Leadership - What has an Orange to do with Leadership?

Welcome back!

Orange-Einzeln Dear Readers,

After looking more closely in the last issue at the leadership principles Barack Obama used to win his election in the USA and at what you can learn from them for your day-to-day business, today I would like together with you to look at another important leadership principle you need not only need for “self-management” but also in order to help your subordinates develop from level 3 to level 4. Without understanding this principle it will be very difficult for you to lead a colleague from the third level onto the fourth level of development So that you understand the significance of the precept, I will have to give a bit of background information and briefly explain the concept of responsibility. Therefore I will begin with a question that may appear unusual:

“Why is an orange far in advance of most managers?”

You will now say: “Mr. Assis, what kind of question is that?” Now, I can understand why you react in this way – but give yourself the time to think about it for a moment. Let us repeat the question again:

“Why is an orange far in advance of most managers?”

An interesting question, because why should a fruit be in advance of us? Now, I mean in its behavior or its reactions? Any idea?

Let us take a look at what happens when you squeeze an orange. What comes out of the orange? Right! Orange juice. And what happens when you put an orange on the ground and step on it? What comes out of the orange? Right! Orange juice and pulp.

And what happens when you throw an orange with full force against the wall? What comes out of the orange then? Right! Again orange juice.

We could now choose and put forward innumerable examples like this but I think you realize what I am getting at and we can agree to say:

No matter what you do with an orange – orange juice will always come out of it!

Or in other words: “An orange always reacts with what is in it.”

Right? Good! So why is it in advance of most managers?

Now ask yourself: Do you always only react with what is in you in every situation you are confronted with in your daily activity as a manager or in you life? Let us take an example from everyday life. Let us assume that you are in a relationship, perhaps you are engaged or married. As a rule you can say that people who are in a relationship or who are are married love each other and that love is the feeling that they feel for one another. If you do not happen to be in a relationship, then take any other form of human relationship and ask yourself: “‚What is the essential emotion I feel in connection with this relationship and/or the other person?” And then ask yourself the following question: Do I always always react with the essential emotion I feel for this person – no matter how the other person encounters me, no matter what they do to me or how they act towards me?

Do you always react with what is in you?

As long as everything goes harmoniously and the other person acts as you “expect” them to (no matter whether this is a conscious or unconscious expectation), it is most probably easy for you to react with what is in you. But how do things look when the other person does not act as you expect them to? What then? If your “expectations” are even disappointed (independently of whether your expectations are justified or are a product of your imagination or dreams). What then? How do you react then? Still with what is in you?

Still with what is your “essential emotion” toward the person and/or the relationship? Most of us will here admit that in these situations at the latest an orange is far in advance of us – or at least the vast majority of us. And I would like to go one step further. This first insight is important in order to understand the second insight and to be able to draw the lesson from it. The example of the orange shows us well that we ought to think about our reactions more often and also about how we are reacting to the people we are managing. It shows us that we often take ourselves far too seriously and often give things a significance that none of them will have in 10, 20 or 30 years‘ time or at least not the significance we give them today. So you can say that the orange teaches us to be more patient and to react much more with love. It demands that we be more tranquil in our reactions to our surroundings. A very interesting example of such a development is the life of Mahatma Gandhi, the man who freed India from its British colonial masters without violence. Read his biography and see what path he followed. And so we have come to the first question I was asked when I discussed this subject with a very close friend a few days ago. The question:

“How far should this understanding go? Is there a limit to how long you should react with what is in you?”

For that it is now important to abandon the example of the orange. Because in contrast to a human being an orange has no emotions in the sense we know them. So let us take a look at how long you should be an “orange”… Before we go into this more deeply I would like to tell you directly that you will not find any measurable specifications in the lines below because in this respect every person is different and every person has different values and principles. Nevertheless I would like to give you an answer in the following lines by showing you what I learned from one of my mentors and what lessons I have drawn for myself from the events of the last few days.

So let us assume that you subordinate repeatedly reacts differently from that you expected. It is important to first ask yourself whether you expectations can be fulfilled or whether under the circumstances your expectations are far too high for the other person so that they are not in a position to fulfill your expectations. Furthermore, you should ask yourself whether you yourself fulfill the criteria you expect of the other person. It is relatively difficult to expect something of somebody else when you yourself cannot fulfill the expectations. So check your own criteria. In both cases healthy self-reflection is important. In other words, the ability to consider yourself and your behavior with detachment. I find it helpful to do this in writing on paper and to write down the whole situation, the actions and the reactions – and the accompanying emotions – as an outside observer would do. For this purpose I have for many years been keeping a log of decisions and observations where I write these things down. (You will learn more about this decision log when we deal with the the practical implementation of the individual levels of development.)

In this way I achieve an emotional separation from the situation and acquire some distance from the issues. Something that is very helpful when you want to resolve highly emotional situations. If you are involved in such a situation in your life at the moment, I invite you to do this NOW! When you have done so and come to the conclusion that your expectations are justified and that you yourself fulfill the demands or criteria, then you have two possibilities – and it is of great significance that we should recognize the possibilities in our lives! The first possibility may be that you reduce your own expectations and bring them to a level where the other person is in a position to fulfill them. The only question ere is: “How long can you keep it up and how far do you want to downshift your expectations and yourself?”

The second possibility may be that you decide not to downshift your expectations. Then again you have two possibilities. Either you end the collaboration or you attempt to explain things to you subordinate and to make them understand why these expectations and their fulfillment is so important to you.

But what if nobody grasps the opportunities?

Well, then I can pass on to you a lesson that one of my mentors once gave to me, one that has helped me often since then in difficult situations with other people. Before my mentor decided at that time whether he would like to coach me and whether I was a person he would permit to to stay close to him, a person he could trust, he “put me under pressure.” What do I mean by that? He put me in situations where I was subjected to immense pressure – whether the pressure came from outside or whether I I imposed this pressure on myself. Before he started to really deal with me, to concern himself with me, he wanted to know and to find out who I really was.

Since he was and is a very busy man, he had no time to waste, and since the coaching relationship I wanted to have with him meant being very close to him, he had to find out who I really was. In the course of the years, even after I passed these first “tests,” as I call them, he has done so again and again in order to find out if I am still the same person he gave his trust to at the beginning. Before he began to coach me, he said to me at that time: “The true face of a person is something you first recognize when they come under pressure.”

We have all already experienced something like this at some time or other: We believed that we really knew a person and we got to know a completely new, different aspect of this person when they got into a situation where they came under pressure. Since my mentor had no time to wait for such moments where he would then discover that under certain circumstances I was the wrong person to receive his trust, he placed me under great pressure. This behavior is something that I have often observed in other successful people in the course of the years. The have artificially created situations where pressure arises in order to discover the true face of a person and assess who this person really is.

Why am I explaining this to you?

Because I had forgotten this important lesson myself. In recent weeks and months I have personally experienced what it is like when you notice that somebody who is very close to you in your job does not fulfill your expectations because they are under pressure. I checked my own expectations and reduced them. At the same time I tried as much as possible to be an “orange” and I explained to this person why these expectations were important to me and that they were expectations that would lead to and sustain more success and mutual respect. And since I was so caught up in this situation and so busy trying to be an orange and to help this person and to do things right, I did not see that life was lending me a helping hand by increasing the pressure on this person – without me seeing it directly.

The result?

The true face of this person became apparent. And now it was easy for me to recognize that I had reached a point where I could do anything I wanted – and it would be useless! And so I was able to recognize that I had been far too reticent, had downshifted everything that was important to me and had neglected it far too much. This was an insight that did not come easily – but I had to realize: No matter how much orange juice I produce it does not bring any results if the other person does not want or like orange juice! So I remembered the words of my mentor and split from somebody who was very close to me at work and who was very important to me in business. And I have done so irrevocably! Because that is something I also learned from my mentor: Once they are out, there is no way back! And what lesson do I draw from this?

It is a good thing to be an orange! It is a good thing to want to help other people and to be there when they need you. And I also need orange juice from myself. Compromises are important and helpful when you are collaborating with other people. No matter whether this is on a professional or a private level. Therefore it is sometimes helpful to lower your own expectations and to check these regularly. But it is just as important, if not more important, never to betray your own values and the things that are important to you by being too reticent.

It is important to pay regard to the things you have learned in life and to respect them. And it is important to preserve your freedom of spirit and to be able to discard yesterday‘s opinions if your views are different today. But as managers we must never forget that we are also always managing ourselves and that we also pass through the 4 plus 2 levels of development. And sometimes we also fall back a level ourselves and have to lead ourselves through them. Because we are always providing leadership! Not only in the classical “manager-subordinate” relationship but, of course, also sideways and upwards in the hierarchy.

Therefore remember: Leadership is action and not position.

Kindest regards,

Your Coach Nuno F. Assis