The Power of the Herd. Linda Kohanov
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training programs don’t prepare new leaders, let alone visionaries, for the most infuriating challenges involved. Common advice for handling power stress is to “suck it up” and “get over it.” Even the best books on emotional intelligence in the workplace only scratch the surface of the personal and social issues innovators face.
In negotiating the Cycle of Sacrifice and Renewal, for instance, renewal is not as simple as taking a vacation, eating dinner at home several times a week, and spending a couple weekends a month attending your child’s soccer games. The inescapable pressure of unresolved interpersonal difficulties, high expectations and demands, heartless gossip, and the general lack of compassion people display for the leader’s position follow you wherever you go, keeping you up nights, infiltrating your private thoughts and spousal conversations on even the most isolated Hawaiian beaches. In Resonant Leadership, authors Boyatzis and McKee create a strong foundation for interrupting the Sacrifice Syndrome through cultivating mindfulness, hope, and compassion; but real, lasting renewal also requires successfully managing a host of paradoxes simultaneously. Leaders must somehow balance individual and group needs within their companies and the culture at large. They must sacrifice personal comfort and short-term gratification yet avoid burnout, in part by setting effective boundaries with fans, foes, and the relentless energy of inspiration itself. To develop a thick skin, as new managers are so often tempted to do, is to lose the sensitivity necessary for creativity, and the compassion essential for effective leadership. To keep your heart open is to experience a certain amount of pain daily. Learning how to manage the discomfort without simply shutting down is possible. But the personal breakthroughs that are required resemble the transformations most often associated with religious or mystical experience.
Models for great leadership, in fact, read like recipes for sainthood. As Boyatzis and McKee observe, great leaders “deliberately and consciously step out of destructive patterns to renew themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally.” These individuals “are able to manage constant crises and chronic stress without giving into exhaustion, fear, or anger. They do not respond blindly to threats with fearful, defensive acts. They turn situations around, finding opportunities in challenges and creative ways to overcome obstacles. They are able to motivate themselves and others by focusing on possibilities. They are optimistic, yet realistic. They are awake and aware, and they are passionate about their values and their goals. They create powerful, positive relationships that lead to an exciting organizational climate.” And they’re masters at helping colleagues and employees rise to similar levels of creativity, emotional intelligence, and social awareness simply for efficiency’s sake, if not for altruistic reasons.
As I’ve so often asked myself, my colleagues, my mentors, and sometimes anyone within hearing range, where’s the handbook for that?
The Horse I Rode In On
In the early 1990s, an initially frustrating attempt at renewal gave me the insight and later the tools to address some of these age-old dilemmas. I had recently resigned from my position as program director of a Florida public radio station to move to Arizona with my new husband, recording artist Steve Roach. After five years wrangling a group of energetic, highly opinionated, artistically motivated people, not only at the station itself but also during the numerous special events and music festivals I organized along the Gulf Coast, I was ready for a break. Working as a freelance writer, living in the desert with my own private composer creating new works of art in the next room, was a dream come true, fulfilling yet economically unpredictable for both of us. So it wasn’t long before I also accepted a position as morning announcer at the local classical station. No longer dealing with the headaches of managing such an operation, I was expecting to hide out in the studio, enjoying a daily dose of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. The problem was, even though the station was technically a part of a major university’s communications department, there was precious little communication going on. And so, after experiencing the employee/employer dynamic from the leader’s viewpoint, I was suddenly thrust back into the labor pool to reevaluate both perspectives from the trenches.
In its public role, the station played sophisticated, soothing sounds. Behind the scenes, however, its administration was unnecessarily secretive and manipulative, playing political games, most often at the expense of female employees, who were rarely, if ever, promoted. As a nationally recognized music critic and former program director myself, I had a reputation that garnered a certain level of respect from the administration. But watching colleagues deal with a capricious, incongruent system tested my patience. Consoling these people inadvertently became part of my job, as several of my most creative work-related friends would burst into the announcing studio in tears, telling me ever more disturbing tales of maltreatment to the tempestuous accompaniment of Rachmaninoff, Wagner, and Ravel. As a lowly announcer myself, I was powerless to initiate organizational change, yet as an individual with a certain amount of leadership presence, I could occasionally turn the tide in my own favor. The ability to teach these skills to my fellow employees eluded me, however, mostly because I was unaware of key nonverbal elements influencing the most frustrating, as well as the most successful, of these pivotal interactions.
At the same time, I was perplexed by the famous musicians I encountered. Most people, radio station managers included, suppress emotion, hiding their true intentions behind bland smiles and passive-aggressive maneuvers, only to blow up at inopportune moments under stress. Yet artists rewarded handsomely for expressing emotion were likewise leading highly dysfunctional lives. It seemed that suppression and expression were two sides of the same dysfunctional coin, and my faith in the sanity of our species was deteriorating — fast.
And so in my midthirties, while my husband was off touring Europe with several other musicians, I impulsively bought a horse. My intention was to ride into the desert, to get as far away as possible from the human race on a regular basis. Yet this beautiful, willful mare refused to comply with my escape plan. Nakia, a striking Thoroughbred ex-racehorse, tested me every step of the way, showing absolutely no respect for my hard-won reputation. It didn’t matter to her that a well-known music magazine flew me to Los Angeles to interview k.d. lang one week, then sent me to Japan a month later to write a cover story on Brian Eno. There was no way I could impress my mount with stories of how another publication was arranging dinners with classical violin virtuosos Isaac Stern and Anne-Sophie Mutter in between meetings with jazz great Wynton Marsalis and rock guitarist Carlos Santana. She didn’t even care that I talked to Johnny Cash an hour before I drove out to the barn one day. Chatting with a country music legend did not make me a passable rider. All those years sitting at a desk, writing, listening to music, and talking into a microphone had cut me off from the fluidity, assertiveness, and balance in motion that even the most generous horse demands, and this mare was hell-bent on showing me exactly how my “prestigious” career made me weak and ineffective.
Yet a strange thing began to happen. As I became more adept at motivating my horse, focusing her attention, and gaining her respect, relationships at home and work improved. People commented on the change, yet no one could pinpoint what had shifted. I also noticed nonverbal dynamics at play in myself and others that were reinforcing dysfunctional patterns on both sides of the employer/employee relationship, though at first I had no idea how to change the situation. It was as if someone had suddenly turned a spotlight on interactions we’d been trying to maneuver through in the shadows, and yet for years I had been unable to even describe these observations to others. Over time, I realized that no matter how eloquently we humans advocated change, how diligently we debated the issues, how zealously we strategized, what we couldn’t talk about was a much more powerful motivator of behavior than anything we could discuss. Working with horses quickly became much more than a diversion. It was the missing link in my education as a writer, musician, wife, friend, employee, and, increasingly, leader.
Psychologists have observed that only 10 percent of human interpersonal communication is verbal. And yet in our culture, we’ve become mesmerized by words as our social and educational systems teach us to dissociate from the body, the environment, and the subtle nuances of nonverbal communication. More and more, our conversations don’t even take place in person, as cell phones, email, and text messages proliferate. Where in the world do we go to master that other 90 percent?
For me, the most rustic of boarding stables proved a worthy setting.