Ed Batista

Three Painful Truths (On Change, Leadership & Mortality)

I believe three things to be true:

• We're entering an era of heightened uncertainty and instability.
• Leadership roles will be increasingly stressful as a result.
• This existence is finite, and we are mortal creatures.

(You may wonder why two predictions are followed by such a self-evident proposition--I'll address that below.)

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, and if you'd rather ignore these painful truths I wouldn't blame you in the least. Some leaders will do just that, and they'll be happier as a result--for a while. They'll turn a blind eye to the increasing volatility that has characterized our world--until change imposes itself upon them. They'll continue to lead as they've led in the past, and they'll get by--until they're depleted and burned out. They'll do all the things we do when we imagine we're immortal--until that illusion is no longer sustainable.

I'm not suggesting that we're incapable of rising to meet these challenges. A dynamic world is full of opportunities as well as risks. Tough times make great leaders and give them occasions to shine. And the finite nature of this existence is what makes it meaningful. At my best, I embrace all of this, and my hopeful nature picks me up when I'm daunted. But my pragmatism makes it very clear that faith alone will not see us through. We need to accept reality. We need to develop our resilience. And we'll need support along the way. First, though, it's worth exploring why these truths are so painful and how they're related.

 

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On Change

We all have different orientations toward change, and our personal attitude can vary tremendously over the course of our lives. Some of us embrace it more willingly than others, and we're all more or less open at different times, depending on our circumstances. But we also possess a powerful drive to exert control in our lives. We may embrace change willingly, even eagerly, and yet it's vital that we experience agency in the process.

As I've written before, "pioneering psychotherapist Alfred Adler theorized that a 'will to conquer' the cosmos is the fundamental human motivation [1], and work by psychologists over the past century indicates that a desire to exert influence and determine outcomes is widespread and pervasive. [2] Recent research by a team from Columbia and Rutgers suggests that this need for control is inherently biological, not merely a socialized preference." [3] [4]

But data from a number of disciplines suggests that the pace of change is increasing, rendering our world less certain and more unstable, making it more difficult to exert control. We see this as a result of developments in artificial intelligence [5], the likelihood of future pandemics [6], concerns about the banking system and financial markets [7], long-term cycles of social discord [8], and even the weather. [9]

Our inherent "will to conquer" and our evolved desire for control are in direct tension with these trends, all of which seem to be accelerating, albeit at varying rates. It will grow more difficult to exert control and experience agency in a world subject to larger and less predictable dislocations. And while these changes will present us with endless opportunities for innovation and growth (as individuals, as societies, as a species), it will be painful to recognize the inevitable limits on our control and agency, to submit to forces beyond our influence (or comprehension), to accept disruption as an ongoing state of affairs, rather than a brief jolt.

 

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On Leadership

In this unsettling environment we will increasingly look to leaders for guidance and reassurance, placing more pressure on them to shield us from the forces of change--and to help us find courage when change overtakes us. This is a function of the symbolic role that leaders fill--leadership isn't just about making strategic decisions and allocating resources. It is also--and I would suggest first and foremost--about storytelling, a topic I've addressed at length:

Storytelling [is] such a powerful process...because we depend upon narratives to navigate the world--they are our compass in the wilderness, our lantern in the dark. Organizational psychologist Karl Weick called this "sensemaking": we rely upon narratives to "make sense" of ambiguous situations and pursue a plan of action in coordination with others. But our reliance on narratives means that in the absence of a coherent story we will feel lost and ungrounded. This poses a risk when we face rapid change that may overtake our existing narrative and render it out of date, as Weick noted: "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." [10]... Through the act of storytelling the leader provides the group with an explanatory narrative that is invested with their authority and informed by their expertise, and thus more influential and credible. [11]

At the best of times this is hard work, both cognitively complex and emotionally taxing, and it will only grow more challenging in the era to come. What are the explanatory narratives that will reconstruct our "everyday cosmologies"? How will our ability to understand the world around us keep up with the accelerating pace of change? Leaders will be hard-pressed to answer these questions--and one way of interpreting the leadership failures we see everywhere today is as a failure of imagination, an inability to identify and communicate a compelling story that enables people to "make sense of ambiguous situations and pursue a plan of action in coordination with others."

Compounding this difficulty is the dual burden we place upon leaders. We expect them to serve as avatars, embodying the community they serve, scrupulously adhering to cultural norms and values, and scrutinizing their behavior for any deviations. [12] But even as we impose these demands upon them, we simultaneously fail to "empathize up." As I've noted before, "Even if we have a good relationship with someone in a superior position, the relative nature of our respective positions can create a sense of 'otherness' that makes it psychologically difficult for us to empathize with that person’s perspective and emotions." [13] We will ask more of leaders and offer them less in return.

But aren't leaders well-compensated for these pains? It's inarguable that executive compensation has risen dramatically since the 1970s. [14] And yet, as I wrote recently, "The status, compensation and other perks [of leadership roles] are pleasurable, to be sure, but their power as sources of motivation inevitably diminishes or even disappears. A process psychologists call 'hedonic adaptation' ensures that we adjust to our circumstances and eventually take them for granted. [15] I see this constantly in my practice--leaders may strive mightily for years to obtain a certain position or achieve a given financial goal, and when they do the feeling of accomplishment is frequently less fulfilling and more ephemeral than they expected." [16]

I've witnessed all of this in my work with leaders over the past two decades as the trends described above gained strength. As they accelerate in the era to come, leaders will be insulated from some of the painful consequences of change, but the experience of leadership itself will grow more stressful and demanding.

 

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On Mortality

This existence is finite, and we are mortal creatures. Why make such an obvious statement--and how is it relevant to my points above? First, what may appear obvious in principle is anything but in practice. It is painful to acknowledge our mortality, and we strenuously resist doing so. Anthropologist and philosopher Ernest Becker located this at the heart of the human condition:

The essence of man is really his paradoxical nature, the fact that he is half animal and half symbolic... He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history, [but] his body aches and bleeds and will decay and die. It is a terrifying dilemma. [17]

Our terror serves an essential purpose, Becker argues--the fear of death is "an expression of the instinct of self-preservation, which functions as a constant drive to maintain life and to master the dangers that threaten life." [18] But to function on a day-to-day basis we have to keep our fear of death on the margins of consciousness, a point Becker makes by citing the psychoanalyst and historian Gregory Zilboorg--the fear of death "must be properly repressed to keep us living with any modicum of comfort... Therefore in normal times we move about actually without ever believing in our own death, as if we fully believed in our own corporeal immortality." [19]

And why does this matter? Because the definition of "normal times" is changing, and in the tumultuous era now underway many of us will be reminded of our mortality much more frequently. For billions of people mortality is already an everyday affair, of course, but Becker and Zilboorg are writing for anyone not yet familiar with death. (They were--Becker liberated a Nazi concentration camp at age 20, and Zilboorg witnessed the Russian Revolution at age 27.)

The trying circumstances to come will be painful, but we will undoubtedly survive. I'm a realist, not an alarmist, and humanity has endured far worse. But I suspect that in this new era one of our most reliable tools for "terror management" [20] will be less effective. I'm referring to what we might call "heroic projects," a concept derived from Becker's work that has had a significant influence on my own:

As described by Sam Keen in his introduction to Becker's The Denial of Death, Becker believed that "the basic motivation for human behavior is our biological need to control our basic anxiety, to deny the terror of death," and over the course of our lives we engage in any number of activities with the (typically unconscious) goal of achieving a symbolic victory over mortality, which offers us at least a provisional respite from this terror. These energies can be directed toward many different ends--raising a family, building a business, pursuing fame or status or wealth. [21]

I believe that this is one of the primary reasons why people pursue leadership roles, despite all of the headaches and heartaches noted above. Leadership itself is a heroic project, an attempt to make a difference, leave a legacy, and in so doing strive to transcend mortality. Few leaders take a job or start a company with this goal explicitly in mind, but it's often a factor at some level. [22]

This striving ultimately proves futile, and at some point we must all come to terms with mortality. Whatever we may believe about what precedes or follows this existence, its finite nature eventually asserts itself. And yet this doesn't render our heroic projects invalid or unworthy. It is right and necessary that we make these efforts--that's how we keep the terror of death at bay, which allows us to function. We raise the family, build the business, pursue fame or status or wealth, hoping that when we accomplish our goal we'll finally feel some ease, a sense of peace, mission accomplished. That hope may be misplaced, but there's nothing wrong with striving toward an illusory goal when it's the striving that matters, and heroic projects serve that purpose.

But this work is hard enough when times are good and life is predictable, and it will be increasingly difficult in the era that is emerging. The factors noted above--artificial intelligence, future pandemics, financial instability, social discord, and even the weather will make it harder for leaders to reliably pursue and accomplish any number of heroic projects. This doesn't mean there will be fewer opportunities for heroism--as I note above, tough times make great leaders. But even the best leaders' efforts will be repeatedly thwarted, and it will be painful.

 

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So What Can We Do?

There's no simple solution, but there are certainly steps we can take. We can ready ourselves by acknowledging and accepting reality. We can prepare by developing our capacity for resilience. And we can identify and obtain the support we'll need in the process. What will this look like in practice?

Acceptance

I'm not a Buddhist, but I've learned much from teacher and author Pema Chödrön, and I find myself returning to this passage in difficult times:

We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect... Doing this is setting ourselves up for failure, because sooner or later, we're going to have an experience that we can't control: our house is going to burn down, someone we love is going to die, we're going to find out we have cancer, a brick is going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head... To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. [23]

Mindfulness, exercise, a healthy diet--all worthy endeavors that I highly recommend. [24] But many of us pursue such activities in precisely the way that Chödrön describes--with the goal of exerting control over our minds and bodies under the illusion that doing so will guarantee that our experience in the world is predictable and pleasant. The absurdity of that idea will likely grow more evident in the years to come.

We should continue these efforts, but with full awareness that they will not keep us safe and secure in the nest. We can't predict the nature of the unexpected event that will throw us out, but somehow, some day, we will be thrown out. This need not entail a passive stance in the face of difficulties--but rather than react with shock and outrage, we can respond with acceptance and determination.

Resilience

We often misunderstand the meaning of resilience, confusing it with invulnerability or toughness. The etymological root of resilience is the Latin resilire, which means "to rebound, recoil or jump back." Resilient materials deform under pressure while retaining their internal consistency, later returning to their original form. Iron is tough, but it's not resilient--when it reaches its breaking point it shatters into pieces. Being resilient in the face of difficulties doesn't mean that we're unaffected by painful experiences. Being resilient means that we have the ability to absorb the impact, respond flexibly, adapt to the resulting stress and pressure, and persist in these efforts over time--without shattering into pieces. [25]

A model of resilience was Admiral James Stockdale, a prisoner of war for seven years in Vietnam. When he was asked by business author Jim Collins who among his fellow POWs were least likely to survive, he replied,

Oh, it’s easy. I can tell you who didn’t make it out. It was the optimists... They were the ones who always said, "We’re going to be out by Christmas." Christmas would come and it would go. And there would be another Christmas. And they died of a broken heart... This is what I learned from those years in the prison camp, where all those constraints just were oppressive. You must never ever ever confuse, on the one hand, the need for absolute, unwavering faith that you can prevail despite those constraints with, on the other hand, the need for the discipline to begin by confronting the brutal facts, whatever they are. We’re not getting out of here by Christmas. [26]

Among the various factors that contribute to resilience [27], one of the most important is emotion regulation, which is what enables that critical balance between faith that we will prevail and discipline to confront the brutal facts. The popular conception of emotions as mindless impulses that are antagonistic to logical reasoning is woefully inadequate and out-of-date. Neuroscientists have known for decades that emotions are vitally important inputs to the reasoning process. [28] At the same time, as neuroscientist Antonio Damasio notes, "uncontrolled or misdirected emotion can be a major source of irrational behavior"--a truism evident to anyone who's witnessed a panicked mob...or a bank run. [29]

We can't control our emotions--nor would we want to [30]--but we can regulate them, which entails improving our ability to sense, comprehend, articulate and express what we're feeling. [31] This is of the utmost importance for leaders in the midst of a crisis, not only because they must manage their own inner emotional state, but also because their emotions are contagious. [32] Establishing that balance between faith and discipline on a team--or in a nation--starts with the leader's ability to look within and do the same.

Support

Leading is an inherently social task, and yet it is often a lonely one. As I wrote years ago, reflecting on my own experiences, "If you're a leader at the head of an organization, by definition you don't have internal peers who share your perspective. Your Board of Directors isn't going to provide you with the developmental support you've enjoyed from previous mentors and managers--they're there to challenge you, not to nurture you. And your family is going to get tired of hearing about the challenges you face long before you get tired of talking about them." [33] So it's essential for leaders to have people they can turn to for support, and those relationships need to be up and running long before a crisis hits.

While I'm obviously a strong supporter of coaching, by no means is a coach a leader's only option. I tell my clients that I'm merely one member of their "coaching team," and they should activate as many others as possible, while taking care to identify truly trustworthy allies. [34] This includes family members and friends, who, even if they have limited patience or skills, can be guided into serving as more effective sources of support. [35]

I also advise my clients to think systemically, which in this context entails recognizing that all of the other leaders around them will be struggling with the challenges identified above. There are limits on colleagues' ability to offer support, thus the need for coaches and other external resources. But optimally peers and teammates will be there for each other when needed--and this rests upon an organizational culture that values empathy without sacrificing accountability. [36]

 

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In Closing

 My work piles up,
I falter with disease.
Time rushes toward me--
it has no brakes. Still,
the radishes are good this year.
Run them through butter,
add a little salt.

~Jim Harrison, "Zona" [37]

This poem was among those found on Harrison's writing desk when he died in 2016. Harrison is a hero of mine, not least because he faced adversity--the loss of an eye as a child, the death of his father and sister in an automobile accident, years of struggle as a writer--and yet he persevered, living a richly fulfilling life and completing a vast body of work.

He was dying when he wrote the lines above, and no doubt he knew it, but that knowledge didn't stop him from working, or from enjoying all that this existence has to offer, right up until the end. I hope to find inspiration in his example during the challenges I will no doubt face in the years to come. I hope this piece encourages you to do the same.

The radishes are good this year. Run them through butter, add a little salt.

 

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For Further Reading

Change

• The Obstacle Is The Way
• Aggression, Panic, Paralysis, Denial
• Tumbling Down Maslow's Hierarchy
• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2008)

Leadership

• How Leaders Overcome Adversity
• From Peacetime to Wartime
• Leadership as Professional Practice
• Compass and Weathervanes (30 Questions for Leaders)

Mortality

• Not Every End Is a Goal (On Midlife Malaise)
• The Final Third (On Mortality, Values and Spending Time)
• Death: The End of Self-Improvement (Joan Tollifson, 2019)
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (Oliver Burkeman, 2021)

Acceptance

• When We Are Ready, the Practice Will Be Waiting
• On the Shortness of Life
• When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Pema Chödrön, 1996/2016)
• Gratitude (Oliver Sacks, 2015)

Resilience

• The Tyranny of Feelings
• How to Cross Antarctica (On Surviving Chaos)
• How I Read Stoicism
• Ignoring Bandits and Building Resilience

Support

• How to Find (and Choose) a Coach
• Getting Coaching for Your Team
• Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others (Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, 2009)
• Helping: How to Offer, Give and Receive Help (Edgar Schein, 2009)

 

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Footnotes

[1] "Individual Psychology" (Alfred Adler, Chapter 21 in Psychologies of 1930, edited by Carl Murchison, 1930)

[2] Feeling of Control Viewed as Central in Mental Health (Daniel Goleman, The New York Times, October 7, 1986):

Researchers are finding that the sense of being in control, and the desire for such control, are more crucial and pervasive aspects of personality than psychologists had previously realized... 'We have a deep need to feel competent, to be in control of our environment; it is one of the primary motives in behavior,' said Jerry Burger, a psychologist at the University of Santa Clara.

[3] Born to Choose: The Origins and Value of the Need for Control (Lauren Leotti, Sheena Iyengar and Kevin Ochsner, Trends in Cognitive Science, October 2010):

Belief in one’s ability to exert control over the environment and to produce desired results is essential for an individual’s well being. It has been repeatedly argued that the perception of control is not only desirable, but it is likely a psychological and biological necessity... Converging evidence from animal research, clinical studies, and neuroimaging work suggest that the need for control is a biological imperative for survival.

[4] Excerpted from Authority and Control in Organizational Life.

[5] Embracing the rapid pace of AI (Laurel Ruma interviewing Cliff Justice, US leader for enterprise innovation, KPMG, MIT Technology Review, 2021):

Cliff Justice: Even if one could fully wrap their head around the progress of artificial intelligence and the potential of artificial intelligence, changing an organization and changing the mindset and the culture in a way to adopt and benefit from the opportunities that artificial intelligence poses and also protect against the threats take some time. So, it creates a level of anxiety and caution which is, in my view, well justified.

[6] See Statistics Say Large Pandemics Are More Likely Than We Thought (Michael Penn, Duke Global Health Institute, 2021) and Pandemics Will be More Frequent (Abraham Haileamlak M.D., Ethiopian Journal of Health Science / National Library of Medicine, 2022).

[7] To take just one example, see Fed Walks Tightrope Between Inflation and Bank Turmoil—but for How Long? (Greg Ip, The Wall Street Journal, 2023)

[8] As I wrote in my December 2020 newsletter, "The historian Peter Turchin has a theory that complex societies undergo predictable periodic crises, driven by 1) a decline in general wages, 2) heightened competition among elites, and 3) the loss of asabiya, an Arabic term that refers to 'the capacity of a social group for concerted collective action.' This characterized the U.S. in the middle of the 19th century, and the result, Turchin would argue, was the Civil War. A similar set of circumstances prevailed in the U.S. after World War I, when the country experienced a surge of violent activity, from racist mobs to labor strife. At both junctures U.S. society underwent a profound and dramatic change, and Turchin believes we’re at a similar point in the historical cycle. We’re unlikely to return to the status quo ante, he suggests, because the current environment isn’t a function of the pandemic, or the current administration, or any single given cause. These factors may not be causes at all, but, rather, symptoms of much larger trends to be observed over the past 50 years in the three elements in Turchin’s model."

[9] See Explaining Extreme Events in 2021 and 2022 from a Climate Perspective (American Meteorological Society, 2022)

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

[11] Excerpted from The Importance of Shared Narrative.

[12] Adapted from Leader as Avatar.

[13] Excerpted from The Difficulty of Empathizing Up.

[14] See CEO Compensation: Data (David Larcker, Bryan Tayan, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2019) and CEO Compensation (Carola Frydman, MIT Sloan School of Management and Dirk Jenter, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2008)

[15] Early research on hedonic adaptation dates back to the 1970s--for example, see Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative? (Philip Brickman, Dan Coates and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1978). More recently, UC Riverside Sonja Lyubomirsky provides what I find to be the most useful descriptions of the concept:

Although we may achieve temporary boosts in well-being by moving to new parts of the country, securing raises, or changing our appearances, such boosts are unlikely to be long-lasting. The primary reason...is that people readily and rapidly adapt to positive circumstantial changes. (The How of Happiness, page 63, 2007)

The more we attain, the happier we become. But, at the same time, the more we attain, the more we want, which negates the increased happiness. (The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does, page 120, 2014) 

[16] Excerpted from Leaders Love Puzzles (for Better and for Worse).

[17] The Denial of Death, pages 25-26 (Ernest Becker, 1973)

[18] Ibid, page 16.

[19] "Fear of Death" (Gregory Zilboorg, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1943, cited in The Denial of Death, page 17)

[20] I'm not aware that Ernest Becker ever used the term "terror management," but his work has been the inspiration for a concept in psychology known as terror management theory.

[21] Excerpted from Learning From Sisyphus.

[22] I'm convinced that this explains much of the ongoing fascination with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs well over a decade after his death. While he deserves to be remembered as a gifted entrepreneur who launched and later rescued an iconic company that continues to influence the culture at large, it is the fact that he is remembered at all that makes him a mythic figure in the eyes of so many leaders today. Jobs succeeded--at least for the time being--in achieving his heroic project. Of all the successful businesspeople from the past, perhaps only Henry Ford compares, the Jobs of his era. We still know Ford's name, although it doesn't come up in my practice nearly as often as Jobs'. And while both will eventually be forgotten, the fact that they are remembered is what makes them relevant, even more than the accomplishments that made them memorable.

[23] When Things Fall Apart, page 70 (Pema Chödrön, 1997)

[24] See the following:

• Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People
• Get Moving! (Exercise for Busy People)
• Low-Carb High-Fat (LCHF) Resources

[25] Adapted from The Ruling Out of Possibilities (On Failure).

[26] The Stockdale Paradox (Jim Collins, 2017)

[27] Work by psychologists Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté suggests that resilience is a function of the extent to which we manifest certain characteristics and engage in specific behaviors, all of which are learnable or subject to influence: Emotion regulation, impulse control, optimism, causal analysis, empathy, self-efficacy and reaching out. See The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life's Hurdles, Chapter 2: How Resilient Are You?, pages 31-47 (Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté, 2002).

[28] Antonio Damasio on Emotion and Reason

[29] Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain, page 53 (Antonio Damasio, 2005)

[30] "It is clear that emotion should not be very susceptible to willful control. If we could turn off all our emotions, feel no pain, never laugh, not be gripped by fear or despair, stop being excited, and so on, we could easily end up dead... The priority of emotions over will is important for our survival because it allows our plans to be interrupted by the immediate pressures of reality.." From White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts: Suppression, Obsession, and the Psychology of Mental Control, page 123 (Daniel Wegner, 2nd edition, 1994)

[31] The Tyranny of Feelings

[32] For more on leadership and emotional contagion:

• The Contagious Leader: Impact of the Leader's Mood on the Mood of Group Members, Group Affective Tone, and Group Processes (Thomas Sy, Stephane Cote and Richard Saavedra, Journal of Applied Psychology, 2005)
• For better results, emotional contagion matters (Sigal Barsade, Wharton @ Work, 2011)
• Leadership and Emotional Contagion (Louise Altman, Intentional Communication, 2011)
• Contagious leaders and followers: Exploring multi-stage mood contagion in a leader activation and member propagation (LAMP) model (Thomas Sy and Jin Nam Choi, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2013)
• Emotion contagion in leadership (Inga Minelgaite and Egle Vaiciukynaite, Business and Economic Horizons, 2016)

[33] Leading Is Lonely and Other Thoughts

[34] The Friendship of Wolves

[35] What Do You Need Right Now? (Advice, Listening, A Hug?)

[36] For more on organizational culture, see the following:

• Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)
• Hard Problems in Soft Cultures
• Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

[37] Dead Man's Float (Jim Harrison, 2016)

 

Photos: Coyote traps courtesy of Fur-Fish-Game. The Edith Macefield house courtesy of My Modern Met. And Jesus Wept in Oklahoma City by Jerry Worster. San Francisco National Cemetery by Hitchster. Weightlifter by U.S. Navy 6th Fleet. Radishes by sk.

Leaders Love Puzzles (for Better and for Worse)

An observation drawn from my practice is that leaders love puzzles. So do many people, of course, but typically as an absorbing hobby. In my experience a disproportionate number of leaders exhibit an almost obsessive need to tackle and solve complex problems, and this trait is one of the factors that drove them to seek out (or create) a leadership role, which reliably presents them with any number of "puzzles" to solve on a daily basis.

This is particularly true of entrepreneurial founders and startup leaders. In their case the new venture is a potential solution to a massive unresolved problem, and the business itself is a multi-layered puzzle, the real-life equivalent of a video game in which completing one level allows you to keep playing at the next level, usually with increasing degrees of difficulty.

Sociologist Thomas Henricks, whose research explores the role of play in human life, identifies the mechanisms that make puzzles of all types so engrossing to pursue and so fulfilling to solve:

Different puzzles have much in common. They produce similar sensations in their players: mixes of frustration and anticipation as the hunt advances followed (ideally) by the end-pleasure of solution. Sometimes that end--and the steps required to reach it--is apparent, but often it is not. In that latter case, success features a series of "aha" moments, the sudden revelations we call discovery. [1]

The process of solving a puzzle also engages the human fascination with "stories," in the broadest sense of the term. As we navigate the world around us, we automatically craft a series of explanatory narratives that help us make sense of our surroundings and predict what will happen next, a process I've called "the narrative engine." [2] This drive helps to explain why so much of the media we consume presents us with a story in the form of a puzzle: mysteries, thrillers, romances, adventure tales. Nearly every story is a puzzle, and nearly every puzzle tells a story.

These dynamics are at the heart of what makes leadership roles rewarding. The status, compensation and other perks are pleasurable, to be sure, but their power as sources of motivation inevitably diminishes or even disappears. A process psychologists call "hedonic adaptation" ensures that we adjust to our circumstances and eventually take them for granted. [3] I see this constantly in my practice--leaders may strive mightily for years to obtain a certain position or achieve a given financial goal, and when they do the feeling of accomplishment is frequently less fulfilling and more ephemeral than they expected.

In contrast, the satisfaction to be derived from solving puzzles is endless, in part because in business resolving any problem usually creates new ones. [4] And for many leaders in my practice this is both a blessing and a curse. It makes work intrinsically motivating and helps to provide the stamina needed to pursue complex challenges for long periods of time. But it can also make it very difficult to stop working, switch off, set limits, and take time away--or even get a good night's sleep.

If this sounds like you, what can you do about it?

Increase Your Self-Awareness

Awareness is rarely sufficient on its own to drive change, but it's the necessary first step. Your healthy drive to solve puzzles in the business (or the puzzle that is the business) turns counterproductive when you no longer make an active, deliberate choice to work but instead work compulsively. You compound the problem when you fail to prioritize your tasks, allowing what's urgent (or simply at the top of your Inbox) to dictate your agenda. Instead...

• Invest in a mindfulness practice, not because it will mitigate your stress--it won't--but to help you notice where your attention is going.
• Treat your attention like a precious resource, and try to maximize the return on your investments.
• Understand the difference between urgency and importance, and be discerning in what you choose to attend to--and ignore.

Manage Your Emotions

Emotions, both positive and negative, are at the root of your inability to stop working. The fulfillment and pleasure that are rewards for successfully solving a business-puzzle go hand-in-hand with the frustration that arises when a puzzle resists your best efforts, the anxiety evoked when time or other resources grow short, and the fear that you may someday fail--and thus lose the right to keep puzzling. We can't control our emotions, nor would we want to, but we can regulate them and their impact on our behavior:

• Learn more about the role emotions play in reasoning, and their potential to disrupt your intentions.
• Note that the difficulty of disconnecting from business-puzzles is likely driven not by strong emotions but by weak ones.
• Explore the relationship between emotion and attention.

Find Other Puzzles

It's profoundly difficult to stop thinking about something, so attempts to simply disengage with work will likely fail--the business-puzzles are just too compelling. [5] But if you keep working right up until bedtime, your brain will continue to try to solve those particular puzzles, which may diminish the quality of your sleep or even wake you up in the middle of the night. The solution is to substitute other puzzles, while taking steps to ensure that they remain healthy distractions and don't become unhealthy obsessions:

• Most media you consume takes the form of a puzzle, but your laptop and phone make it all too easy for business-puzzles to interrupt you, so manage the flow of business data, and note that multi-tasking can be harmful.
• Video games, social media, and any form of "news" [6] offer a perpetual supply of alternative puzzles, but they're also meticulously engineered to hijack your attention, so engage them with care.
• Consider the benefits of a much older form of "puzzle technology"--paper. A good book will provide you with a fulfilling puzzle without interrupting you with notifications, and research suggests that reading a book in bed results in a better night's sleep. [7]

 

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Footnotes

[1] Why We Enjoy Puzzles: The View From Play Studies (Thomas Henricks, Psychology Today, 2022)

[2] A Better Information Diet

[3] Early research on hedonic adaptation dates back to the 1970s--for example, see Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative? (Philip Brickman, Dan Coates and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1978). More recently, UC Riverside Sonja Lyubomirsky provides what I find to be the most useful descriptions of the concept:

Although we may achieve temporary boosts in well-being by moving to new parts of the country, securing raises, or changing our appearances, such boosts are unlikely to be long-lasting. The primary reason...is that people readily and rapidly adapt to positive circumstantial changes. (The How of Happiness, page 63, 2007)

The more we attain, the happier we become. But, at the same time, the more we attain, the more we want, which negates the increased happiness. (The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does, page 120, 2014) 

[4] The Problems of Success

[5] Why You Can't Stop Thinking About Something

[6] The scare quotes around "news" reflect my opinion that the vast majority of information presented today via any and all news media comes in the form of puzzles intended to arouse anxiety and distress, while fostering the illusion that further passive consumption is a form of constructive puzzle-solving. I've had many clients who successfully stopped working on business-puzzles at a reasonable hour only to find themselves obsessively doom-scrolling late into the night. In this sense there's no distinction among video-games, social media, and most "news"--but the latter comes wrapped in a veneer of pseudo-productivity and virtue, making it all the more insidious.

[7] Does reading a book in bed make a difference to sleep in comparison to not reading a book in bed? (Elaine Finucane et al, National Library of Medicine, 2021)

 

Photo by freebie.photography.

Some Crises Build Character. Others Reveal It.

Something bad happened, and there was a crisis. There are still many risks, and the situation could yet turn worse, but at the moment, catastrophe has been averted. If approached correctly, this can be a fruitful learning experience for you and the people around you. It may seem too early to learn from the crisis, but don't wait too long. Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman notes an important distinction between our experience and our memories:

The experiencing self is the one that answers the question: "Does it hurt now?" The remembering self is the one that answers the question: "How was it, on the whole?"... Confusing experience with the memory of it is a compelling cognitive illusion... The experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living, and it is the one that makes decisions. What we learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our future memories, not necessarily of our future experience. This is the tyranny of the remembering self. [1]

So while events are still fresh in your mind, and the distress and anguish felt by your experiencing self are still vivid, here are some questions to pose to yourself and others:

What did you learn about yourself?

How did you respond under pressure, anxiety, and uncertainty?

Crises evoke a sense of threat, which triggers the "fight, flight, or freeze" response. What did you learn about your tendencies?

How did you communicate with people (venue, channel, cadence, level of detail, tone)?

How did people respond to your communications? What does that tell you about your effectiveness?

How did you make decisions? What did you learn about your decision-making under stress?

What did you learn about the people around you?

How did THEY respond under pressure, anxiety, and uncertainty?

What did you learn about THEIR "fight, flight, or freeze" tendencies?

How did they communicate with you and others?

How effective were their communication efforts?

How did THEY make decisions? What did you learn about THEIR decision-making under stress?

 

Gathering this data is a useful exercise, and it's by no means sufficient. Awareness is always the necessary first step, but it rarely leads to growth on its own. Truly learning from this crisis will entail understanding your strengths and your weaknesses, and then engaging in an ongoing effort to maximize the former and address the latter.

More specifically, you'll want to understand how you can best prepare for the next crisis. Outdoor writer Tom Stienstra survived countless life-threatening situations during his decades roaming the wilderness by remembering a piece of wisdom from self-defense instructor Il Ling New: "Everyone thinks they will rise to the occasion. What happens instead is that you default to your level of training." [2] So here are some further questions to consider:

What do your responses above tell you about your strengths and weaknesses?

How can you be better prepared for the next crisis?

What might it look like to train for that crisis?

Who might you turn to, where might you go, to obtain such training?

 

The questions above are largely aimed at capabilities, but crises also teach us something essential that can't be learned under any other circumstances about character.

What did you do that you're proud of? What motivated those actions?

What did you do that you're NOT proud of? What motivated THOSE actions?

What do any of these actions say about your character?

What do the actions of others say about THEIR character?

What do you want to remember?

 

---

Footnotes

[1] Thinking, Fast and Slow, page 381 (Daniel Kahneman, 2013)

[2] Tom Stienstra’s Tales of Survival (San Francisco Chronicle, 2023)

 

For Further Reading

How Leaders Overcome Adversity

Aggression, Panic, Paralysis, Denial

The Importance of Slowing Down

From Peacetime to Wartime

 

Photo by GraceOda.

Self-Care for Coaches

Coaching is a very fulfilling activity, and I feel lucky to spend all day, every day working with leaders in this capacity. But it's also very demanding, which is why I try to take good care of myself--and my practice--in a variety of ways. This certainly includes the basics: mindfulness, exercise, sleep, reducing chronic stress. [1] But more specifically, there are four self-care practices for coaches that I follow myself and recommend to colleagues.

1. Get a Coach

There are a number of obvious reasons why every coach should have a coach. Just like our clients, we encounter difficult situations that test our capabilities on a regular basis, and coaching is a reliable means of augmenting our strengths and addressing our weaknesses. Further, guidance from a seasoned fellow professional can help us to consider new possibilities and overcome blind spots. As I've noted before, coaching isn't just about asking questions, and advice and feedback play valuable roles in the process. [2]

But being in a formal coaching engagement also offers something of special importance to the coach-as-client: empathy. As coaches, we're used to being in the position of having others come to us with their problems and challenges, and forgetting what it's like to be on the other end of a helping relationship can be an occupational hazard. Being coached reminds us of what it feels like to be a client--and that invariably makes us better coaches. [3]

My initial exposure to coaching came as a client in my first leadership role after business school. A mentor on my board of directors advised me to invest in myself and get a coach, and I went back to one of my Stanford professors, Mary Ann Huckabay, and asked if she would take me on as a client. Thankfully she did, and our work together not only transformed my approach to leadership, but also helped motivate me to launch my own coaching practice in 2006. Three years later I realized that I needed a coach in order to be the best coach I could be--I returned to Mary Ann's practice, and we've been working together continuously ever since. If you don't have a Mary Ann in your life, I hope you'll reach out to your network of colleagues and find one. [4]

2. Talk About Money (with People You Trust)

As an independent coach working solo, I wear two hats: I'm a coach who cares deeply about my craft, and I'm also the CEO of a small business who must ensure that my business remains profitable. It's easy to find people who want to talk about the soulful art of coaching but who don't know much about running a profitable practice. It's also easy to find people who are eager to sell you their services to help you build a practice but who don't seem particularly soulful, to say the least. In my experience the key is building relationships with colleagues who share your commitment to craft and who are also willing to discuss the financial and logistical aspects of running their practice. [5]

For many of us there's always some discomfort in discussing finances, and that can be exacerbated if we're reluctant to think of coaching as a profession. But a coaching engagement is both a personal relationship and a business relationship, and the integration of both halves makes it successful and sustainable. Acknowledging and attending to the financial needs of our practice is critical in that process and ultimately in the best interests of our clients.

Collegial relationships in which we can have such candid conversations are built on trust, which often starts with a willingness to be vulnerable. (This may be yet another reason to work with a coach.) And note that it may be easier than you think. I sometimes have occasion to talk with aspiring coaches who are just starting out, and at a certain point in the conversation I generally say, "Let's talk about money"--and they are invariably relieved that I've taken the initiative to broach the subject.

3. Manage Your Assets (and Say No More Often)

When wearing my CEO hat I have to be mindful that my small business has two (and only two) assets: my time and my reputation. I'm the sole steward of those assets--if my time is wasted or my reputation suffers, no one pays a price but me. Further, other people may well have very different ideas than I do about how to employ my time or build my reputation. So it's essential for me to manage these assets with great care.

I'm not suggesting that there's one best way for you to manage your own time and reputation. One person's wasted hour is another's sound investment. And what qualifies as a "good use of time" or provides a boost to your practice's visibility or your personal brand will undoubtedly change during the course of your career, so any guidelines in these areas should be revisited regularly. But it helps immensely to establish such guidelines in the first place, even if they're provisional and open to experimentation.

I suspect that running your practice with an eye toward managing your time and reputation with care will eventually require to you say "no" more often. Nearly a decade ago, I wrote about the necessity--and the difficulty--of this transition:

Success is often built on a reflexive habit of saying "yes" to opportunities that come our way. We’re hungry for any chance to prove ourselves, and when we're presented with one, we take it, even--or especially--if it seems daunting. A lesson I learned years ago was to say "yes" to opportunities that made me feel nervous because the anxiety was a sign that I'd learn something useful. We may also tend to say "yes" out of a fear that turning down an opportunity even once sends a message that we're not interested, and we'll stop getting additional chances in the future.

But success tends to attract bigger and better opportunities. As we succeed, a key challenge becomes prioritizing the many opportunities that present themselves. We often try to do this without saying "no" definitively--we still want to keep our options open. Inevitably, though, this results in a lack of clarity and overcommitment, and we wind up disappointing people, exhausting ourselves, or simply failing. To prevent this we need to learn to say "no" gracefully but firmly, maintaining the relationship while making it clear that this is one opportunity we're choosing not to pursue. [6]

4. Live a (Somewhat) Boring Life

The French novelist Gustave Flaubert advised Gertrude Tennant, a friend and patron who later edited his correspondence, "Be regular and orderly in your life, like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work." [7] I don't think of coaching as artistry, nor do I aspire to be "violent and original," but I do find Flaubert's underlying principle highly relevant and seek to apply it in a number of ways.

By committing to a "regular and orderly" set of routines, both professional and personal, I make it possible to do my best work every day on a sustainable basis. I'm not recommending any particular set of routines--I think each of us needs to determine for ourselves the practices that will best meet our individual needs. In my case, I generally get a lot of sleep, wake up at roughly the same time each day, see clients at predetermined timeslots with ample time in between sessions, take several walks a day, and have a quiet evening at home.

To be clear, I don't think it's necessary to strive for some sort of "perfect attendance record," nor am I suggesting that you need to impose a rigid set of rules on yourself. [8] Routines that feel unduly constraining are fragile, not resilient, and usually fail to be become habitual practices. Every once in a while I feel the need to stay up late, drink too much wine, and watch an old movie--although that's as wild as I get these days. But by giving myself permission to make exceptions, I make it easier to sustain the (regular, orderly) routines that constitute a typical day.

 

---

Footnotes

[1] In The Art of Self-Coaching I devised the (admittedly cheesy!) acronym MESSy to highlight the importance of mindfulness, exercise, sleep and reducing chronic stress. For more on these topics:

Mindfulness

• Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People)
  
• Arriving at Your Own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness (Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2007)
• Meditation Techniques for People Who Hate Meditation (Stephanie Vozza, Fast Company, 2014)
• 26 Scientifically Proven Superhuman Benefits of Meditation (Jon Brooks, ComfortPit, 2014)
• This is what eight weeks of mindfulness training does to your brain (Christian Jarrett, BPS Research Digest, 2016)
• Eight weeks to a better brain (Sue McGreevy, The Harvard Gazette, 2011)
• Changing Our Brains, Changing Ourselves (Lea Winerman interviewing Richard Davidson, American Psychological Association Monitor, 2012)

Exercise

• Get Moving! (Exercise for Busy People)
• Walking lifts your mood, even when you don't expect it to (Christian Jarrett, BPS Research Digest, 2016)
• The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer (Gretchen Reynolds)
• Need A Self-Control Boost? Get Outside (Jessica Stillman, Inc., 2014)

Sleep

• Great Leaders Sleep Well--Why Rest Is Critical for Success (Ronnie Hendel-Giller, 2018)
• There's a Proven Link Between Effective Leadership and Getting Enough Sleep (Nick van Dam and Els van der Helm, Harvard Business Review, 2016)
• You Can't Do Your Job if You Don't Sleep (Tony Schwartz, Harvard Business Review, 2012)
• Sleep-Deprived Leaders are Less Inspiring (Christopher Barnes, Harvard Business Review, 2016)
• Senior Leaders Get More Sleep Than Anyone Else (Rasmus Hougaard & Jacqueline Carter, Harvard Business Review, 2018)
• The Science of Sleep: Dreaming, Depression and How REM Sleep Regulates Negative Emotions (Maria Popova, The Marginalian, 2012)

Stress

• Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others (Laura van Dernoot Lipsky with Connie Burk, 2009)
• Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being (Linda Graham, 2013)
• Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success (Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness, 2017)
• Embracing Stress Is More Important Than Reducing Stress (Clifton Parker, 2015, discussing recent work by Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal)
• How to Make Stress Your Friend [14-minute video] (Kelly McGonigal, 2013)

[2] Coaching, Advice and Feedback

[3] See Chapter 3 in Edgar Schein's Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help (2011), entitled "The Inequalities and Ambiguities of the Helping Relationship."

[4] How to Find (and Choose) a Coach

[5] While coaching isn't therapy, one of the most useful resources I've encountered regarding the management of a practice is Sheldon Kopp's Back to One: A Practical Guide for Psychotherapists. A few of the topics he covers are unique to therapy, but much of the book is equally relevant to coaching.

[6] Learning to Say "No" Is Part of Success

[7] Oxford Reference

[8] I make one exception: I expect to be early and fully prepared for every single coaching session, every working day. A coach's first job is showing up.

Photo by iezalel williams.

What Am I Most Alive To?

What am I most alive to?

I'm alive to my grievances and disappointments. They arise at the slightest provocation. And should I momentarily ignore them, vast enterprises will offer their assistance by reminding me.

I'm not very alive to all the sources of fulfillment I enjoy. These gifts I fail to acknowledge.

I'm alive to my aches and limitations, the slow-motion train wreck of middle-age. And should I momentarily forget the reality of life as a mortal creature, vast enterprises will offer their assistance by promising immortality.

I'm not very alive to the fact that I am alive. Breathing normally. Not in any real pain. In full possession of my senses and faculties. Able to walk unassisted, and feed and bathe myself. These blessings I take for granted.

I'm alive to all the things I'm "missing" and "need," the absurd shopping list that I carry around in my head. And should I momentarily misplace it, vast enterprises will offer their assistance by suggesting alternatives.

I'm not very alive to the diminishing returns and ultimate uselessness of material things. This truth I lose sight of.

I'm alive to everything I think I lack. I'm not very alive to all I have to be thankful for. This I can change, but only when I stop and consider what's truly on the scales, and when I decline the assistance of all those vast enterprises.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

---

For Further Reading

Gratitude Checklist

Not Every End Is a Goal

Stop Trying to Be "Good Enough" by "Getting Better"

Learning from Sisyphus

Adventure, Tragedy, Comedy

Gualala (On Mortality and Gratitude)

Feeling Sorry for Yourself?

A Better Information Diet

Bad Is Stronger Than Good (Roy Bauermeister, Catrin Finkenauer, Ellen Bratslavsky, and Kathleen D. Vohs). One of the most influential papers ever written, this 2001 article from the Review of General Psychology explains much about the dynamics noted above.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (Oliver Burkeman, 2021)

Death: The End of Self-Improvement (Joan Tollison, 2019)

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Pema Chödrön, 2016)

The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters (Emily Esfahani Smith, 2017)

Gratitude (Oliver Sacks, 2015)

 

Photo of Point Reyes from Chimney Rock.

1x 10x 100x (On Leverage)

A theme in my practice is helping leaders determine which tasks and activities add the greatest long-term value (both professionally and personally), reallocate their time and attention accordingly, navigate around the obstacles that block their way, and resist the endless distractions that threaten to drag them off course.

This isn't about productivity. That framing often yields a focus on "doing more things," or "doing things more efficiently." The efficient use of our time and attention is important, but doing the wrong things more efficiently is an easy way to expend a lot of energy going nowhere. We should never confuse motion with progress. [1]

A more useful guiding principle is leverage. One way I discuss this with clients is by distinguishing among different orders of magnitude: 1x. 10x. 100x. These aren't precise measurements, but precision isn't the point--what matters is simply the recognition that some tasks and activities generate an immense amount of long-term value relative to others. So what can we do with this idea? And what are its implications?

Return on Attention

We're familiar with the concept of return on investment, but we usually think of the resource being invested as capital. This is understandable--most leaders operate under financial constraints, and grasping the ROI of a given initiative helps to ensure that their capital is being put to its best use. But we often fail to appreciate that our time and attention are also finite resources, and in some circumstances they're more limited than capital. [2] And going a step further, I'd argue that attention is a more important constraint than time. As I've noted before,

Time merely passes, while focused attention makes things happen. When we’re able to gather and direct our attention toward a particular task or interaction, we can have a significant impact in a minimal amount of time. But when we’re unable to bring our attention to bear on the work at hand, all the time in the world is insufficient. [3]

So we can assess the amount of leverage we derive from a given task or activity by understanding its return on attention. [4] A key is recognizing that "ROA" is a ratio, and both the numerator and the denominator matter. Consider the difference between a one-on-one with a direct report and a large-group meeting. A one-on-one is a tremendous "expenditure" of attention--each party is focused exclusively on the other person and their respective agenda. And yet the substantial return almost always justifies the expense. (Whenever this isn't the case, one or the other party will usually seek to conserve attention by cancelling the one-on-one.) [5]

In contrast, most large-group meetings don't consume much attention at all--we see this in the tendency to multi-task during such gatherings (which can be interpreted as an effort to maximize the relatively low ROA.) A problem is that in many organizational cultures there's a high tolerance for low-ROA meetings because no one regards their attention as a finite resource.

Again, note that the goal isn't mere efficiency or productivity. You could hold your one-on-ones en masse and feel very "efficient," or you could shorten your meetings to 10 minutes to be highly "productive," but you'd generate less long-term value as a result, not more.

• How would you assess the ROA of the tasks and activities on your calendar?
• Where might you gain leverage by maximizing the return?
• Where might you gain leverage by minimizing the expenditure?

 

Events < Processes < Systems

When we first undertake a task or activity, we often conceptualize it as an event--a one-time occurrence that we prepare for and execute, after which we move on to other matters. But when we conduct a certain event repeatedly we generate more leverage by approaching it as a process--not a single discrete experience, but an ongoing, continuous series. And when we're engaged in a set of processes, we generate even more leverage by treating them as a system--an interrelated and organic whole. The goal is to continually generate more leverage by transforming events into processes and processes into systems.

For example, two areas where this often comes up in my practice are fundraising and enterprise sales. The inexperienced CEO or sales leader views a pitch to a prospect as an event--they prepare, they do their best, they move on. Over time more capable CEOs and sales leaders develop a process, which can take any number of forms: Qualifying prospects so they refine their pitch in a deliberate sequence of conversations. Limiting the number of conversations they have in a given day. Conducting retros after each conversation to learn from every iteration. Etc.

And the most capable CEOs and sales leaders integrate their various processes into a system, creating connections across a host of seemingly disparate tasks and activities: Engaging in self-care and managing their calendars so they're at their best when it matters most. Hiring the right team around them to augment their personal capabilities. Documenting their approach so they can teach others and delegate lower-leverage processes and events. Establishing a culture that attracts and retains the best talent. Ad infinitum.

• Where do you see opportunities to approach events as processes?
• How might you treat multiple processes as a single system?

 

Time Frame Matters

Leverage isn't always an inherent quality of a given task or activity. It can change dramatically depending on the relevant time frame. A good night's sleep is often a high-leverage activity because we're more effective at decision-making and emotion regulation when we're well-rested. [6] As a result it's usually a good investment to prioritize sleep over late-night work, which often adds relatively little value, because everything we do the following day will be of higher quality.

On some occasions it's truly necessary to stay up late or even pull an all-nighter, but these circumstances will likely become less frequent as we grow more senior. [7] And yet over the course of our entire careers, we'll add the most value by consistently getting the right amount of sleep, in part because doing so contributes to better health and longer life. [8]

Similarly, at any given moment pausing to reflect is usually a high-leverage task, because it helps to ensure that our time and attention are subsequently directed toward the most valuable ends. [9] In some rare situations, there's not be a second to spare, and we're best-served by simply following our intuition. But the longer the time frame--a day, a week, a year, a life--the more value we'll create by regularly reflecting on what we're doing and why. [10]

So is sleep a 1x activity, or 10x, or 100x? Is reflection a 1x task, or 10x, or 100x? It depends, of course. The dilemma is that tasks and activities that generate a great deal of value over long time frames are always important but rarely urgent. As I've noted before,

Important-but-not-Urgent activities are like brushing our teeth (or exercise or meditation): There are no real consequences if we skip a day, but if that becomes a trend we'll miss out on significant benefits and may run into serious problems. [11]

• What Important-but-not-Urgent tasks and activities do you expect to generate the most value for you over time?
• What boundaries will help you protect them on your calendar in the short term? [12]
• What consistent habits will help you cultivate sustainable commitments? [13]

 

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Footnotes

[1] Confusing Motion with Progress

[2] The Problems of Success

[3] To Stay Focused, Manage Your Emotions

[4] Growth, Profitability and Return on Attention

[5] The best guidance I'm aware of on how to conduct one-on-ones can be found Andy Grove's High Output Management, pages 72-79 (1st edition, 1983). Here's a passage I share with clients frequently:

A key point about a one-on-one. It should be regarded as the subordinate's meeting, with its agenda and tone set by him. There's good reason for this. Somebody needs to prepare for the meeting. The supervisor with eight subordinates would have to prepare eight times; the subordinate only once. So the latter should be asked to prepare an outline, which is very important because it forces him to think through in advance all of the issues and points he plans to raise. Moreover, with an outline, the supervisor knows at the outset what is to be covered and can therefore help to set the pace of the meeting according to the "meatiness" of the items on the agenda. An outline also provides a framework for supporting information, which the subordinate should prepare in advance. The subordinate should then walk the supervisor through all the material.

[6] For more on sleep and leadership effectiveness:

• There's a Proven Link Between Effective Leadership and Getting Enough Sleep (Nick van Dam and Els van der Helm, Harvard Business Review, 2016)
• You Can't Do Your Job if You Don't Sleep (Tony Schwartz, Harvard Business Review, 2012)
• Sleep-Deprived Leaders are Less Inspiring (Christopher Barnes, Harvard Business Review, 2016)

[7] How to Scale: Do Less, Lead More

[8] For more on sleep, health and mortality:

• Sleep Duration and All-Cause Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Prospective Studies (Francesco Cappuccio, Lanfranco D'Elia, Pasquale Strazzullo, and Michelle Miller, Sleep, 2010)
• New Evidence on Sleep's Role in Aging and Chronic Disease (Population Reference Bureau, 2018)

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

[10] Time Horizons

[11] Importance vs. Urgency

[12] Happy Workaholics Need Boundaries, Not Balance

[13] Building Blocks (A Tactical Approach to Change)

 

Image courtesy of Inventors of Tomorrow.

Holding Our Breath (On Maslow's Hierarchy)

I've written before about the Hierarchy of Needs, a influential theory developed by the eminent 20th century psychologist Abraham Maslow. [1] According to this framework, human needs are ordered by their "prepotency" or their ability to command our attention and influence our behavior. This hierarchy begins with physiological needs, such as hunger, thirst and sleep:

Undoubtedly these physiological needs are the most prepotent of all needs. What this means specifically is that in the human being who is missing everything in life in an extreme fashion, it is most likely that the major motivation would be the physiological needs rather than any others. A person who is lacking food, safety, love, and esteem would most probably hunger for food more strongly than for anything else. [2]

But what happens to [a person's] desires when there is plenty of bread and when [their] belly is chronically filled? At once other (and higher) needs emerge and these, rather than physiological hungers, dominate the organism. And when these in turn are satisfied, again new (and still higher) needs emerge, and so on. This is what we mean by saying the basic human needs are organized into a hierarchy of relative prepotency. [3, emphasis original]

As indicated by the first passage above, the needs that emerge once physiological needs are met are the following:

• Safety: "Security; stability; dependency; protection; freedom from fear, from anxiety, and chaos; need for structure, order, law, limits; strength in the protector... [The safety needs] may serve as the almost exclusive organizers of behavior, and we may then fairly describe the whole organism as a safety-seeking mechanism." [4]
• Belongingness and Love: "If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, there will emerge the love and affection and belongingness needs, and the whole cycle already described will repeat itself with this new center. Now the person will feel keenly, as never before, the absence of friends, or a sweetheart...or children. [They] will hunger for affectionate relations with people in general... Now [they] will feel sharply the pangs of loneliness, of ostracism, of rejection, of friendlessness, of rootlessness." [5]
• Esteem: People "have a need or desire for a stable, firmly based, usually high evaluation of themselves, for self-respect, or self-esteem, and for the esteem of others. These needs may therefore be classified into two subsidiary sets. These are, first, the desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for mastery and competence, for confidence in the face of the world, and for independence and freedom. Second, we have what we may call the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people), status, fame and glory, dominance, recognition, attention, importance, dignity or appreciation. [6]
• Self-Actualization: "Even if all these needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what [they], individually [are] fitted for... What a [person] can be, [they] must be. This need we may call self-actualization... This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one idiosyncratically is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming. The specific form that these needs will take will of course vary greatly from person to person. [7]

Often inaccurately displayed as a pyramid--a figure never used by Maslow himself--the hierarchy of needs is better represented as a ladder, which evokes the image of hands and feet on multiple rungs simultaneously. [8] Yet while we can envision and pursue higher needs when lower needs aren't entirely fulfilled, this becomes difficult if not impossible when lower needs go unmet. There's an easy way to demonstrate this:

Hold your breath, for as long as you can, while timing yourself.

I just did and lasted 1 minute and 15 seconds. I haven't tried that since I was a kid in a swimming pool somewhere, and as I began I truly intended to give it my best effort--in part, of course, because some vestigial, childish part of me thought it would be "impressive," although who I was trying to impress is unclear. I was determined to hit the 1-minute mark, which was a little challenging, and once I did I thought momentarily of shooting for 2:00--but within seconds I realized that was going to be impossible. At 1:10 I had abandoned all pretense of appearing "impressive" and was just thinking about the breath I finally took 5 seconds later, to my immense relief.

And that is Maslow's hierarchy in action. When my physiological need for oxygen was being fully met, it was easy to think about higher-order social and symbolic needs. Even as my oxygen supply was being depleted, I still gave some thought to those higher needs, striving to hold out a little longer. But eventually the "prepotency" of my most fundamental need exerted itself and took control--thankfully.

Why engage in this trivial exercise? Because it vividly illustrates some aspects of Maslow's theory that have significant implications for our lives in the real world:

Our needs aren't mutually exclusive, nor do we pursue them in a fixed sequence. The need for safety doesn't emerge only after all of our physiological needs are met, and higher needs don't emerge only when we're completely secure. As lower needs are met more fully, we can climb further up the ladder, but we're usually reaching for higher rungs no matter where we stand.

Yet we rapidly descend the ladder when fundamental needs go unmet. Holding your breath to induce hypoxia may seem silly, and few people reading this will experience persistent hunger. But some of us will experience chronic pain--I have myself, several times. [9] Others will struggle with insomnia, an issue that comes up regularly in my practice. And still others will feel profoundly unsafe, even imperiled. On these occasions it's essential to reestablish a firm footing before we begin climbing again.

But we will continue to strive upwards, which is a function of evolutionary psychology. Lower needs lose their power as motivators and eventually disappear from consciousness when they're fully met. (If you actually tried holding your breath earlier, you probably felt a surge of gratitude when that first wave of oxygen hit your lungs. What a pleasure it was to breathe! How long did that last?) This dynamic bears a close relationship with a concept known as hedonic adaptation: We adapt to changed conditions more readily than we anticipate, and we tend to take any improvements for granted. [10]

This is a feature for the species that often feels like a bug in our individual lives. Once our physiological and safety needs are sufficiently fulfilled, we re-organize our lives around the need for belonging. With sufficient social connection, we focus on obtaining self-esteem and the regard of others within that community. It's readily apparent why evolution has solved for these needs, in this order, and why this benefits the species while often leaving us feeling unfulfilled or inadequate in some way. (Evolution has never cared much about our peace of mind.)

The concept of self-actualization--the final rung on Maslow's ladder--doesn't fit so neatly into this schema, and its purpose seems to transcend such utilitarian calculus. It's clear that whole, secure people who live in connection with others and enjoy their esteem will be more biologically successful than those who lack similar advantages. But it's not at all clear what evolutionary advantage is conferred through self-actualization, what purpose is served by "becoming everything that one is capable of becoming." Perhaps that's the question that Maslow is asking us each to answer.

 

---

Footnotes

[1] For more on my thinking on Maslow and his work, see the following:

• Tumbling Down Maslow's Hierarchy
• Hard Problems in Soft Cultures
• Organizational Development: Is Humanism Overrated?

[2] Motivation and Personality, 2nd edition, pages 36-37 (Abraham Maslow, 1970)

[3] Ibid, page 38.

[4] Ibid, page 39.

[5] Ibid, page 43.

[6] Ibid, page 45.

[7] Ibid, page 46.

[8] Who built Maslow’s pyramid? A history of the creation of management studies’ most famous symbol and its implications for management education, page 91 (Todd Bridgman, Stephen Cummings, John Ballard, Academy of Management Learning and Education, 2019). I'm precluded by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) from linking directly to a freely-available version of this paper, but you can search for it on the Victoria University of Wellington's open access repository, which is located outside the U.S. and not subject to the DMCA.

[9] On Pain and Hope

[10] For more on hedonic adaptation, see the following:

• The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does, page 120 (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2014)

• The How of Happiness, pages 48-51 (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2007)

• Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative? (Philip Brickman, Dan Coates and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1978)

 

Photo by Jerry Crowley.

Emotional Speed Bumps

A major theme in my practice is emotion regulation--helping clients better manage their inner emotional experience, and then articulate and express what they're feeling in ways that allow them to accomplish their goals more effectively. [1] Much of that work involves down-regulating strong negative emotions: anger, fear, grief.

But sometimes we're tripped up not by strong emotions, but by weak ones. We're not enraged, just annoyed. We're not terrified, just worried. We're not overwhelmed, just sad. These weak feelings rarely lead us to take significant steps that trigger profound remorse, but they often cause us to feel stuck in some way, making it more difficult to obtain a desired outcome or resulting in expenditures of time or effort that we later regret.

I've come to think of these feelings as "emotional speed bumps"--they create a slight barrier between us and a goal or a preferred activity, raising the necessary activation energy just enough that we fail to move forward. And in the process, while held in place, we fall prey to unproductive impulses--nothing catastrophic, just poor uses of our attention--or we procrastinate on a task that can be deferred, perhaps indefinitely, when we would have been better off addressing it.

Something--or someone--evokes annoyance, or worry, or sadness, and although these feelings aren't strong enough to derail us, they do disrupt us and distract us. We avoid that task at the top of our to-do list. We don't send that important message or have that tough conversation. We don't get up off the couch and take a walk or go to the gym. Instead, we pursue something easier. We find something on our to-do list that makes us feel "productive." We spend a little too much time on social media. We watch one more episode, or have one more drink, or go for one more level in the game. There are no tragedies here, no great losses--but eventually, at some point, we look back and wish we'd done things a little differently. What helps? Raising our awareness and taking action.

Raising Our Awareness

While awareness is rarely sufficient to drive change on its own, it's the necessary first step. You may already feel self-aware in some important ways--for example, you may have a clear sense of your strengths and weaknesses, your values, and the conditions under which you do your best work. [2] But that big-picture perspective doesn't necessarily translate into in-the-moment awareness of low-intensity emotions.

Some of those feelings may be right on the margins of consciousness--in which case they can still affect your behavior. [3] In this context it's important to distinguish between regulation and suppression. The former involves decoupling feelings and subsequent reflexive behavior, while the latter essentially entails pretending that we're not feeling what we're feeling. We can suppress emotions for brief periods of time, and, in some circumstances--such as a dire threat to our physical safety--this is a useful strategy. But we can't suppress emotions for long, and even making the attempt can be counter-productive. [4]

The key is increasing our conscious awareness of low-level feelings so that we can be intentional about the resulting behavior. There's no simple solution, but there are several practices that enable us to be more attuned to our emotions and to be more deliberate about our subsequent choices. A cheesy acronym I like--the only one I use in my practice--is getting MESSy:

• Mindfulness: The goal of mindfulness here isn't stress reduction, but simply being more effective at noticing what we're feeling.
• Exercise: Regular physical activity attunes us to the physiological manifestations of emotion and allows us to sense an emotional response sooner.
• Sleep: Ample research shows that when we' re not well-rested our ability to sense and regulate emotion is impaired.
• (Reducing Chronic) Stress: Chronic, low-level stress diminishes our ability to regulate emotion, and there are often stressors we can minimize with some modest changes in our daily routines. [5]

Taking Action

We often assume that our attitude determines our behavior, and that we act as we do because of underlying feelings. But this view of ourselves poses a challenge when a "speed bump" lies between our current state and a preferred alternative. We may conclude that our feelings are keeping us from engaging in desirable behaviors (or compel us to engage in undesirable behaviors), and somehow we're helpless bystanders, prisoners of our own psychology. We know we should act differently, but we don't feel like it.

However, rather than being a one-way causal relationship, it's a two-way street: While our attitude obviously informs and influences our behavior, our behavior also informs and influences our emotions in a dynamic and cyclical process. To be clear, we can't simply will ourselves out of profound dysfunction caused by strong negative emotions. But we do have much more power than we typically realize to consciously choose behaviors that will affect our attitude and influence the "speed bumps" that can get in the way of our goals and objectives. [6]

This shouldn't be interpreted as a command to "Stop whining and suck it up." Occasionally, yes, that's exactly what we need to hear, but such dictates are often counter-productive--even when we're just talking to ourselves. Rather, the key is to avoid relying on willpower, a finite and unreliable resource [7], and instead construct a robust and predictable set of routines that will make it more likely we'll follow our intentions, take action, and thereby influence our feelings. [8]

William Faulkner supposedly said, "I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes at 9:00 every morning." [9] He didn't wait until he felt like writing--if it was 9:00, it was time to write. You may not require such a rigid schedule, but one of the values of a predetermined routine is that it makes it easier to follow through with commitments we've made (to others or ourselves), whether or not we feel like it. Another writer, Steven Pressfield, contrasts the "amateur," who works when they feel like it, with the "pro," who has a very different point of view:

When we turn pro, everything becomes simple. Our aim centers on the ordering of our days in such a way that we overcome the fears that have paralyzed us in the past. We now structure our hours not to flee from fear, but to confront it and overcome it. We plan our activities in order to accomplish an aim. And we bring our will to bear so that we stick to this resolution. This changes our days completely. It changes what time we get up, and it changes what time we go to bed. It changes what we do and what we don't do. It changes the activities we engage in and with what attitude we engage in them. It changes what we read and what we eat. It changes the shape of our bodies. [10]

 

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Footnotes

[1] For more on emotion regulation:

• The Tyranny of Feelings
• Attitude and Behavior
• The Smoke Detector Principle (Why We Overreact)
• To Stay Focused, Manage Your Emotions

[2] From Peter Drucker's Managing Oneself:

Most people, especially highly gifted people, do not really know where they belong until they are well past their mid-twenties. By that time, however, they should know the answers to the three questions: What are my strengths? How do I perform? and, What are my values? And then they can and should decide where they belong. Or rather, they should be able to decide where they do not belong.

[3] For example, see Effects of subconscious and conscious emotions on human cue–reward association learning (Noriya Watanabe and Masahiko Haruno, Scientific Reports, 2015)

[4] For more on the impact of suppressing emotions:

• Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive and social consequences (James Gross, Psychophysiology, 2002)
• Consequences of Repression of Emotion: Physical Health, Mental Health and General Well Being (Jainish Patel and Prittesh Patel, International Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research, 2019)

[5] For more on these MESSy practices:

• Mindfulness
  • Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People)
  • Changing Our Brains, Changing Ourselves (Lea Winerman interviewing Richard Davidson, American Psychological Association Monitor, 2012)
• Exercise
  • Get Moving! (Exercise for Busy People)
  • Walking lifts your mood, even when you don't expect it to (Christian Jarrett, BPS Research Digest, 2016)
• Sleep
  • There's a Proven Link Between Effective Leadership and Getting Enough Sleep (Nick van Dam and Els van der Helm, Harvard Business Review, 2016)
  • Sleep-Deprived Leaders are Less Inspiring (Christopher Barnes, Harvard Business Review, 2016)
• (Reducing Chronic) Stress
  
  • How to Make Stress Your Friend [14-minute video] (Kelly McGonigal, 2013)
  • Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being (Linda Graham, 2013)

[6] Adapted from Attitude and Behavior

[7] Against Willpower (Carl Erik Fisher, Nautilus, 2017)

[8] Building Blocks (A Tactical Approach to Change)

[9] Quote Investigator

[10] Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life's Work, page 72 (Steven Pressfield, 2012) I discuss Pressfield's work further in Leadership as Professional Practice.

 

Photo by Andrew Rivett.

How to Cross Antarctica (On Surviving Chaos)

Business author Jim Collins recently gave a talk in which he discussed the contrasting leadership styles--and fates--of pioneering polar explorers Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott:

The work that Morten [Hansen] and I did in Great by Choice was really, ultimately, about thriving in chaos.

Number one, we observed that you learn how to exert self-control and self-discipline in a world that is out of control. We found this marvelous matched pair, Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott, the first two to try to go to the South Pole in 1911. It was like an entrepreneurial startup heading off into the most uncertain and unforgiving environment. It wasn't just, "Hey, let’s go to the South Pole, hunker down and survive." It was to try to be the first in history to reach the South Pole.

What we found is that the way Roald Amundsen led--he’s the one who got there first and got back alive and safe--was different than the way Robert Falcon Scott led. Scott got there second, and then he and his entire team died on the way back that same year.

The environment was completely out of control. It's the South Pole. It's 1911. It can easily kill you. You think it's hard building a company in California? Try going to the South Pole in 1911. It was the moon mission of 1911.

Amundsen was very, very disciplined in his march across the plateau, and Scott was very erratic. Amundsen stayed on this consistent march. He never wanted to get exposed to a terrible storm when he was depleted and exhausted. But even on really uncertain days, he would still make progress towards their goal, they were 20-mile marching across the plateau. Scott was much more erratic. He had big days and not big days, and the weather determining his pace rather than himself...

I go back to Amundsen and Scott. Both calculated the amount of supply depots they needed. It is highly inefficient to multiply your potential supply depots by three. But it's not highly inefficient if you're coming back, winter's gathering on you, and you run out of supplies and die. Tell me what efficient is. We found that great companies are kind of irrational in their "efficiency." They’re not the most efficient use of capital; they’re not the most efficient use of buffers. What they are is enormously resilient by design. [1]

My clients aren't polar explorers, but many of them are trying to be the first in history to accomplish a particular entrepreneurial venture, and at the moment all of them are trying to navigate an "uncertain and unforgiving environment." Winter isn't gathering--it's already here. If you're in similar circumstances, here are some issues to consider and questions to ask yourself:

Discipline & Consistency

Collins cites Amundsen's discipline and consistency as keys to his success and his team's survival. But this approach isn't exclusive to explorers in far-flung places. The English novelist Graham Greene was not only acclaimed (nearly winning the Nobel Prize twice) and popular (selling more than 20 million books in his lifetime), but also prolific (publishing 24 novels among countless essays and stories). [2] And discipline and consistency were hallmarks of his approach to work that continued through World War II and the London Blitz:

Over twenty years I have probably averaged five hundred words a day for five days a week. I can produce a novel in a year, and that allows time for revision and the correction of the typescript. I have always been very methodical, and when my quota of work is done I break off, even in the middle of a scene. [3]

Note the importance of stopping as a form of discipline. Amundsen stopped to ensure that he wouldn't get caught by a storm. Greene stopped in order to maintain his momentum every workday. And you'll undoubtedly need to impose similar limits on yourself. As Intel CEO Andy Grove once wrote, "My day always ends when I'm tired and ready to go home. Not when I'm done... A manager's work is never done. There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done." [4]

You probably won't have to cover 20 miles over snow and ice for today to count as a success--although you may need to write 500 words. Whatever your field, I suspect that in a chaotic and unpredictable environment the more control you can exert over your time, your effort, and your output the better off you'll be.

• What forms of discipline would support more consistent effort?
• What data will tell you that you've reached a useful limit?
• What boundaries and routines will help you stop? [5]

Efficiency

As Collins' remarks make clear, the definition of "efficiency" is highly contextual. An "efficient" use of resources in flush times when conditions are predictable and success is more likely will not serve you well when the environment changes radically. In your current role it might not get you killed, but it could certainly cause you to run out of time, money, patience, or stamina.

The key is understanding your existing constraints and how those constraints change with the environment. A regular topic of discussion in my work with leaders is the emergence of new constraints as their organization evolves. Limited capital is almost always the first and most significant gating factor, and it must be treated as a scarce and precious resource to extend the company's runway. But over the past decade capital was often rapidly surpassed as a governing constraint by talent, public prominence, or the leader's availability. [6]

With recent shifts in the economic climate, capital is again becoming a more salient constraint--but as Collins points out, an "efficient" use of capital won't be much help if you've run out of supplies in between depots. And even if you're responsible for capital allocation in your organization, perhaps the most important resources you need to allocate efficiently are your own time and attention. [7]

• What finite resources impose constraints on your personal and organizational operations?
• How might those constraints change under conditions of uncertainty?
• What's been your definition of "efficiency" in recent years?
• How should that definition evolve to suit the emerging environment?

Resilience

Collins mentions "resilience" only at the end of the excerpt above, but it's a quality at the heart of his message. While we may rightfully admire Robert Falcon Scott's bravery in the face of the challenge that ultimately claimed his life, that's not the same thing as resilience. As I've written before,

We often misunderstand the meaning of resilience, confusing it with invulnerability or toughness. The etymological root of resilience is the Latin resilire, which means "to rebound, recoil or jump back." Resilient materials deform under pressure while retaining their internal consistency, later returning to their original form. Iron is tough, but it's not resilient--when it reaches its breaking point it shatters into pieces. [8]

The "uncertain and unforgiving environment" of the next few years will no doubt test your resilience, and it may test your bravery as well, but let's not confuse the two. Let's also not view resilience as a monolithic quality we possess or lack. Work by psychologists Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté suggests that our degree of resilience is a function of the extent to which we manifest certain characteristics and engage in specific behaviors, all of which are learnable or subject to influence: Emotion regulation, impulse control, optimism, causal analysis, empathy, self-efficacy and reaching out. [9]

And therapist and meditation teacher Linda Graham notes that we can build resilience through "priming," or enhancing our ability to experience certain emotions or physiological states that will serve us well in difficult circumstances. In addition to beginning each day with some form of loving, physical connection--like a hug!--and recalling a memory or a hope that evokes a sense of well-being, we can also train ourselves to recognize when we've lost our composure, take a moment to breathe, feel our heart beating, and calm ourselves before proceeding. [10]

• What elements of resilience in Reivich and Shatté 's model feel like strengths of yours? How might you leverage them more fully?
• What elements feel weaknesses of yours? How might you cultivate them more deliberately?
• What daily practices enhance your ability to handle stress?

 

---

Footnotes

[1] Jim Collins on 'Thriving In Chaos' (Dan Bigman, Chief Executive, 2022)

[2] Graham Greene Dies, 86, Novelist of the Soul (The New York Times, 1991)

[3] The End of the Affair, page 34 (Graham Greene, 1951)

[4] High Output Management, page 47 (Andy Grove, 1983/1995)

[5] Happy Workaholics Need Boundaries, Not Balance

[6] The Problems of Success

[7] To Stay Focused, Manage Your Emotions

[8] The Ruling Out of Possibilities (On Failure)

[9] The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life's Hurdles, Chapter 2: How Resilient Are You?, pages 31-47 (Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté, 2002). For more on resilience and further excerpts from Reivich and Shatté's work, see The Art of Self-Coaching, Class 5: RESILIENCE & VULNERABILITY.

[10] Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being, page 230 (Linda Graham, 2013)

 

Photo by Eugene Kaspersky.

Nick Cave on Grief

Australian musician Nick Cave is no stranger to grief. At age 19 his father was killed in an automobile collision, a trauma that seems to have contributed not only to his decision to drop out of school to pursue music, but also to the initiation of a decades-long heroin habit, which he finally kicked after multiple stints in rehab. Nearly 40 years later, in 2015, Cave's 15-year-old son Arthur fell from a cliff and died from his injuries. The loss of Arthur had a profound effect on Cave and his wife Susie Bick, transforming not only their shared perspective on life, but also Cave's approach to music, art, and religion.

Cave discusses all of these topics at length with journalist Seán O'Hagan in a revelatory new book, Faith, Hope and Carnage, which proclaims on the back cover, "This is not a memoir. This is a conversation." Distilled from more than 40 hours of phone calls between Cave and O'Hagen over the past two years, the book provides a setting in which the two men explore complex ideas that require not only ample time and space, but also a tremendous amount of trust and a willingness to be candid and vulnerable. (In addition to serving as Cave's interlocutor, O'Hagan acknowledges his own grief following the loss of his younger brother Kieran.)

 

---

Nick Cave: ...I don't know quite how to explain this, Seán, except that perhaps God is the trauma itself.

Seán O'Hagan: You're going to have to try to explain that one. What do you mean by "God is the trauma itself?"

Cave: That perhaps grief can be seen as a kind of exalted state where the person who is grieving is the closest they will ever be to the fundamental essence of things. Because, in grief, you become deeply acquainted with the idea of human mortality. You go to a very dark place and experience the extremities of your own pain--you are taken to the very limits of suffering. As far as I can see, there is a transformative aspect to this place of suffering. We are essentially altered or remade by it. Now, this process is terrifying, but in time you return to the world with some kind of knowledge that has something to do with our vulnerability as participants in this human drama. Everything seems to fragile and precious and heightened, and the world and the people in it seem to endangered, and yet so beautiful. To me it feels that, in this dark place, the idea of a God feels more present or maybe more essential. It actually feels like grief and God are somehow intertwined. It feels that, in grief, you draw closer to the veil that separates this world from the next. [p 32]

 

---

Cave: You've experienced sudden loss and grief, too, Seán, so you know what I'm talking about. You are tested to the extremes of your resilience, but it's also almost impossible to describe the terrible intensity of the experience. Words just fall away.

O'Hagan: Yes, and nothing prepares you for it. It's tidal, and it can be capsizing.

Cave: That's a good word for it--"capsizing." But I also think it is important to say that these feelings I am describing, this point of absolute annihilation, is not exceptional. In fact it is ordinary, in that in happens to all of us at some time or another. We are all, at some point in our lives, obliterated by loss. If you haven't been by now, you will be in time--that's for sure. And, of course, if you have been fortunate enough to have been truly loved, in this world, you will also cause extraordinary pain to others when you leave it. That's the covenant of life and death, and the terrible beauty of grief.

O'Hagan: What I remember about the period after my younger brother, Kieran, died was a sense of total distractedness that came over me, an inability to concentrate that lasted for months. Did you experience that?

Cave: Yes, distraction was a big part of it, too.

O'Hagan: We talked earlier about the act of lighting a candle, and that for me was the only thing that could still my mind. It was as if peace had descended if only for a few moments.

Cave: Stillness is what you crave in grief. When Arthur died, I was filled with an internal chaos, a roaring physical feeling in my very being as well as a terrible sense of dread and impending doom. I remember I could feel it literally rushing through my body and bursting out the ends of my fingers. When I was alone with my thoughts, there was an almost overwhelming feeling coursing through me. I have never felt anything like it. It was mental torment, of course, but also physical, deeply physical, a kind of annihilation of the self--an interior screaming.

O'Hagan: Did you find a way to be still even for a few moments?

Cave: I had been meditating for years, but after the accident, I really thought I could never meditate again, that to sit still and allow that feeling to take hold of me would be some form of torture, impossible to endure. And yet, at one point I went up to Arthur's room and sat there on his bed, surrounded by his things, and I closed my eyes and meditated. I forced myself to do it. And, for the briefest moment in that meditation, I had this awareness that things could somehow be all right. It was like a small pulse of momentary light and then all the torment came rushing back. It was a sign and a significant shift. But when you mentioned that sense of constant distractedness, I was thinking about how, after Arthur died, there was a raging conversation going on in my head endlessly. It felt different to normal brain chatter. It was like a conversation with my own dying self--or with death itself. And, in that period, the idea that we all die just became so fucking palpable that it infected everything. Everything seemed to be at the point of dying.

O'Hagan: You sensed that death was all around you, just biding its time?

Cave: Exactly. And that feeling was very extreme for Susie. In fact, she kept thinking that everyone was going to die--and soon. It was not just that everyone eventually dies, but that everyone we knew was going to die, like, tomorrow. She had these absolutely existential free-falls that were to do with everyone's life being in terrible jeopardy. It was heart-breaking. But, in a way, that sense of death being present, and all those wild, traumatised feelings that went with it, ultimately gave us this weird, urgent energy. Not at first, but in time. It was, I don't know how to explain it, an energy that opened up all kinds of possibilities and a strange reckless power came out of it. It was as if the worst had happened and nothing could hurt us, and all our ordinary concerns were little more than indulgences. There was a freedom in that. [pp 41-43]

 

---

Cave: If there is one message I have, really, it concerns the question all grieving people ask: Does it ever get better?... The answer is yes. We become different. We become better.

O'Hagan: How long did it take before you got to that point?

Cave: I don't know. I'm sorry, but I can't remember. I don't remember much of that time at all. It was incremental, or it is incremental. I think it was because I started to write about it and to talk about it, to attempt to articulate what was going on. I made a concerted effort to discover a language around this indescribable but very ordinary state of being. To be forced to grieve publicly I had to find a means of articulating what had happened. Finding the language became, for me, the way out. There is a great deficit in the language around grief. It's not something we are practiced at as a society, because it is too hard to talk about and, more importantly, it's too hard to listen to. So many grieving people just remain silent, trapped in their own secret thoughts, trapped in their own minds, with their only form of company being the dead themselves. [pp 43-44]

 

---

Cave: I have since come to understand that there is little headway that we can make around grief until we learn to articulate it--speak it, say it out loud, sing about it, write it down, or whatever. There is no place to speak about grief in our regular lives. It's just not done, so we are left with these infernal abstractions that reside in our mind, and that, perhaps, unconsciously impact our behaviour. [p 95]

 

---

Cave: Arthur's death literally changed everything for me. Absolutely everything. It made me a religious person--and, Seán, when I use that word "religious," you do understand the way that I am using it, right? We've talked enough about that for you to understand I am not talking about being a traditional Christian or something like that. I am not even talking about a belief in God, necessarily. It made me a religious person in the sense that I felt on a profound level a kind of deep inclusion in the human predicament, really, and an understanding of our vulnerability and the sense that, as individuals, we are each of us, imperilled.

O'Hagan: You feel that we are imperilled?

Cave: Yes. Insofar as anything can turn catastrophic at any time, personally, for each of us. Look at this pandemic. Look how unbelievably vulnerable we are. All these systems supposedly holding the world in place and we are laid low by a virus. Each life is precarious, and some of us understand it and some don't. But certainly everyone will understand it in time. And because of that, I feel a kind of empathy with people that I never felt before. It feels urgent and new and fundamental. For the predicament we have all found ourselves in--the predicament of an imperilled life. [pp 105-106]

 

---

Cave: I think grief reinvents us. When I say grief, I mean the second life we lead after trauma. It feels more essential. The way we respond to things is altered--we become, as human beings, more precise.

O'Hagan: Yes, and much more selective in terms of what we listen to, read, watch. I like to think we become more attentive and discerning, but maybe it's just that we have less patience these days. [p 151]

 

---

Cave: We've talked about this a lot, the idea that suffering is, by its nature, the primary mechanism of change, and that it somehow presents us with the opportunity to transform into something else, something different, hopefully something better. That God bestows upon us these terrible, devastating opportunities that bring amelioration and transformation. This change is not something we necessarily seek out; rather, change, is often brought to bear upon us, through a shattering or annihilation of our former selves. [pp 165-166]

 

---

O'Hagan: I wonder if it is necessary to almost go under in order to come through stronger.

Cave: You mean, in regard to grieving?

O'Hagan: Yes.

Cave: That's an interesting idea, and I completely understand what you mean, but there is a very dangerous and seductive feeling to living life on the brink that I think should be resisted. In that very dark place, the grieving person can feel a proximity to the one they have lost that can be difficult to turn away from, or return from. That particular kind of grief can have a deadening and, I don't know, mechanising effect that, in some cases, can be permanent. I mean, Susie and I felt this within ourselves; for a while, there was a kind of zombification. I don't want you to misunderstand what I am saying, but there can be a kind of morbid worshipping of an absence. A reluctance to move beyond the trauma, because the trauma is where the one you lost resides, and therefore the place where meaning exists. [p 168]

 

---

Cave: We tend to see grief as an emotional state, but it is also an atrocious destabilising assault upon the body. So much so that it can feel terminal.

O'Hagan: Yes, and when you are deep in grief, there's no real comfort to be had in people constantly telling you that time will make things better. But I distinctly remember waking up one morning, having finally had a decent night's sleep, and thinking, it's going to be okay. There was a sense that something had shifted imperceptibly. Did that happen to you?

Cave: Well, at first there was nothing but darkness, but, over time, Susie and I started to experience something like small fragments of light. These points of light were essentially thoughtful gestures from the people we encountered. We began to see, in a profound way, that people were kind. People cared. I know that sounds simplistic, maybe even naive, but I came to the conclusion that the world wasn't bad, at all--in fact, what we think of as bad, or as sin, is actually suffering. And that the world is not animated by evil, as we are so often told, but by love, and that despite the suffering of the world, or maybe in defiance of it, people mostly just cared. I think Susie and I instinctively understood that we needed to move toward this loving force, or perish. [pp 169-170]

 

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Cave: I am very familiar with this feeling. It is the compensatory gift at the heart of grief. The usual precepts collapse under the weight of the calamity: the terrible demands that we place upon ourselves; our own internal judging voice; the endless expectations and opinions of others. They suddenly become less important and there is a wonderful freedom in that as well.

O'Hagan: Well, "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," as the great Kris Kristofferson put it.

Cave: Ha! Exactly, Seán, exactly! Fuck, I love that song. [p 190]

 

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Cave: Grief can lead some people to dark places from where they simply never return. I have seen it often. People constricting around an absence, growing hard and mad and furious at the world, and never recovering. There is nothing to lead them back from the abyss. And beyond that, too, I think the point-blank rejection of all spiritual matters as mere nonsense has its own problems. I'm talking about the outright rejection of religion by some who basically see it as a kind of inherent evil. That stance is a denial of all the potential good religion brings: the comfort, the succour, the redemption, the community. This thinking can bring its own kind of nothingness--not always, of course, but often. And, as we are seeing, people find a version of religion elsewhere, in tribalism, in their identity, in politics, for God's sake, in possessions. Look at our glorious secular world as it stands today. To me, secularism can also feel like a kind of hardening around an absence. So, essentially, what I am trying to present is the idea of grief as a gift. Grief as a positive force. Grief that can become, if we allow it its full expression, a defiant, sometimes mutinous energy. [p 220]

 

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O'Hagan: You both somehow managed to go beyond the trauma and the grief to the place where you are now. Did you make a conscious decision, as I think you once said to me, to defy it?

Cave: ...The life Susie and I have is full and replete with meaning. I love Susie more than I ever have. She feels the same about me. Our love is often joyous, which doesn't mean we don't shed our share of tears. I don't know how we got to where we are, because, in truth, I don't know where that is. I do know we shall never recover fully from the death of our son, nor should we. We are marked by it, and Susie carries a sadness that lives just below the surface of her loveliness, and perhaps that's what also makes her the astonishing and oceanic woman she is. I do know that Susie and I apportion meaning to the smallest things, in a way we never did before, and we get enormous comfort from this. Grief comes and goes, but it no longer scares us. We can collapse together, or apart, in the knowledge that tomorrow we will be back on our feet. I know that mostly I am happy and life is good. I don't mean that casually or trivially. I mean that life is actually good. People are good. I rarely see badness in people; rather, I see layers of suffering. I think people can do both terrible things and wonderful things when faced with the true understanding of their own powerlessness, vulnerability and lack of control. And I think Susie and I are acutely aware of the precarious nature of not only our lives, but all lives--their rareness, their preciousness--and that it can all disappear in an instant. In the light of that knowledge, we find gratitude to be a simple and essential act. And Arthur showed us that--the necessary and urgent need to love life and one another, despite the casual cruelty of the world. Love, that most crucial, counter-intuitive act of all, is the responsibility of each of us.

O'Hagan: You see the world as essentially good.

Cave: Well, in Revelations, there are those beautiful lines: "Look, He is coming with the clouds / And every eye shall see Him." I feel the goodness of the world must be experienced to some extent through the mechanism of suffering--the God in the cloud--if the notion of goodness is to hold any kind of truth or real substance. Beneath the surface, simple happiness is rarely simple at all, and most often hard-earned, and the price can be high. How Susie and I arrived at that place, I don't know, Seán. Like I said, I don't what what this strange place even is, but it was reached with baby steps, and through darkened rooms and countless cigarettes and a multitude of kindnesses from so many people, and many lessons learned along the way--just like anything else. [pp 239-240]

 

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For Further Reading

The Red Hand Files (Nick Cave). A website that Cave launched in 2018, The Red Hand Files consists of a series of answers to questions posed by the public. One of the most moving is Issue #6: in which Cave responds to the following:

I have experienced the death of my father, my sister, and my first love in the past few years and feel that I have some communication with them, mostly through dreams. They are helping me. Are you and Susie feeling that your son Arthur is with you and communicating in some way?

 

BOOKS AND ESSAYS

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (Atul Gawande)

The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker)

Dying: A Memoir (Cory Taylor)

Gratitude (Oliver Sacks)

Mortality (Christopher Hitchens)

Sheryl Sandberg, UC Berkeley Commencement (2016)

The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End (Katie Roiphe)

The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion)

When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)

Why Mortality Makes Us Free (Martin Hägglund, The New York Times, 2019)

 

POEMS

"Aubade" (Philip Larkin)

"For the Anniversary of My Death" (W.S. Merwin)

 

RELATED POSTS OF MINE

Mourning Ends, Grief Need Not

On the Shortness of Life

Marcus Aurelius, 3,000 Years, and the Present Moment

 

Photo of Nick Cave by NRK P3.