually deliriously and furiously rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship. He had worked so hard to build a life, and in reality he had been destroying it. He discovered that his life had little meaning and his vast conquests had left him with little significance. In fact, he had perfected conquest in the financial world; he, however, failed miserably in contribution to the larger world. His life’s purpose had resided in accomplishment alone; he served the task list; he lived for the execution of initiatives; he was the man who “got it done.” While he felt appreciated by his superiors, he also felt used. Gary had a pile of regrets and “looking himself in the mirror” had become nauseating, at best. Gary had built his identity on the unstable foundation of accomplishment-dependence; he was only good enough if he was accomplishing enough. So, to Gary, when he wasn’t accomplishing, he didn’t exist, and those badlands can get quite scary rather quickly. He bounced back and forth between feeling so good and never feeling good enough, and the definition of enough was never too clear and always out of reach. Somewhere along the way, he exchanged the power to be himself, to love himself, and to love those around him with the almighty adoration of accomplishment. Tasks had become the enemy of those waiting to love him, and Gary had too easily sold out to the enemy. He was a confused double agent and felt estranged from his own heart. He had taken many journeys, but had avoided the requisite flawless leaders’ journey from head to heart.

Gary viewed his stacked “to-do” list as empowering his life, but in reality it served to overpower him. The list was where he did his best work, and the list was where he was most stuck: the list never ended. As soon as one list was completed, another one was created. He was so busy doing; he never got to be. Being had become too difficult; he chose the life of a human doing. He got the tasks done – that is, except the preeminent task of life, the task of meaning and worthy purpose. He was never able to deeply connect with his wife and children because he subjugated them to the task list. His gluttony for accomplishment eclipsed his need for human relationship. His wife and children didn’t disappear; they just eventually faded away, settling for second best because first best was perpetually unavailable. He was left alone to live with the remnants of pain and a more than appropriate level of anguish. Gary lived in the shadow of illusive balance. Those who loved him surrounded him, but he felt so alone. He had gradually and unwittingly chosen exile. He strove to be the provider, but, when he turned around, there was no one left for which to provide. He created the emptiness in which he resided; he manufactured his own misery. He now wanted to repair and restore as much as possible of what he had lost and destroyed. Since Gary was so adept at lists, I asked him to take some time and make a list of a life filled with things that eclipsed accomplishment in importance, essentially what a life built on the economy of meaning, a life of gifts without any expectation of a return. Make the list, amend it, adjust it, edit it, perfect it. Get it done, and then we would discuss it. He later told me that this list was the most difficult and most important work he had ever done in his life. His first item helped form the title for this book.

Gary’s new life list:

- Feel joy and contentment about my insignificance – Embrace my irrelevance

- Connect with people as deeply and quickly as they are able

- Stare into the eyes of my wife; listen to her soul; love her; beg her forgiveness

- Stop everything and watch my children – especially when they say “dad, watch this!”

- Cry with those who are crying

- Listen to my child when she tells me whatever is on her mind at that moment

- Hold someone’s hand when they’re afraid

- Live my life as though it ends too soon

- Free oppressed people

- Feed hungry people

- Shelter homeless people

- Avoid at all costs colluding with exploitation

- Compassionately speak truth

- Live wide open and vulnerably

- Forgive without condition

- Love without reason

- Trust without reservation

- Dance without consideration

A notable thing here is that Gary didn’t quit his job; instead, he took it to another level of excellence. He took a few weeks of vacation to sort things out, but he came back in a more meaningful and powerful way. He learned to find meaning in the mundane, and holiness in the ordinary. He recreated an existence that touched the hearts of people, and instead of Gary working so hard, everyone around him was working much harder than he was. Gary transformed his existence by renewing his mindsets. He still got things done, in many ways better than before, but what changed was that he found an illusive peace that comes from balance, deep relationships, and authentic intensity. He recaptured reason by finding his way to his heart. He discovered resonating meaning and worthy purpose by connecting deeply with others’ hearts. He recovered his authentic identity by living a life founded on the solidity of who he was, not what he did. He rediscovered his true power by sharing it with those around him. He gifted followers with a newfound hope and meaning and that, in turn, energized them to collectively struggle to achieve his directions and dreams. He became the proud owner of that which cannot be bought. He had stumbled onto the path of the flawless leader.

What will you do to restore relationships you have harmed? On what is your self-worth based? What is more important than accomplishment?

The fires of our discontent are found within our unquenchable desires for more. Nowhere does this discontent rage fiercer than in the engulfing flames of our weak over-indulgence, our gluttony. Leaders often choose to burn contentment in the bonfires of gluttony. Our conspicuous consumptions and illogical wishes are the unfortunately stressful byproducts of our capitalistic democracies, our extortionist organizations, our self-absorbed cultures, and our fears of our unknown self. On a planet where fifty percent of the people have no shoes, have never made a telephone call, and will never read this page, discontent of mythical proportions broods hysterically among those who have countless shoes, phones and reading materials. We hear the cries of gluttony everyday, “Enough is never enough,” “Mommy, I want that – now!” “Gotta do more, gotta be more,” “You deserve it – you can have it all,” “We must never be satisfied,” “There is no finish line.” Our cultures of credit cards, mortgages, “keeping up with the Joneses,” and ever increasing salaries and revenue targets continually feed this well hidden dysfunction. The problem, however, with discontent and gluttony is that it robs us of our power, the power of authentic and actionable identity.

Gluttony is the strongest defense we have against contentment. Contentment must be defended against because it’s scary, for we can only be content when we abandon blame and judgment and unconditionally accept ourselves for who we are and what we are doing. Authentic contentment does not include satisfaction and complacency; it is an unadulterated acceptance of our current reality and an actionable agreement with our current objectives. This self-acceptance entails acute awareness, exacting alignment of intention and behavior, courage, and forgiveness: a rare recipe in kitchens these days. Gluttony wouldn’t be a root cause to leader dysfunction if it didn’t captivate so much of our attention and deflect us from the truly meaningful. Our blind grasping of ill-defined accumulations prevents us from our most powerful and enduring interventions: identity and purpose.

T.D. Jakes, a contrarian voice, said, “Contentment is the apex of existence.” When we are satisfied with ourselves we embody our own gift of “enough.” Contentment is the ultimate act of unconditional love and acceptance, the resulting joy and peace that come from meaningful identity and purposeful action. Few of us experience this because we swim with our heads barely above water in our own ocean of discontent, dissatisfaction, self-hate, and overall revenge for being born. Most organizations encourage these feelings because they use people as human resources, as inhumane means to an end. Gluttonous leaders preach to the masses that encouraging contentment would create laziness, resistance to change, and a culture coated with haphazard malaise. Most managers prefer to use fear and domination because to actually lead is risky and scary. These leaders are defending against honoring people as equals and leading through the power of resonating purpose. The gluttonous leader is weak and produces shallow, short-lived conquests, where the flawless leader brings enriching and enduring contributions. Contentment is quite possibly the most precious thing that gluttony cannot attain.

It is understandable that when we are not firmly grounded in “who we are” and “what we want” we react in fear by “wanting it all.” (The illogical assumption being that more and bigger must be better.) While it is understandable, it is also unacceptable. We fill our aching voids resulting from our lack of identity and vision with random, incoherent gluttony and greed. When we don’t know who we really are and what we really want out of life, then we reach out by trying to grab it all. Gluttonous leaders instinctively criticize, judge, and reject themselves and others, habitually supporting their gluttonous addictions in lieu of simple, scary self-acceptance. When we are gluttonous we have a lot, including regrets, resentments, self-hate and emptiness. This amounts to manufacturing our own harm via the shrinking of our life by smothering it with stuff: the more we get the less we are. Gluttony is the quintessential devaluing of our distinctive selves. Its seduction is the emotional high of shopping for more in the disguised department stores of our own discontent. Ironically, we also accumulate more dissatisfaction through our frenetic purchases, accomplishments, and conquests. Once we accumulate the new, we devalue it by ignoring it in pursuit of the more, or the new and improved. In the midst of our noisy gluttony, we avoid our heart’s quiet calling for contentment: know yourself, forgive yourself, accept yourself, love yourself, choose your destiny, live out your purpose with gusto.

Flawless leaders are irritants because they dare to strive for the contentment that can only result from authentic identity, resonating purpose and meaningful action. They are content with themselves, their actions, and the directions they have set. They accept reality, create the future, and forgive quickly. They are grounded in their identity because they are able to articulate who they are without mentioning what they do. Leadership is both who you are and what you do, but it all starts in who you are. Every decision flows from identity. Every answer to every question is another brick in the building of our uniqueness. Gluttony is the consummate defense against the power and productivity that only authentic identity and meaningful purpose can bring.

Who are you? Where are you? What resentments do you still hold toward yourself? What accumulations prevent you from living fully?

Consumerism, greed and generic gluttony have collided to create the previous age of conspicuous consumption. It is this transaction and accumulation oriented age of the deal that has now birthed the age of the empty suit. The passionate pursuit of new experiences and greater ownership has created societies stuffed full of emptiness, and leaders unknown to and unaware of themselves. Leaders have only become as good as the deal they can strike, the payoff they receive. Every action is made in anticipation of a return. It is as if leaders are investing their lives in a cosmic vending machine in the hopes of receiving good but unarticulated benefits as compensation. The first of many problems in this scenario is that leaders stop doing things from a sense of identity or principle and begin to form a reality that is based on quid pro quo. In a this-for-that culture, I will give you this when I know what that is. Immersed in this culture, when that which leaders will receive in return is unclear, leaders tend not to act. So, short-term mindsets become the standard. These mindsets also contribute to the rampant fear-based paradigm of risk avoidance. This risk aversion culminates in the fear to create raw innovation – so organizations now create new applications and add-on products, and no one is creating new industries, inventions and products that don’t already easily fit into an existing category. And we wonder why the global economy is in ruin?

The reward for becoming the proud owner of all that can be bought is deep despair, diminishing returns, and emptiness. The way out is to become solid in your own identity and principles, to know what purpose is worthy of your complete surrender, to know what you will do in this world with no promise of a return. Flawless leaders live courageously and make decisions based in the solidness of their own identity and principles, from a sense of strength and rightness, an unfortunately rare thing in these parts. Flawless leaders are the proud owners of all that cannot be bought.

What purpose is worthy of your surrender? What will you do in this life with no promise of a return?