My friend was interviewing doctors for his upcoming heart surgery when he met Dr. Smith. Dr. Smith’s practice was quite large, with its own clinic, staff of doctors, technicians, nurses, and support people. My friend met several of the staff, learned more about the medical procedures he would go through, and had what he described as a “good meeting” with Dr. Smith. Although from a technical perspective he had been impressed with the doctors and staff, as he was leaving the clinic he still felt apprehensive about choosing Dr. Smith as the one who would open his chest, temporarily stop his heart, and hopefully save his life. As he got on the elevator to leave, he met yet another of the clinic’s staff who appeared to be the janitor. Being polite, my friend asked the young man what he did at the clinic, and the man replied, without hesitation, “Me and Dr. Smith save lives.” The young man went on to passionately explain that by ensuring the cleanliness of Dr. Smith’s facility he was helping him save lives. The young man asked my friend if Dr. Smith was his doctor. My friend replied thoughtfully, “He is now.”

We choose to be flawed when we attempt to lead others without first creating a shared and resonating purpose. Obviously Dr. Smith’s staff shared a purpose that held motivating meaning for even the janitor. Helping people see that their daily grind powerfully serves a larger purpose is the work of flawless leaders. Witnesses, such as my friend, cannot help but be moved by the ripples that such action creates.

Followers flock to meaning like moths to a flame. So imagine my disappointment when I hear leaders talk of “driving execution”, “getting them on the bus”, “getting them in the boat”, and “drilling down change”. My problem with all these defenses against leadership is that all too often, the leaders do not know how to drive, they are not on the boat or the bus themselves, and since they don’t want anyone drilling anything into them why do they think others would welcome such drilling? These are all examples of manipulative behavior that extinguishes the engagement of followers. It’s no wonder most managers secretly suspect that the spirits of their people have departed while their bodies remain (the definition of disengaged). When leaders have genuine conversations with followers about meaningful possibilities, followers engage. Finding and articulating the meaning in work is the work of leaders. Orchestrating meaningful conversation with followers is the work of flawless leaders. For example, in the pharmaceutical industry, is the message one of cutting costs to make the quarter’s earnings, or is it one of shared continuous struggle to save lives and improve the health of the world? One message coldly shrinks life to a short term goal. The other message fills hearts with warm meaningful purpose and endurance to reach a larger-purpose horizon. As leaders, are we shrinking or are we growing?

There is more to work than meets the wallet. There is more to the quarter than the numbers. There is more to the future than the past can offer.

It is the work of flawless leaders to engage others. Everything enduring begins with purpose. Find and articulate the unifying purpose in work and you are half way to leading. Masterfully engage followers in meaningful conversations around that purpose allowing the emergence of a greater co-created purpose and you start leading. Genuinely build relationships in the process and you are leading flawlessly.

What is closest to your heart? What is most meaningful? What is most worth doing in this life? What purpose is worthy of your unadulterated surrender?

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?

Frank was a dynamo. His energy levels and stamina were the envy of all. His managerial capacity was astounding. His presence was larger than life. He also had deep needs that were satisfied by looking busy. He had defined an overstuffed schedule and generally frenetic behaviors as the hallmark of effective leadership, and his less effective boss rewarded and reinforced this behavior. So in order to fulfill his well hidden needs to be accepted, honored, and competent, Frank would literally run around his business and react vehemently to each and every fire that broke out. As a regional Vice President, he was not only responsible for putting the fires out; he was also responsible for preventing them from recurring. It was that second thing, the fire-prevention role, that Frank unconsciously neglected because he was magnetized to the seductive elixir of the reactive-manager role that he loved to play in order to feel good about who he was. Frank did feel good about his chosen identity, but that unfortunately did not help his business. It hurt his business. To really help his business, Frank actually needed to adhere to the uncommonly sage advice, “Don’t just do something – stand there!”

We all have multiple roles, hats, and positions. A mother is probably the human with the most roles. The average mother is leader, manager, teacher, lover, wife, partner, mentor, advisor, coach, counselor, officer, referee, doctor, judge, analyst, friend, daughter, accountant, nurse, negotiator, pharmacist, chef, maid, and chauffer all before lunchtime. Not all of us are blessed with such complexity. But we all play our parts, actresses and actors in a powerful play. Some parts we run toward with joyful abandon; some parts we run from like rats jumping from a sinking ship. Whatever the role, we say our lines. We move on and off the stage. We act; we interact; we switch roles; we wear hats; we put on masks; we change costumes. Certain parts we like to perform better than others. We over-identify and overuse some roles, choosing to be comfortably trapped in a fractured sliver of existence – gravitating to comfort and safety as a defense against the discomfort of living fully. A mother might overuse the caring-pacifier role, a father might be stuck in the fierce-protector role, and a Vice President could constantly gravitate to the reactive-manager role. When our pet-select roles seduce us, magnetize us, and envelope us, we over-identify with that specific part of life.

Our intoxication with these identity-magnet bit-parts of existence chips away at our wholeness, dilutes our presence in other critical roles, and shatters our fullness. A multitude of varying roles is not a fragmented life. Being less than fully present in any one role is diminishment. Overusing or avoiding roles is a sign of potential organizational dysfunction. Our identity is the compilation of fully living every role that presents itself throughout our lifetime. Our identity is not our action. Our identity is not one role or even a compilation of roles. Our identity is our unique creative process of breathing our full authentic presence into our chosen possibilities. Flawless leaders consciously create their identity and submit to a larger purpose instead of unconsciously overemphasizing single aspects of leadership in an effort to salve deeply hidden personal issues.

What roles magnetize you? What roles do you neglect and what is the resulting fallout or risk? Where and when are you less than fully living?

Leaders that create an elite aura disserve followers. The elitist attitude in leadership says to all followers that “I am better than you, hence I should lead you.” It is a mental state of ascendency that leads to domination, control, tyranny, extortion, and abuse of the community and society. History has clearly shown us numerous times that the elite leader has great capacity for tyranny and dehumanizing leadership. Elitism is obsolete and must be eliminated in order for authentic leadership to flourish.

After more than two centuries, the US has created a somewhat free and equal society that is fairly distinct in the world, although still infected with aristocratic domination and elitism in areas and pockets throughout. When America declared its independence from the British Empire and won its liberty and status through war, it separated from a monarchy and would for years strive to live distinctly different from monarchy, ensuring free speech, freedom of religion, right for all citizens to bear arms, etc.

Over two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the United States of America said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take away everything you have…I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.” Jefferson was a liberal, secular humanist, however, today, this thinking would be considered fairly right wing.

Through only 200 years, a few generations, Americans have allowed elitism to creep back into leadership and now our free speech has been limited to certain “free speech zones”: areas set aside in public places for the exercise of free speech in the US. The US Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law… abridging… the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The US Constitution was circumvented by the US Courts: the existence of free speech zones is based on U.S. court decisions stipulating that the government may regulate the time, place, and manner—but not content—of expression. These free speech zones stem from decisions within the last fifty years, but were not extensively utilized and enforced until the last 2 decades, coincidently and arguably with a noticeably higher rise in elitism in Governmental leadership.

Over the last fifty years Americans have also seen limitations on their religious freedom: mandatory teaching of evolution theory in public schools and the elimination and denigration of creation, elimination of prayer in public schools, and the shift in mindset that the US Constitution guarantees the freedom from religion, where it was always only originally intended to guarantee the freedom to be religious.

The last several decades in America have seen numerous challenges to individual’s rights to own firearms. Rights for Americans in this area have been severely limited by state and local governments and are yet another symptom in a long line of the sickness called elitism in leadership.

Elitism is paternalistic, coercive, extortive, and monarchical. It says, “let me control your life because you are not wise enough to do so.” It is not democratic. If human equality is holy, elitism is evil. Elitism is definitely not an American original. It says that all are not equal. It is the harbinger of tyranny and slavery and human abuse. And after only two centuries, the American congress looks more elite than the British parliament that it rebelled against. The extreme debates and diatribes in which the British parliament and its Prime Minister currently engage make the American congress and President look like the elite, polished puppets that they are. Congressmen cannot even challenge the President out loud when the President lies in a public speech without receiving censure. Thomas Jefferson and his arguing, impolite, brilliant compatriots are reeling in their graves. Freedom no longer rings in America, the elite have silenced the bell. If these comments from an American Democrat irritate you, you have probably been infected with the disease of elitism.

Authentic humility will always be the bedrock essence of a flawless leader. However strenuously we strive for relevance, we are rarely really relevant. It is high time leaders not only accept this but also embrace it. Embracing irrelevance is a holy reverence for the equality of all humans. Most leaders are constantly in search of their own relevance and thus are chained to illogical and unarticulated fantasies of being God. They think they should lead because they are “the best choice for the job;” because they have been “appointed.” When we embody the paradigm of constant relevance we repel followers because they sense our need to be dominant, however covert our condescension may be. Our past accomplishments and accolades shallowly support our self-pertinence. Leading and following are intensely “present-time” sensitive. Followers disregard past track records once they are with you in the moment’s current affliction. In our present anxiety, our past triumphs melt feverishly into triviality. Flawless leaders reject continuous relevance because they have chosen a lifelong submission to authentic service and meaningful purpose.

Immature children think of themselves; mature adults think of others. A tyrant views other people as beneath him; a community member views others as equals; a servant views other people as more esteemed than her. Pretentiousness repels; authenticity attracts. Only the strong become servants because they have mastered the illogical instability of self-supremacy. The servant is merely the mature, periodic and loving master of the ever-present inner-tyrant. Psychologists tell us that we carry with us our inner child. It is the manner in which we carry that child that makes all the difference. It is the flawless leaders that lovingly accept their inner instabilities, yet still guide themselves to a life of significance through surrendering to worthy purpose. Flawless leaders do not major on the minor issues. Flawless leaders are able to create strong bonds with followers through appropriate vulnerability. These relationships of deep strength and connectedness form the invisible infrastructure that propels the flawless leader’s organization toward meaningful success. There are correlations between leadership ability and organization outcomes. The extreme organizational power that is released from leaders’ embracing their irrelevance is another symptom of the necessary and deep work that occurs on the path of the flawless leader.

In what ways does your undercover elitism limit possibilities within the organization you serve?

The night of our renovation is a come as you are affair. The natural byproduct of our personal reconstruction is a considerable amount of dust, an acceptable mess. There is no classroom, no laboratory, no test case, no disposable first draft when it comes to life. It is purely a build-the-airplane-as-you’re-flying event. There is no certification for birth or parenting; it just happens. And often it is quite messy. The most extraordinary flowers bloom in the most retched filth, the good earth. That’s just the way it works. The best tasting sandwiches are oftentimes the messiest ones. The most precious humans, the little babies, are the untidiest of us all. And when we work on ourselves, the fruition of our transformation requires mistakes, failures, and imperfections: the dust of our own change. The question that must remain rattling inside us is “If a thing is worth doing, is it worth doing poorly a few times first?” Please pardon our dust.

When we walk into the workshop of the woodworker we do not condemn them to incompetence for debris and sawdust strewn in random unkempt piles on the floor. When we see the little toddler stumble and fall so many times when they are beginning to walk, we do not demand their legs be removed. When the young ones take their training wheels off their little bicycles and have difficulty riding unassisted, we do not assume stupidity and sell their bikes to cut our losses. In all these instances and many more, we have patience, understanding, and react with encouragement and assistance. But when the leader is learning and changing, we get nervous and gravitate to assumptions of travesty and disaster. We are oblivious that the power of this collective premise often cajoles leaders into hypocrisy. In many cultures this cultural presupposition is so powerful that leaders adopt a correlating unfounded notion that they cannot afford to learn by mistakes, they must be what they are undoubtedly not: perfect. The inevitable dust of a leader evokes our condemnation, where in most other cases the dust of others causes us to smile and pick up a broom to help. Please pardon our dust.

Leaders’ changing themselves is consummately the prime directive for flawlessness. The road to flawlessness is paved with our flaws as we navigate them effectively. When leaders are not constantly changing and adjusting, they are usually stuck and failing. When we discourage learning and change by the condemnation of the accompanying dust, we encourage failure. Through our intolerance, we tacitly create a greater ineptitude and hypocrisy. Please be careful where you step in these construction sites. Stop shaking your head in disgust and intolerance, and start rolling up your starched sleeves and help to clean up a bit. Please pardon our dust.

I worked with a leader once that employed an over-simplified model by asking his employees at times, “is this a journey or a destination?” He did this in a cute attempt to help them realize that their efforts at completion were not yet effective. His destination thinking was effective when it came to the content, output or accomplishment of their tasks, but it was ineffective when dealing with their developmental journeys. Life is not merely a series of destinations; it is also a journey. Both paradigms are valid and helpful. However, destination mindsets are rarely helpful in making us more fit for the greater journey. If I am only concerned with the destination, I might become too busy driving the car to stop and get gas. As leaders, we need to embrace both ways of thinking: destination thinking and journey thinking. From a systems perspective, journey thinking is about structure and process fitness and improvement, and destination thinking is about output effectiveness. For many systems, the keys to incremental effectiveness are often found in structure and process improvement. For many leaders, the keys to enhancing flawlessness are often found in enhancing our fitness for the journey. And there is a good deal of dust that gets pretty much everywhere over the course of a long journey. Please pardon our dust.

Beautiful craftsmanship only happens in the midst of dust and debris as the rough edges and extraneous material is removed and the sanding and polishing produces a greater level of existence and experience, the art of the everyday, the miracle of the methodical and mundane, the creation of holistic flawlessness from raw and flawed materials. The transformation of a flawless leader is similar. Please pardon our dust.

What imperfections and dust generation do you avoid in your hypocrisy?

When are you unhelpfully critical of dust and contribute to trapping value in others?

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Link to 

Answers are strenuously sought after and largely irrelevant when it comes to leadership. Most leaders are in their positions because they were among the most competent and knowledgeable while in their previous positions. Unfortunately, most leaders fail, too. So, even though they were seen as the answer, they became the problem. In fact, the latest studies would indicate that about 70% of leaders are dishonorably discharged in some way. The same group that installed the leader as the answer to their problems ends up removing the leader, perhaps, because that leader did not ask the right questions.

Let’s face it, the best leaders ask the best questions, and their best ideas come from someone else. Flawless leaders know that it is far better to have one questioner and a thousand who answer than a thousand questioners and one who answers. A flawless leaders job is to orchestrate the right conversation that brings about authentic change and energized engagement. Leaders don’t facilitate change and actions by answering someone’s question. It is high time for the archetype of leader as oracle to die in order for leaders to access their flawlessness. Instead of question and answer sessions, the best leaders have question and listening sessions.

There is an important inherent gift that all leaders possess, yet rarely access: irremediable ignorance. Just in case one of your close friends hasn’t told you lately – you don’t know it all and you never will. When leaders approach the world as an answer to its questions, they inevitably fail because they are operating from an unrealistic impossible premise. Alternatively, flawless leaders approach the world as a series of questions designed to release its trapped value. It is only with meaningful conversation around significant questions that leaders can hope to release the trapped value within their organizations. These conversations are only started with great questions.

E.E. Cummings said, “always a more beautiful answer that asks a more beautiful question.” As leaders, when you are tempted to answer everyone’s questions, I urge you to ask another question instead. Followers have the answers, but their answers are trapped within. A leader asking followers the right questions unlocks their value and engages their spirits. As leaders, we can only change ourselves in this way when we embrace our irremediable ignorance. We do not have all the answers, not will we ever, but it is possible to have the right questions. What questions would engage your followers fully? What questions would harvest the best thinking in the group? What conversations are you avoiding? What potentially helpful questions are you afraid to ask?

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Link to 

In what ruts are you stuck? What choices would set you free?

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?

Managers operate in the relatively easy content area of what needs to be done and measured –that which can be easily seen. Leaders operate in the motivational human behavioral areas of Why are we doing this? What is meaningful? Who am I? Do I matter? Do I want to struggle and commit? Do I need to share my power with this group? –the areas which are unseen, or at best a shadow.

Leadership is easily ignored because it deals with the invisible. Is leadership real or is it a shadow? Is the shadow of leadership more substantial or meaningful than the content of what is actually being accomplished? When leadership is relegated to the easily ignored warm and fuzzy arena, what is lost? In reacting to these questions, we create our approach to leadership –our collective behaviors: the part of us with which others live.

When it comes to leadership, the unseen is more important that the seen. Bad attitudes, low motivation, poor cooperation, ulterior motives, etc. ruin organizations of any and all types, yet we cannot see them and they cannot be measured well. These are the results of flawed leadership and these are the areas that really irritate the measuring managers.

When I ask CEOs, “What behavior changes are required from your leaders to bring long-term success to your organization?” Their answers are never around measurement or execution because those are such shallow and short-term skills. They are usually about the immensely difficult areas of collaboration, communication, coordination, relationship, and motivation. These are all concept areas that cannot be seen –the invisible.

When will we stop wasting time on the shallow stuff and get into the deep waters of flawless leadership? What are your defenses against leading –that which prevents you from tackling the difficult stuff? What does it take for you to work in the shadows of authentic leadership?