Ed Batista

The Fruit of Suffering

While I'm a great admirer of the Stoics and take much consolation from the work of Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus [1], I don't share their belief in a cosmic plan that determines the procession of earthly events. I'm not opposed to this idea, nor do I feel any need to disagree with those who hold such a belief. I know many people who subscribe to one version or another, and I find it easy to co-exist happily with them.

But I resist the idea that a cosmic plan should be interpreted as "everything happens for a reason." This seems to me an ineffective way of seeking to dismiss our natural responses to horror and tragedy, and it can be viewed as a variation on the widespread belief in a "just world," a concept first explored by psychologist Melvin Lerner:

Individuals have a need to believe that they live in a world where people generally get what they deserve. The belief that the world is just enables the individual to confront his physical and social environment as though they were stable and orderly. Without such a belief it would be difficult for the individual to commit himself to the pursuit of long range goals or even to the socially regulated behaviour of day to day life. Since the belief that the world is just serves such an important adaptive function for the individual, people are very reluctant to give up this belief, and they can be greatly troubled if they encounter evidence that suggests that the world is not really just or orderly after all. [2]

But belief in a just world is either a luxury, a form of privilege enjoyed by those who've never experienced horror or tragedy, or it's a coping mechanism, a way of discharging the cognitive dissonance that results when the inescapable reality of injustice and randomness in the distribution of horror and tragedy can no longer be avoided.

While by most standards I've lived an immensely privileged life, I've also experienced and observed sufficient horror and tragedy to convince me that the world is not just, that injustice is in fact common and all too random. So in writing now about the "fruit of suffering"--the benefits that may be derived from horrible and tragic experiences--I am not in the least suggesting that such suffering "happened for a reason," or that such fruit provides a "silver lining," or that any of this occurs in a "just world." And yet to deny the existence of these fruits would be to rob ourselves of a potent source of meaning. As Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, has written,

There are situations in which one is cut off from the opportunity to do one's work or enjoy one's life; but what can never be ruled out is the unavoidability of suffering. In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end. In other words, life's meaning is an unconditional one, for it even includes the potential meaning of unavoidable suffering...

[In Auschwitz] the question that beset me was, "Has all this suffering, all this dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends on such a happenstance--as whether one escapes or not--ultimately would not be worth living at all." [3]

The last few weeks have been a time of great suffering indeed. In the midst of the profound upheaval caused by the global pandemic, one of the best friends I ever had died in an accident--and while I've walked and talked and cried with other people who knew him well, we couldn't even hug each other for fear of catching a potentially deadly disease. One week later my brother David closed his bar in Washington DC, before the official order, to protect his customers and employees from COVID-19, and he won't be able to earn a living until he re-opens. And I'm keenly aware that many people around the world have suffered far more than I have. I don't know what fruits other people may have derived from their suffering, but I'm increasingly aware of those that have been bestowed upon me:

Clarity

My values, the things that really matter to me, have never been more clear. The difference between needs and wants has never been starker. I need to stay healthy and to take good care of myself. I need to have thriving relationships with the people who are most important to me. I need to be of service to my clients and feel a sense of purpose in my work. Everything else is a mere want, a desire that may or may not get met--if so, I'll enjoy it, and if not, I'll survive.

Connection

I feel closer than ever to the people in my life--Amy, my family and friends, my clients. Just the other day I had the most heartfelt conversation with my Mom that I've ever had--and I'm 52! I've discovered new depths of friendship and shared countless stories with others who were close to Erik, our friend who died. I'd all give it all back to have him with us again, but I can't--so instead I cherish the way that he continues to have an impact on our lives after he's gone.

Gratitude

This isn't new for me, but even so, I have a heightened sense of appreciation for small moments of peace and beauty and light. Amy and I are adhering strictly to San Francisco's stay-at-home order, but we can still safely walk around our neighborhood, and we regularly stop to take in the ivory glow of calla lilies and the scent of jasmine. Yesterday we had to drive up to Sonoma to check on Merlin, Amy's retired horse, and it was a wonder to spend just a few hours in those green hills

Meaning

As an executive coach, my work has always provided me with a deep sense of purpose. But I've never felt more needed or more useful now that all day, every day, I spend my time talking with leaders about one of the greatest challenges they've faced in their professional lives. And I'm reminded of something I wrote on February 8th, the last day I saw my friend Erik, reflecting on mortality without grasping just how close at hand it was: "I find myself considering how I spend my time--and with whom--and the image of a candle burning down readily comes to mind. Instead of adding items to a 'bucket list,' I feel motivated to let things go, to devote less and less time to activities I find unrewarding, and to focus my energy on the people and experiences I find most meaningful." [5]

So having begun by rejecting one of the Stoics' core beliefs, I close by affirming the value of another, as articulated by Seneca:

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is--the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. [6]

A newfound determination to bear this in mind, to invest my limited time wisely, to make the life I have left as meaningful as possible, may be the most valuable fruit this suffering has yielded.

 

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Footnotes

[1] How I Read Stoicism

[2] Just World Research and the Attribution Process: Looking Back and Ahead (Melvin Lerner and Dale Miller, Psychological Bulletin, 1978). For more on the "just world hypothesis," see Belief in a Just World: Research Progress Over the Past Decade (Adrian Furnham, Personality and Individual Differences, 2003).

[3] Man's Search for Meaning, pages 114-115 (Viktor Frankl, 1946/2006)

[4] I Will Miss You So Much, My Friend

[5] The Final Third (On Mortality, Values and Spending Time)

[6] On the Shortness of Life

Photo by Torsten Behrens.

One Minute of Calm

We need moments of calm now more than ever, so I've set up a site where I'm posting one-minute videos of scenes from the natural world in California's Marin, Mendocino and Sonoma Counties, as well as Golden Gate Park and the Presidio in San Francisco:

One Minute of Calm

 

We need moments of calm now more than ever, so I've set up a site where I'm posting one-minute videos of scenes from the natural world in California's Marin, Mendocino and Sonoma Counties, as well as Golden Gate Park and the Presidio in San Francisco:

One Minute of Calm

 

How Leaders Overcome Adversity

We believe that great leaders possess four essential skills, and...these happen to be the same skills that allow a person to find meaning in what could be a debilitating experience. First is the ability to engage others in shared meaning... Second is a distinctive and compelling voice... Third is a sense of integrity (including a strong set of values)...

But by far the most critical skill of the four is what we call "adaptive capacity..." It’s composed of two primary qualities: the ability to grasp context, and hardiness. The ability to grasp context implies an ability to weigh a welter of factors, ranging from how very different groups of people will interpret a gesture to being able to put a situation in perspective. Without this, leaders are utterly lost, because they cannot connect with their constituents...

Hardiness is just what it sounds like--the perseverance and toughness that enable people to emerge from devastating circumstances without losing hope.

~Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas, "Crucibles of Leadership" [1]

A crucible is a vessel used in chemistry and metallurgy in which substances are transformed through the application of extreme heat and pressure. We can think of the current global crisis as a "crucible experience"--a chapter in our lives that will undoubtedly transform us, for better or for worse. In "Crucibles of Leadership" Warren Bennis and his co-author Robert Thomas employ this metaphor as they explore the lives of leaders who went through such an experience, "a trial and a test, a point of deep self-reflection that forced them to question who they were and what mattered to them." [2] Studying a number of leaders who overcame adversity in such circumstances allowed Bennis and Thomas to identify the four (five, really) characteristics identified above that these leaders shared.

Bennis taught leadership at USC's Marshall School of Business for over three decades, and before that he served as president of the University of Cincinnati for nearly a decade and taught at MIT's Sloan School of Business, where he earned his PhD. But his academic credentials notwithstanding, Bennis first learned about leadership as a teenager at war.

During World War II he was one of the youngest lieutenants to serve in the European theater, earning the Purple Heart for being wounded in combat and the Bronze Star for heroic achievement. This chapter in his life profoundly shaped his understanding of leadership: "Overnight, I learned that a leader is not simply someone who experiences the personal exhilaration of being in charge. A leader is someone whose actions have the most profound consequences on other people’s lives, for better or for worse, sometimes for ever and ever." [3]

So if you're a leader how might you leverage these five concepts to help your organization overcome the adversity we face today?

1. Engaging others in shared meaning.

An essential function of leadership is what organizational psychologist Karl Weick has called "sensemaking"--rendering a complex situation comprehensible to others, thereby enabling them to act in concert to achieve their goals. In a widely cited paper on how a loss of shared meaning can contribute to disastrous outcomes, Weick notes that our sense of life as a predictable process is an illusion: "People...act as if events cohere in time and space and that change unfolds in an orderly manner. These everyday cosmologies are subject to disruption." He goes on to discuss the process of sensemaking and its importance in organizational life:

The basic idea of sensemaking is that reality is an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs.

Organizations can be good at decision making and still falter. They falter because of deficient sensemaking. The world of decision making is about strategic rationality. It is built from clear questions and clear answers that attempt to remove ignorance. The world of sensemaking is different. Sensemaking is about contextual rationality. It is built out of vague questions, muddy answers, and negotiated agreements that attempt to reduce confusion. [4]

This is the essence of the challenge you face today. The "everyday cosmology" of our world, our sense of society's coherence has not changed in an orderly manner, but in a disruption so profound that people are finding it difficult to make sense of it all. This is the underlying source of the heightened anxiety and occasional panic that we see around us.

In this context you will succeed not through good decision-making alone, but through your efforts to reduce confusion, quell panic, and soothe anxiety. This is precisely why you have been invested with authority in the first place, as the anthropologist and philosopher Ernest Becker has noted: "The universe contains overwhelming power. Beyond ourselves we sense chaos. We can't really do much about this unbelievable power, except for one thing: we can endow certain persons with it." [5]

So your first task as a leader is to use your power to help people in the process of sensemaking. This doesn't mean that you have the "answers" or an "explanation"--who does?--but, rather, that you recognize that "reality is an ongoing accomplishment." Every action we take co-constructs a particular version of reality, and while this is ultimately a collective process, you have a special role to play as a consequence of the power with which you've been endowed by your followers. And that power doesn't merely reside in your authority to make decisions, but in your ability to gather your team and enlist them in a process of sensemaking.

2. A distinctive and compelling voice.

Anything you hope to accomplish during this crisis will rely on your ability to communicate effectively in a range of settings: team meetings, one-on-one conversations, broadcasting to an all-hands, and via the written word. You must be able to speak and write using language, tone, and gestures that feel personal and authentic, while also conveying a sense of calm. You must be direct and straightforward about the challenges ahead, while also expressing empathy for your employees' anxiety and fear.

In these efforts you'll draw upon your capacity for emotion regulation--which is distinct from emotion suppression. Suppression involves efforts to ignore our emotional responses, or pretend we're not having them--this is possible in short bursts but not for extended periods (and it can even backfire, resulting in a heightened state of emotional arousal.) [6] In contrast, regulation entails acknowledging what we're feeling, labeling those feelings internally, and judiciously expressing them. This is one of the most important aspects of leadership in a crisis--as I've written before:

Emotions are literally contagious--we sense them in others, pick them up and pass them on--and we're even more sensitive to the emotions of leaders and others we view as having high status.

A leader who can leverage this dynamic effectively has a tremendous competitive advantage. They can acknowledge negative emotions (both their own and others) and manage or make use of them in a way that's healthy and productive, rather than A) seeking to repress or ignore them or B) letting them spiral out of control. And they can also more fully sense and express positive emotions (both their own and others), which can be a powerful source of influence and motivation. [7]

3. A sense of integrity and a strong set of values.

Effective leaders do not need to be liked during periods of adversity, when they must make difficult decisions that will cause pain and hardship for many people. But leaders must be trusted, particularly during periods of adversity when uncertainty is high, information is scarce, and time for communication is short. In the absence of sufficient trust, a wartime leader cannot be effective. [8]

In this context, your integrity and values will be critical in maintaining trust. Hopefully you've established a baseline level of trust with your team--as technology executive Steven Sinofsky wrote recently, "Trust is the resource you have been building as a peacetime leader--to act during a crisis you dip into that reserve." [9] But whatever trust exists within your organization now will be tested in the weeks and months to come.

You can act to maintain and build trust during a crisis by recognizing that it emerges from others' perception of two distinct qualities: your judgment and your intentions. [10] The difficult decisions you now face will inevitably test others' trust in your judgment when they disagree with the actions you intend to take, but this is an easier problem to solve, because you may be able to explain your rationale and change their mind, or they may be willing to "disagree and commit." [11]

But if people doubt your intentions, this is a much harder problem to solve. They won't know whether there's simply been a misunderstanding, or whether you're acting out of opportunistic self-interest--and at a time of crisis they will seek to minimize the risk to themselves, resulting in a restricted flow of information, which will only heighten the sense of distrust.

The key is having clarity on your values, communicating them openly, and acting in alignment with them at all times, even--and especially--when it's personally painful to do so. And the starting point here is being able to answer this fundamental question: What principles are guiding your actions in this crisis?

4. The ability to grasp context.

Let's return to Bennis and Thomas' definition here: the "ability to weigh a welter of factors, ranging from how very different groups of people will interpret a gesture to being able to put a situation in perspective." In this crisis it's crucial to recognize that different people are responding very differently to the global situation. A theme emerging in my work with leaders is what I'm calling the "rubber-band effect": Prescient leaders are ahead of the curve, seeing what's likely to happen to their organizations and communities well before those around them.

This view puts those leaders several weeks or months ahead into the future, and the people around them aren't there yet. They don't quite see the future in the same way, and as a result they either discount the risk of COVID-19, urging business as usual, or they panic. The "rubber-band" stretches. So the prescient leader must "pull" people along with them, inviting them to see this vision of the future, both to put a stop to business-as-usual and to cultivate long-term hope and optimism. But people can't be "stretched" too far, too fast, or the "rubber-band" will break. This is the context you must grasp today.

But in addition to helping others put the current situation in perspective you will likely need to do the same for yourself. In my practice even leaders with extensive wartime experience are occasionally finding themselves in the grip of fear and anxiety. I'm reminded of a mantra that has resonated in my work and life for many years: The impulse to hurry is usually a signal to slow down. [12]

5. Hardiness.

We may think of hardiness or resilience as a trait, a monolithic quality that we possess or lack. But in The Resilience Factor, psychologists Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté identify seven behaviors that characterize people who demonstrate the ability to adapt and persevere in the face of adversity:

How can we go about the process of making someone more resilient? Our work on the nature of resilience shows that it is comprised of seven abilities: emotion regulation, impulse control, empathy, optimism, causal analysis, self-efficacy, and reaching out [i.e. seeking support from others]. These seven concrete factors can be measured, taught, and improved. [13]

There's no single step you can take to immediately expand your capacity for these behaviors, but merely being aware that they are the building blocks of resilience can help you be more mindful of engaging in them deliberately. And there are several practices that will enable you to become more effective: some form of mindfulness, regular exercise, and sufficient sleep. While it's obviously difficult to commit to these activities at a time of crisis--and it will get harder over time--they are investments, not indulgences.

A final note on what Reivich and Shatté call "reaching out": Most of my clients are CEOs, and as I've written before,

...an important aspect of the role that few people consider before launching a venture or pursuing a career in senior leadership is that it's lonely. Leaders must be friendly with employees, investors, customers, and other stakeholders, and yet in all of those relationships there are inevitably factors that complicate or even preclude true friendship. Leaders often begin their career with a rich network of friends from school and work, but as they grow more senior these relationships can founder as differences emerge in professional trajectories. [14]

I see this dynamic compounded in my practice today--leaders are more important than ever as sources of support to others, and yet they are often lonelier than ever, feeling that their duty to be a source of calm and hope precludes them from sharing their own fears and anxieties. If you feel similarly, I urge you to identify the people in your life who are capable of empathizing with the challenges you face and reach out to them.

 

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Footnotes

[1,2] "Crucibles of Leadership" (Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas, Harvard Business Review, 2002)

• Bennis and Thomas collaborated on this classic HBR article, which grew out of their work together on Geeks and Geezers: How Eras, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders (2002). Thomas, a former Managing Director at Accenture, continued studying the process of learning from experience, resulting in a full-length book on that theme, Crucibles of Leadership (2008), for which Bennis wrote the forward.

[3] An Invented Life: Reflections on Leadership and Change (Warren Bennis, 1993)

[4] "The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster" (Karl Weick, Administrative Science Quarterly, Volume 38, Number 4, December 1993)

[5] The Denial of Death, Chapter Seven: The Spell Cast by Persons--The Nexus of Unfreedom (Ernest Becker, 1973)

[6] Mental Control and Ironic Processes (Daniel Wegner, a summary of The Handbook of Mental Control, edited by Wegner and James Pennebaker, 1992)

• I discuss Wegner's work on "mental control" further in White Bears and Car Crashes (Thinking About Thinking).

[7] Brené Brown, Vulnerability, Empathy and Leadership

[8] From Peacetime to Wartime

[9] Crisis Leadership (Steven Sinofsky, Medium, 2020)

[10] Two Sides of Trust

[11] While the principle of "disagree and commit" seems to have originated with Andy Grove or Scott McNealy, Jeff Bezos provided a useful definition in his 1997 letter to shareholders:

Use the phrase "disagree and commit." This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, "Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?" By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.

This isn’t one way. If you’re the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time... [emphasis mine]

[12] The Importance of Slowing Down

[13] The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life's Hurdles, page 33 (Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté, 2002)

[14] The Friendship of Wolves

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For Further Reading

Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People)

Get Moving! (Exercise for Busy People)

A compilation of readings on the importance of sleep.

Investments, Not Indulgences

Photo by Dave Hogg.

Working from Home...Alone

The night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.

~Ernest Hemingway [1]

Recently in Working from Home...Together I discussed the challenges faced by people who now share working quarters with a host of new "colleagues"--their spouses, partners, children and/or roommates. But what about the opposite problem? What about people who may be compelled to work from home for an extended period of time and live alone? I haven't lived alone for 30 years, but for most of that time I've worked alone, usually from home, as employee #1 of three new ventures, as the only West Coast employee of a Washington D.C. consulting firm, and as a one-man coaching practice since 2006.

The primary theme of yesterday's post was that people who now find themselves living and working together need to establish effective boundaries, a concept explored over a decade ago by my former colleague Michael Gilbert, who drew on his training as a biologist:

Just as functional membranes (letting the right things through and keeping the wrong things out) facilitate the healthy interaction of the cells of our bodies, so do functional personal boundaries facilitate the healthy interaction of the various parts of our lives. Bad boundaries lead to either being overwhelmed or withdrawal. Good boundaries lead to wholeness and synergy. [2]

While groups of people in close quarters need to manage their boundaries to support differentiation, people living alone need to manage their boundaries to support integration. They must be intentional about "letting the right things through." As I've written before, three different types of boundaries--temporal, physical, and cognitive--promote "wholeness and synergy," and here's how they might be employed by someone living alone who's working from home for an extended period. [3]

Temporal boundaries designate certain times for certain activities.

While an organization that has rapidly moved from an in-person office to mandatory work-from-home will hit some rough spots as employees master new tools and develop new norms to support their use, we know it can be done. And if you're living alone you'll have help in these efforts, because all of your colleagues are facing some version of these challenges. Resources will be dedicated to get everyone up to speed and coordinated, and schedules and routines will be re-established. The organization will establish the temporal boundaries it requires in order to function.

But as an individual who has rapidly moved from an in-person office to mandatory work-from-home you will also hit some rough spots as you re-organize your life in the absence of predictable routines, including "going to work" and "coming home." And you may have no help in these efforts, because most of your friends, family and colleagues are all trying to figure out how to re-organize their own lives. While the organization will provide you with the temporal boundaries necessary to support work, what about everything else?

• To make work-from-home sustainable for a period of weeks or months, it will be necessary to continue to engage in the other activities that support your wholeness and fulfillment as a human being. But during a crisis work can expand to take up all the time and space that we make available, and those other activities can easily get forgotten or pushed off the agenda. As strange as it may sound, you now need a calendar for your personal life that's as well-organized as your professional calendar.
• Note that this need not entail "life-work balance," which may not be possible in the midst of a crisis and may not be of interest even in ordinary times if you're like most of my clients, who I think of as "happy workaholics" (an identity I share.) But as I've written before, "The amount of undisturbed time we preserve for [non-work activities] will vary and may be quite small, but what matters is that we create and maintain a functional boundary around that time. [4]
• One of the most important non-work activities--especially during a crisis--is sleep. [5] A challenge you may face living along is the temptation to keep working late into the night. This may be necessary at times, but if it becomes a consistent practice you'll quickly begin to undermine your effectiveness at emotion regulation and decision-making. As former Intel CEO Andy Grove once noted, "My day always ends when I'm tired, not when I'm done... A manager's work is never done." [6] And as I regularly tell my clients, the workday doesn't begin when we wake up--it begins when we go to sleep.

Physical boundaries designate certain places for certain activities.

As I wrote the other day, "Back when we 'went to work,' the physical boundaries were embodied in the corporate campus, the downtown building, a series of rooms, a series of desks. We entered and engaged these spaces and we were 'at work'... The dilemma we face now is that those boundaries have been collapsed--or at least severely compressed. There is no 'at work' or 'at home'--it's all the same place." [7]

An advantage of working from home while living alone is that you don't have to worry about how to share space with other people in a way that feels fair to all parties--which is one of the main challenges faced by your colleagues. But a consequent disadvantage is the risk that work takes over your entire living space, which will make it harder to disconnect and engage in other activities (and may ultimately make your home feel more cramped and smaller.) The key is being as deliberate with your space as you need to be with your time:

• To the greatest extent possible, designate workspaces in your home and keep them distinct from spaces you use for other purposes. If you have a dedicated home office, count your blessings--and be mindful of the impulse to conduct other activities there. If you don't have a separate room for work, consider utilizing spaces for that purpose that you're unlikely to use for relaxation and personal activities.
• Small investments in these spaces and the tools you'll be using can yield significant benefits. Get the best office chair you can afford. Upgrade your webcam and your microphone. Pay attention to the background behind you, because that's what your colleagues will be seeing.
• While communities will begin to impose restrictions on movement outside the home to slow the rate of infection, be sure to get outside on a regular basis while adhering to these mandates and practicing social distancing. This is important under normal circumstances, and it will be essential if work-from-home is to be sustainable over time.
• One very specific point: Do not work in bed. When we go to sleep, we need to stop thinking about work and allow our attention to roam freely. For "happy workaholics" this can be difficult under ordinary circumstances, and it can be harder than ever during a crisis. Working in bed leads us to associate that space with problem-solving and other challenges that will make it more difficult to get to sleep or enjoy high-quality sleep.

Cognitive boundaries direct our attention toward an object of focus (and away from distractions).

This has always been a challenge in the workplace, one made worse in recent years by open offices [8] and all the tools in our work environment that have been designed to capture our attention. But at the root of the issue are several fundamental aspects of human psychology: Attention and deliberate focus are finite mental resources, and in order to conserve them for important situations, we've evolved to experience their expenditure as depleting. And emotions are vitally important in orienting us toward perceived opportunities and threats, so as a consequence emotions are "attention magnets." [9]

The primary challenge faced by your colleagues who now find themselves working alongside family members and housemates is avoiding the distractions posed by those other people in order to focus on work. The primary challenge you may face as someone living alone is avoiding the distraction posed by work in order to focus on everything else. This will likely be more difficult in the current situation because work is providing many of us with a sense of contribution, a feeling that we're doing something to help even though we're not actively involved in fighting the pandemic. And yet if you're going to make working-from-home sustainable, you're going to need to disconnect from work on a consistent basis and direct our attention elsewhere. So what can you do?

• The temporal and physical boundaries discussed above are all ultimately intended to help support cognitive boundaries that allow you to direct your attention as productively as possible. In the current situation it won't be possible to perfect your temporal and physical boundaries--like everyone else, you'll have to do the best you can. But a helpful start is simply being aware that attention and deliberate focus are limited resources, and to mindfully observe where your attention is being directed (and when it's being pulled back toward work.)
• Recall that good boundaries "let the right things through and keep the wrong things out,"and as someone living alone one of your most important needs will be to stop thinking about work and to stay connected with the people in your life other than colleagues. Temporal and physical boundaries can help here, such as a schedule reminding you to check in with people, or phoning a friend or loved one while taking a walk outside.
• And even if work isn't absorbing all of your attention, the pandemic and COVID-19 may well be. Cognitive boundaries are essential in helping us regulate our consumption of the news and its impact on our state of mind. We have to manage our "information diets" so that we're not constantly distracted in order to be truly present in the rest of our lives. [10] It will be difficult, particularly as the crisis worsens, but it may be some of the most important work we can do to survive it.

In Closing

I'm keenly aware that countless numbers of our loved ones and neighbors do not have the luxury of dealing with these problems because their work cannot be conducted online. My brother David voluntarily closed his bar in Washington D.C. to support social distancing, and he will not be able to earn a living until we can return to normal social activity. I don't know how to help in your community, but here in San Francisco we can give to the Season of Sharing Fund, or the city's Give2SF fund.

 

This is a companion piece to Working from Home...Together.

Thanks to Ian McMilan for the inspiration.

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Footnotes

[1] A Farewell to Arms, page 216 (Ernest Hemingway, 1929/2014)

[2] Good Fences: On Boundaries, Agency and Wholeness in Work-Life (Michael Gilbert, 2008)

[3,4] Happy Workaholics Need Boundaries, Not Balance

[5] A compilation of readings on the importance of sleep.

[6] High Output Management (Andy Grove, 1983/1995)

[7,8] Working from Home...Together

[9] The Uneasiness of the Open Office

[10] A Better Information Diet

Photo by Luca Volpi.

Working from Home...Together

Claudette Colbert: "That, I suppose, makes everything quite all right?"

Clark Gable: "Well, I like privacy when I retire. Yes, I'm very delicate in that respect. Prying eyes annoy me. Behold the walls of Jericho! Maybe not as thick as the ones that Joshua blew down with his trumpet, but a lot safer."

~It Happened One Night, 1934 [1]

A theme in my recent conversations with leaders who are implementing work-from-home policies at their companies is how to personally adjust to these new domestic arrangements. In many cases my clients have a spouse or partner who's also now working from home, and often they're both tasked with childcare or some form of home-schooling for their children. Some clients have dedicated home workspaces, but many do not--or they're finding (like me!) that a home workspace organized for one person can feel a little crowded when it's asked to accommodate two. Given what we already know about the problems of open offices [2] and that our homes are now being converted to "open offices" for weeks if not months, what will help?

Boundaries.

As my former colleague Michael Gilbert noted over a decade ago, the term "work-life balance" is "fundamentally flawed, a dangerous trap, an all-around bad idea... The fact is that work is a part of life, not in opposition to it. The fact is that what we all seek is joyful work-life integration, not some sort of painful detente." [3] The problem we face now, of course, is too much integration, so we're unbalanced in entirely new ways. But Gilbert had a better alternative to "balance" that couldn't be more timely today:

We have been using the word "balance" when what we really seem to mean is "boundaries." Boundaries keep things in their place. Balance suggests the same amount of two things on either side of a scale. Boundaries keep one of those things from oozing past the edge of its platter and taking over the other side...

Boundaries and integration go together. Maybe it's just the biologist in me, but it seems that good boundaries are what make integration work. Just as functional membranes (letting the right things through and keeping the wrong things out) facilitate the healthy interaction of the cells of our bodies, so do functional personal boundaries facilitate the healthy interaction of the various parts of our lives. Bad boundaries lead to either being overwhelmed or withdrawal. Good boundaries lead to wholeness and synergy. [4]

So what do good boundaries look like in practice? In the past I've described three different types of boundaries--temporal, physical, and cognitive--that "happy workaholics" [5] could use to promote "wholeness and synergy," and here's how they might be employed by two or more people working together at home.

Temporal boundaries designate certain times for certain activities.

When work takes place outside the home, temporal boundaries are more clearly defined. We "go to work," and there we have a host of boundaries that determine who we spend time with, for what purpose, and for how long. This will still occur with the colleagues with whom we'll be interacting virtually--our schedules may even need to be more tightly coordinated, because we won't have the ability to walk over to their desk, or bump into them serendipitously.

But what about our new "colleagues"--the people we live with who now share our workspaces? While we probably have some rituals with them that govern how we spend time together before and after work, our professional calendars may be completely out of sync. And when we're working from home, what does "before work" and "after work" even mean? What does it mean to be "working" at all? When do we stop? When are we available to the people we're living with, and when are we not?

The key is establishing some temporal boundaries that help us both connect with our virtual colleagues and co-exist harmoniously with our co-located "colleagues." What might this look like?

• If you and the people who live with you don't have separate (and soundproof) workspaces, you may need to coordinate your call schedules so that you minimize the disruption to others.
• Even if you do have separate workspaces, consider coordinating your schedules so that you can take meals or breaks together. Alternatively, you may need to coordinate your schedules in order to take meals and breaks apart. I suspect we'll all need a mix of both over the long haul.
• Creating the time and space necessary for deep thought and reflection has always been difficult. [6] It's now even harder working alongside people who generally have no problem interrupting us. We now need to clarify the times when we're open to being interrupted and the times when we're not. Headphones are the universal symbol for this in many office environments, but our new "colleagues" may have different norms, so being more explicit about our availability may be useful.
• For two parents a schedule designating the primary caregiver at specific times so that childcare responsibilities feel fairly allocated may be absolutely essential--and for anyone providing childcare on their own, journalist Lyn Lenz has some sage (and very funny) advice.

Physical boundaries designate certain places for certain activities.

Back when we "went to work," the physical boundaries were embodied in the corporate campus, the downtown building, a series of rooms, a series of desks. We entered and engaged these spaces and we were "at work"--and, as with the temporal boundaries embedded in our work schedules, these professional boundaries determined who shared space with us and for how long. The dilemma we face now is that those boundaries have been collapsed--or at least severely compressed. There is no "at work" or "at home"--it's all the same place, and we're sharing it with the same people all day long. The key is realizing that physical boundaries need not be (and rarely are) impassable obstacles--in Gilbert's framing, they're permeable "membranes":

• If you're lucky enough to have a home workspace with a door you can close, count your blessings--but even a door is easily opened. The door isn't a barrier, it's a symbol--and we can create other symbolic boundaries to designate the purpose of a given space in our homes and to allocate the spaces that are available among our new colleagues. Although this can be taken to extremes, of course:

• An awareness of physical boundaries in the past helped ensure that we got out of the office on a consistent basis at regular intervals to create some literal distance between us and our work, and that's going to be even more important now. While anti-infection measures will likely restrict our movements in our communities (as occurred today in the Bay Area), we should continue to get outside and leave our homes behind, if only for a brief walk, in order to give ourselves and our new colleagues a break from each other (and note that this is still fine in the Bay Area as long as you're 6 feet away from people you don't live with.) To my point above, all of this will be easier if we have some consistency in our shared schedules, and while it will be harder to accomplish for parents with children at home, it will likely be even more important.

Cognitive boundaries direct our attention toward an object of focus (and away from distractions).

This has always been a challenge in the workplace, one made worse in recent years by open offices [7] and all the tools in our work environment that have been designed to capture our attention. But at the root of the issue are several fundamental aspects of human psychology: Attention and deliberate focus are finite mental resources, and in order to conserve them for important situations, we've evolved to experience their expenditure as depleting. And emotions are vitally important in orienting us toward perceived opportunities and threats, so as a consequence emotions are "attention magnets." [8]

And this will only grow more challenging now that work and home have been collapsed into the same space and we find ourselves with a new set of "colleagues"--the family members and housemates who are also people to whom we typically devote a great deal of attention and who invariably evoke strong feelings (for better and for worse.)

My wife Amy and I usually begin our days sitting across from each other in the living room after she's finished breakfast in the kitchen. (Just coffee for me.) I'm on a laptop responding to email or other work that requires low levels of focus, and she's on her phone, often sharing anecdotes or news stories with me. But the pandemic has altered my schedule so that I now need to use this  time for writing and other work that requires more intensive focus. Yesterday morning I was working on this very post, struggling to avoid being distracted, and she could tell that I was starting to feel frustrated. What's going on? she asked.

I'm trying to write something, and it's hard to focus.

What are you writing?

A post about how hard it's going to be for people to work from home together...

We had a good laugh :-)

So what can we do?

• The tools discussed above--temporal and physical boundaries--are all ultimately intended to help support cognitive boundaries that allow us to direct our attention as productively as possible. In the current situation it won't be possible to perfect our temporal and physical boundaries--we'll all have to do the best we can. But a helpful start is simply being aware that attention and deliberate focus are limited resources, and to mindfully observe ourselves (and our new colleagues) as we work together.
• With this heightened sense of awareness regarding our attention, we can take some steps to manage its expenditure, even in the absence of optimal temporal and physical boundaries. For example, I've found that white noise through headphones goes a long way toward allowing Amy and I to be together at home while I'm working. (This 10-hour clip is my favorite.)
• But recall that good boundaries "let the right things through and keep the wrong things out," so the point of establishing cognitive boundaries isn't simply to manage our attention so that we can get more work done--it's equally essential to leverage those boundaries to stop thinking about work (and COVID-19) in order to pay attention to the people around us, our new "colleagues." We have to manage our "information diets" so that we're not constantly distracted by work (and the news) in order to be truly present with the people we love. [9] It will be difficult, particularly as the crisis worsens, but it may be some of the most important work we can do to survive it.

In Closing

I'm keenly aware that countless numbers of our loved ones and neighbors do not have the luxury of dealing with these problems because their work cannot be conducted online. My brother David voluntarily closed his bar in Washington D.C. to support social distancing, and he will not be able to earn a living until we can return to normal social activity. I don't know how to help in your community, but here in San Francisco we can give to the Season of Sharing Fund, or the city's Give2SF fund.

 

This is a companion piece to Working from Home...Alone.

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Footnotes

[1] It Happened One Night, directed by Frank Capra and released by Columbia Pictures in 1934, stars Claudette Colbert as an heiress on the run and Clark Gable as a reporter with a tough hide and a soft heart. In the famous "Walls of Jericho" scene, shown above, Gable drapes a blanket across a clothesline to enable the two travelers (who are, of course, slowly falling in love) to share a motel room. Here's a wonderful retrospective: Looking Back: "It Happened One Night" (Michael Oleszczyk, Movie Mezzanine, 2013). And here's an uncredited description of the "Walls of Jericho" scene.

[2] The Uneasiness of the Open Office

[3] Why Work-Life Balance Is a Bad Idea (Michael Gilbert, 2008)

[4] Good Fences: On Boundaries, Agency and Wholeness in Work-Life (Michael Gilbert, 2008)

• Here I link to the Internet Archives' copies of Gilbert's articles above as, sadly, his website (and most other recent traces of him) have disappeared.

[5] Happy Workaholics Need Boundaries, Not Balance

[6] How to Think (More on Open Space and Deep Work)

[7] The Uneasiness of the Open Office

[8] A Better Information Diet

[9] Ibid.

From Peacetime to Wartime

Lincoln remained silent for what seemed a very long time. He then gathered himself up in his chair and said in a tone of earnestness that I shall never forget, "I can't spare this man. He fights."

~A.K. McClure, 1892 [1]

Jensen Harris, co-founder and CTO of Textio, as well as one of my clients, was particularly prescient about the impact of COVID-19, and he not only pushed his own organization to prepare and to take strong measures in response, he also took a visible and public stand that had an impact on a number of other companies that at the time saw no reason to do anything. [2] Jensen knew he had done the right thing, but felt some ambivalence about the forcefulness and vigor that characterized his actions and was uncertain how others would respond.

In a recent conversation we discussed the possibility that the pandemic is requiring leaders to adopt a "wartime" mentality, and we weren't just speaking metaphorically. I'm generally uncomfortable using warfare as a metaphor for business--it seems disrespectful to the sacrifices made by actual warriors--but in the case of COVID-19 we are fighting a war, and wartime invariably asks something different of leaders than peacetime. In 2011 venture capitalist and former CEO Ben Horowitz wrote about the difference between "peacetime" and "wartime" conditions for business leaders:

Peacetime in business means those times when a company has a large advantage vs. the competition in its core market, and its market is growing. In times of peace, the company can focus on expanding the market and reinforcing the company’s strengths.

In wartime, a company is fending off an imminent existential threat. Such a threat can come from a wide range of sources including competition, dramatic macro economic change, market change, supply chain change, and so forth. [3, emphasis mine]

Horowitz also noted the "radically different" management styles called for in these respective conditions:

In peacetime, leaders must maximize and broaden the current opportunity. As a result, peacetime leaders employ techniques to encourage broad-based creativity and contribution across a diverse set of possible objectives. In wartime, by contrast, the company typically has a single bullet in the chamber and must, at all costs, hit the target. The company’s survival in wartime depends upon strict adherence and alignment to the mission. [4]

A man who comes to mind in this context--an actual warrior--is Ulysses S. Grant. He entered West Point at age 17 and later acquitted himself admirably in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48 (a conflict that Grant was bitterly opposed to, viewing it as "one of the most unjust [wars] ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.") [5] Later assigned to a desolate post in distant California, desperately lonely for his family, and reporting to an officer with whom he had previously clashed, Grant took to drinking, which ultimately led to his resignation from the military.

Grant spent his 30s struggling to find his place, eking out a meager living on a small farm before giving up and taking a job in his father's leather goods store working for his younger brothers. He was a respected member of his community, but he was a long way from greatness--and then the Civil War broke out in April 1861. Grant sought to be recommissioned, turned down a captaincy as too junior, and by the autumn had been made a general. For the next two-and-a-half years, Grant waged war in Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee with great success, although the press called him "The Butcher" for the bloodiness of his campaigns. [6]

During this time Abraham Lincoln was growing increasingly frustrated by the cautiousness and ineffectiveness of the senior generals who had failed to directly confront the Confederacy's main fighting force, the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee. In March 1864 Lincoln promoted Grant to lieutenant general, the first man to hold that rank since George Washington in 1798, and placed Grant in command of all Union forces. Thirteen months later the war was over.

I'm not suggesting that Grant single-handedly won the war, but he was clearly well-suited to be a wartime leader, a direct and dynamic figure who succeeded where his polished predecessors had failed. Journalist Joel Achenbach has described some of the qualities that characterized Grant's leadership:

One Union officer famously wrote that Grant "habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it."

In the Army of Northern Virginia, the rebel general James Longstreet, who knew Grant well from their military adventures long before the great rupture, knew what was coming: "That man will fight us every day and every hour ’til the end of the war."

At photographer Mathew Brady’s studio, an assistant to Brady fell partway through a skylight and showered potentially lethal glass shards all over the floor next to Grant, who had been sitting for a portrait. Grant barely flinched. He was almost superhumanly imperturbable. He was the kind of man who did not seem to hear the shrieking of the world. [7]

Determination. Persistence. Calm.

We need these qualities in our wartime leaders because they must act decisively and with conviction, mobilizing those around them to work together under conditions of great uncertainty while avoiding panic. This doesn't simply result from command authority, a point made recently by technology executive Steven Sinofsky: "Nothing brings out the worst aspects of a dictator boss or manager than a crisis. Invariably they take the idea of wartime general too far and start to act like wartime dictator." [8] Instead, effective wartime leadership is rooted in trust, Sinofsky continues:

The thing a crisis needs the most in order to effectively work it is organizational trust. Leaders must be trusted. Employees must be trusted to act. Trust is the resource you have been building as a peacetime leader--to act during a crisis you dip into that reserve.

Because as a wartime leader you are going to act a bit out of character and jerky to some, you need to have the trust of the team to act. If you have trust then your temporary jerkiness will be overlooked because the team will understand or believe you have some greater good in mind. [9]

And it's the determined, persistent, calm leader who can take forceful, vigorous action to mobilize people while avoiding panic. But if you're a leader today, you're almost certainly feeling a great deal of distress, anxiety, and fear. This doesn't mean that you're incapable of wartime leadership--it means that you're a human being. So bear in mind that leadership is a performance that requires you to fulfill necessary symbolic functions, and leadership is a professional practice that requires you to cultivate the ability to live with uncertainty.

I don't think it was an accident that Ulysses S. Grant turned again to alcohol later in his command when he was responsible for the deaths of thousands of men in a single day of warfare--I suspect that even this "superhumanly imperturbable" man needed help in tuning out "the shrieking of the world" when it was at its loudest. There are better ways, and if you're a leader today, my hope is that you're getting the support you need, investing in self-care, and making the time to think so that it's possible for you to show up as determined, persistent, and calm with the people who are depending on you.

This will be essential in maintaining trust, even as you "dip into the reserve" that you established in peacetime. And it's noteworthy that Lincoln and Grant's partnership--one of the greatest working relationships in history--was characterized by a deep sense of trust, reflected in one of the president's letters to his general in April 1864:

Not expecting to see you again before the Spring campaign opens, I wish to express, in this way, my entire satisfaction with what you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it. The particulars of your plans I neither know, or seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you... If there is anything wanting which is within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it.

And now with a brave Army, and a just cause, may God sustain you. [10]

 

Thanks to Jensen Harris, Ben Horowitz, Joel Achenbach, and Steven Sinofsky.

For Amy Wright, who I see embodying these qualities every day.

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Footnotes

[1] Abraham Lincoln and Men of War-Times: Some Personal Recollections of War and Politics during the Lincoln Administration, page 180 (A.K. McClure 1892/1996, 4th edition)

[2] @jensenharris (March 2, 2020)

[3,4] Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO (Ben Horowitz, 2011)

[5] Grant, page 30 (William McFeely, 2002)

[6] They called Grant a butcher. But can a butcher have regrets? (Phillip Greenwalt, Hallowed Ground, Fall 2018)

[7] U.S. Grant was the great hero of the war but lost favor with historians (Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post, 2014)

[8,9] Crisis Leadership (Steven Sinofsky, 2020)

[10] The Jewel of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln's Re-Election and the End of Slavery, pp 227-228 (David Long, 1994)

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For Further Reading

Leadership as a Performing Art

Leader as Avatar

Leadership as Professional Practice

Emotional Mountaineering (The Three Tasks of Coaching)

Investments, Not Indulgences

How to Think (More on Open Space and Deep Work)

Photo by Archives New Zealand.

I Will Miss You So Much, My Friend

That's me with Erik Bengtsson, just over one month ago, on February 8th at the top of Pole Mountain in the Jenner Headlands. Over the last few years Erik has become one of the best friends I've ever had. Every month or two we set out on a day-long hike in one of the far corners of the Bay Area, spending hours talking about work and life, our plans and hopes and fears and dreams. We've found these days deeply rewarding on many levels, and this year we had already scheduled one for every month but September, reflecting our increasing commitment to the shared experience, our ongoing dialogue, and our friendship.

Reaching the top of Pole Mountain a few weeks ago was particularly meaningful, because we had tried once before in October 2018. We got close to the summit but had to stop a few miles short because I was still recovering from an injury, and I knew that if we pushed all the way I might be in too much pain to make it back to the bottom on my own. It was the smart thing to do, and Erik was happy that I made that call, but we both held onto the idea of returning and making it all the way up, and last month we did just that.

At the summit we made the decision not to follow the trail up to a fire lookout, but instead scrambled up through a steep field to an overlook, where we took in the view above. It was stunningly beautiful, all the more so because of what it took to get there, and we sat and continued our conversation. Then we fell silent for a while, just absorbing the feeling of being in this landscape, the forests rolling up and over the hills like waves. We would have stayed longer, but Erik had a date that night that he was excited about, and we had a long trip back. As we stood up to leave, I decided that I wanted a photo of us together, which was an unusual impulse--on hikes with Erik I typically bury my phone in my bag so it won't be a distraction from our conversation. But that day I said, "Let's take a selfie." And I'm so glad I did, because February 8th will be our last hike together.

Erik worked for Cameron Yarbrough, the founder and CEO of Torch, an online platform that provides coaching to organizational leaders. I've known Cameron for a number of years and also consider him a friend, although we're not in touch very often. Last night Cameron texted me and asked if I was available to talk. This had never happened before, so I called him right away, and he told me that Erik had died in a rock climbing accident. It was a heart-stopping, world-stops-spinning moment, and I'm still dealing with the shock. One of my first absurd thoughts was, "How can this be? Our next hike is on Saturday!" Cameron and I talked about what we were going through in the moment and how much we loved Erik and how hard it is to realize that he's gone, and it was helpful to hear this painful news from someone who felt that same pain. (Thank you, Cameron--I can't convey to you how grateful I am that you took the time to make that call.) And then I turned to Amy and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

It doesn't feel accurate to say that Erik was my "best friend," because that implies a different kind of relationship to me--peers who socialize together and share in many aspects of life. Erik and I weren't peers--we met when he was a student of mine, and then years later we worked together as client and coach--and we were far enough apart in age that it was a fruitful source of difference between us. It was a few years after our coaching relationship ended that Erik and I considered working together again when we decided that we wanted to stay in touch, but he should work with another coach. So we chose to become friends.

That didn't translate into socializing together outside of our monthly hikes, in part because I just don't socialize very much. As a coach I spend all day, every day interacting with people, and while I love my work passionately, I need a lot of time to myself in the evenings and on weekends in order to be of greatest service to my clients each day. But Erik and I certainly shared many, many aspects of our lives over the course of hours of conversation, and that running dialogue has been one of the most fulfilling aspects of my life in recent years. So he ultimately became one of the very best friends I've ever had.

And with his death there is a hole in my world and my heart that I don't know how to fill. After sobbing last night, I've been able to be present with clients today and to fulfill other responsibilities, but the sadness and grief come crashing through in occasional waves, and there always seem to be more tears. And right now that seems like the best way to honor what a special person he was and how much he meant to me. He occupied a special place in my world and my heart, and those places are empty now--although, as I write this, I realize that's not entirely true.

Those empty places in my world and my heart are full of love.

• Erik loved his mom and his dad and his sister deeply. Family trips to New Orleans and Florida were among his most meaningful experiences, and he often thought about how to be a helpful son as his parents grew older.
• Erik loved what he and Cameron and their colleagues were building at Torch. It meant so much to him to have found a role that allowed him to bring together his many skills--as a leader, a strategic thinker, an operator, and a coach--and to have the potential for impact on the world, to make a dent in the universe.
• Erik loved the process of personal growth and development, and he loved challenging himself. He was always striving to deepen his practice as a meditator, an adventurer, a leader, and even as a boyfriend.
• Erik loved the women in his life, and he loved being in love. He had been in a number of relationships, some long-term with the potential to be permanent, others more fleeting, but he was an eternally romantic optimist.
• Erik loved his friends from so many different communities that he had been a member of, from the Wranglers in Austin 20 years ago to the gang of buddies who roamed the globe with him on climbing and surfing adventures.
• And I loved Erik. He was directly responsible for two pieces of writing that are particularly meaningful to me: Stop Trying to Be "Good Enough" By "Getting Better" (an original line of his) and When We Are Ready, The Practice Will Be Waiting, the contents of a notebook I filled out while hiking in Point Reyes, territory he and I had explored together many times. Re-reading them now doesn't fill those empty places, but it reminds me of what's there.

Goodbye, my friend. I will miss you so, so much.

 

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Other losses in the past have inspired the posts below--I'm finding some consolation in them now, and perhaps others will as well.

Mourning Ends, Grief Needs Not

Viktor Frankl on Love, Suffering and the Meaning of Life

The Final Third (On Mortality, Values and Spending Time)

Time and Tradition

Gualala (On Mortality and Gratitude)

On the Shortness of Life

Bullshit Bingo

The essence of bullshit is not that it is false, but that it is phony... It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction... [The bullshitter] does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

~Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit

I often help clients prepare for difficult conversations, and while some are grave or even somber experiences, others are merely contentious and irritating. Falling into the latter category are conversations in which a client anticipates being met with, in one form or another, a bunch of bullshit. The varieties of bullshit that people employ in professional life are, of course, endless:

• Arriving late while offering insincere apologies.
• Arrive late without apologizing at all.
• Arriving while on another call, making apologetic gestures.
• Offering an effusive greeting that's obviously false.
• Offering no greeting at all.
• Offering a patronizing compliment.
• Remaining on their phone throughout the meeting.
• Implying that you committed some sort of offense.
• Feigning outrage over said offense.
• Generously forgiving you for said offense.
• Calling attention to your supposed lack of experience.
• Calling attention to their supposed experience.
• Excuses for failing to fulfill a prior commitment.
• Revisiting an issue that has already been resolved.
• Reminding you of concessions they've made in the past.
• Suggesting that you owe them something.
• Noting how patient they've been.
• Signalling that their patience is running out.
• A deep sigh, followed by silence.
• Ad infinitum...

The other party no doubt has "reasons" to justify their particular brand of bullshit. To note Harry Frankfurt's distinction, they're not liars spreading falsehoods--they're bullshitters. Their statements and behavior can be plausibly explained--and yet any such explanations are inherently phony. The intent behind their statements and behavior is to obtain an advantage, and they will pick and choose their responses at will in order to do so. This is distracting, and annoying, and occasionally infuriating--and that's a problem.

Because when we're facing a liar, we can get the conflict out in the open and ultimately confront them with objective truth, in one form or another, that proves their bad faith. The bullshitter will never afford us this opportunity, because it doesn't suit their purposes. Their goal isn't to get away with a lie--they may lie while bullshitting, but that's an expedient tactic, not a deliberate strategy. Their goal is to bullshit us--and it can be profoundly difficult to call people on their bullshit, especially if they're skilled bullshitters, and so we find ourselves feeling trapped. Which is distracting, and annoying, and even infuriating--and that's when we get upset and impatient and start making mistakes. So the task, then, when confronted with bullshit is simply this:

Don't take the bait.

Simple in theory, difficult in practice, and this can help: play Bullshit Bingo. Anticipate the main forms of bullshit you expect to be met with in this particular conversation, and make a list. Paper may be easier to work with than a digital format, but it's your call. If the list is too long it'll be unwieldy, but if it's too short it won't be as useful. Find the right balance. Each item on the list should be concise--a few words or even an acronym will suffice. And your notations should be somewhat cryptic--this isn't a list that you want your counterpart to be able to read.

Proceed with the conversation, and every time you're met with with some bullshit that you expected, make a mark on your list. Keep a running tally. "Oh, look, there's that one. And there it is again. And there's another one. And another." You may encounter some brand new bullshit--something you didn't expect. Add a new line to your list. See how much bullshit you can keep track of during the conversation.

I'm being flippant, of course, but that's the point--when we get distracted or annoyed or infuriated, the bullshitters win, and being able to laugh in a situation like this is a powerful tool in regulating our emotions and keeping a clear head. To be sure, I'm not suggesting that we should always use a silly tool like this instead of having a more candid conversation or even an outright confrontation. I'm a big believer in learning to navigate tough conversations, the power of feedback and, on occasion, the value of a good fight. But those approaches take time and energy, and some people--bullshitters--just aren't worth it. As the late comedian W.C. Fields once said, "I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to."

Photo by Bill Smith.

On Bullshit

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt first published "On Bullshit" in the Raritan Quarterly Review in 1986, and it appeared again two years later in a collection of his essays, The Importance of What We Care About. And then it sat quietly for 17 years before Princeton University Press brought it out in a slender, stand-alone volume that became an unexpected best-seller.

While "On Bullshit" certainly felt timely in 2005 (and, presumably, to the handful of people who first read it in the '80s), it's grown more relevant with each passing year, and it's now one of the defining texts of our era. I recommend it in its entirety, but I think the closing pages are essential reading for any citizen of the 21st century:

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose. [pp 55-56]

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Both in lying and in telling the truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are. These guide them as they endeavor to describe the world correctly or to describe it deceitfully. For this reason, telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. Through excessive indulgence in the latter activity, which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person’s normal habit of attending to the way things are may become attenuated or lost. Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the respond of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. [pp 59-61]

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The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality, and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These "antirealist" doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself.

But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them. Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial—notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit. [pp 64-67]

 

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On Bullshit (Harry Frankfurt, 2005)

The Importance of What We Care About (Harry Frankfurt, 1988)

"Charging Bull" by Arturo di Modica. Photo by Sam Valadi.

We're Not the Center of the World (But We Think We Are)

Theologian Eric Springsted [1] draws upon the work of philosopher Simone Weil to illustrate a phenomenon that we all experience every day:

We are subject to an illusion, [Weil] suggests, that is analogous to the one we experience whenever we look up into the sky...and it appears that the sky is a bowl inverted above us, thus making it appear as if we were at the center of a spherical world. In the moral case the illusion is that it appears to us as if we were at the center of the world. We thus appear as terrifically important, and what else is of value can be ranked by its proximity to us. [2]

The late writer David Foster Wallace discussed the same illusion, which he described as a "default setting" in human psychology:

Here's just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. [3]

So we can acknowledge that we are not the center of the world (or the universe), and we know that this illusion is not true--and yet it certainly feels true. This "center of the world illusion" is deeply intertwined with conscious experience--in a sense, we can view it as an aspect of consciousness itself, which suggests that even as we find it "socially repulsive," it has served some sort of purpose. Psychologist Victor Johnston has written about "the adaptive illusion," the idea that our perceptions of the world around us do not reflect an objective "ground truth," but instead are a function of evolutionary biology:

[Our conscious experiences] are the emergent properties of the nervous system that have been selected because they amplify and discriminate between attributes of the world that are biologically important... But natural selection doesn't "care" whether such experiences are accurate reflections of our external reality; it "cares" only about biological usefulness--the extent to which they enhance the survival and reproduction of organisms that possess them relative to those that do not... As a consequence, organisms have evolved subjective experiences that impose a distorted but functionally useful view of the world "out there," and at the same time have evolved the neural machinery that underlies this interpretation of reality... In a sense...we are all hallucinating. [4]

We can readily grasp why evolution has selected for the center of the world illusion--viewing ourselves from this perspective, we typically put our subjective needs and desires above those of others, making our own biological success more likely. This need not conflict with research suggesting that evolution has also selected for empathy and that our ancestors' ability to connect with others and cooperate in relatively large groups is what allowed them to overcome their disadvantages against predators and environmental conditions. [5] But even if a capacity for empathy is also an evolved trait, in many situations the experience of empathizing with another requires deliberate and sustained effort, while the center of the world illusion can be evoked effortlessly in an instant. In our brain's hierarchy of priorities, the self usually takes precedence over others.

As with so many other aspects of our psychology, the center of the world illusion is a "feature" for the species that often "acts like a bug" in personal experience. [6] While it supports our biological success, it also causes a great deal of trouble. It distances us from each other, at times making it profoundly difficult to understand other people's perspectives or even accept their views as "real" in the same way that we regard our own. It leads us to privilege our subjective emotional experience, particularly the highly contingent states of fear and anxiety that are so often a function of mistaken assumptions and missing data. [7,8] It is the engine of our selfishness, the drive that so often causes us to act with heedless disregard for our impact on others.

This illusion's default nature is what makes it so problematic. The sense of naturalness that it evokes renders it invisible to us. It's hard to remember that it's an illusion even in moments of reflective calm, and it vanishes from awareness the instant we register a sensation or feel an impulse that grounds us in our individual identity and perceived needs. So what can we do? Springsted refers us to a passage in Weil, who locates the effort to resist this illusion at the heart of what it truly means to be human:

To empty ourselves of our false divinity, to deny ourselves, to give up being the center of the world in imagination, to discern that all points in the world are equally centers and that the true center is outside the world, this is to consent to the rule of mechanical necessity in matter and of free choice at the center of each soul. Such consent is love. The face of this love, which is turned toward thinking persons, is love of our neighbor; the face turned toward matter is love of the order of the world, or love of the beauty of the world which is the same thing. [9]

And Wallace challenges us to see the many ways in which contemporary society actively exploits and reinforces the illusion. He acknowledges the benefits we enjoy as a result, before reminding us that life presents us with an endless stream of opportunities to put service before comfort, to put others before self:

The so-called "real world" will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the so-called "real world" of men and money and power hums merrily along on the fuel of fear and anger and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. [10]

Attention, awareness, discipline, effort, caring, sacrifice. And, to Weil's point, love: Love of our neighbor, love of the order and beauty of the world. These qualities do not come easily to fearful, anxious creatures who believe themselves to be the center of the world. Perhaps the whole point of this existence is to try.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Eric Springsted

[2] "Will and Order: The Moral Self in Augustine's De Libero Arbitrio," page 92 (Eric O. Springsted, Augustinian Studies, Volume 29, Issue 2, 1998). This essay is also available as a chapter in Springsted's The Act of Faith: Christian Faith and the Moral Self (2015).

[3] "This Is Water" (David Foster Wallace, 2005.) While I continue to find "This Is Water" worthy of study, I also believe it's important to acknowledge Wallace's violence and abusiveness toward the writer Mary Karr, which I discuss further here.

[4] Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotion, pages 18-19 (Victor Johnston, 1999)

[5] To take just one example: Forget Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness That Counts (Dacher Keltner interviewed by David DiSalvo, Scientific American, 2009)

[6] "It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature" Trite--or Just Right? (Nicholas Carr, Wired, 2018)

[7] Racing Up the Ladder of Inference

[8] Seeing What's Not There (The Importance of Missing Data)

[9] Waiting for God, page 160 (Simone Weil, 1973). Quoted in Eric Springsted's "Will and Order," page 93.

[10] Wallace, ibid.

Photo by Rachid Ahitass.