There are but Three

“There are but Three,” spoke the Eldest, her bright eyes shining in her creased leather face. “Each is tossed and torn by Sister Wind.”

We’d watched with envy as our brothers and sisters left for the fire-talks of the Clan. Now it was our turn to meet with the Eldest. The Chief’s messenger arrived at half-moon. My father and mother called me to our fire to hear, “You will attend the fire of the Eldest at moon-dark.

The fire in the Eldest’s hut was low and chill crept mouselike through chinks in the daub. We listened, eager for clanship, but secretly wishing for toys and play,.

“Sister Wind is with us always. She pushes and pulls the Three, and you, young ones, it is to you to feel her breath and know when to raise a sail and ride upon her back and when to set a windbreak and hunker till she calms or passes.”

“There are but Three. There are Three stories in your head to listen to, Three heartbeats to dance with, Three spirit sunfires to surge in you and Sister Wind blows them all. There are but Three, The Where, the How, and the Who.”

The Eldest paused. She took a sip from her cup. We looked at each other. I  know not what others were thinking but the story in my head said “What?”  The Eldest took another sip and, just before my head-story came jumping from my mouth, she continued.

“Some would now ask ‘What?” or perhaps “Why?” Good questions, but I ask that you keep them behind your teeth for now.” The Eldest looked into my eyes and smiled.

“For now let us look at the Three, the campfires Sister Wind puffs out her cheeks, and bellows-like blows upon.

The Where.

“The Where is our home. Our food comes from the Where, from the grains, leaves and flowers  that we coax from the earth, and from the animals who give us the blessing of their pelts and flesh.  The Mother feeds us, gives us water, shelters us from hot and cold, wet and dry. The Where is a part of the Clan because, as our feet walk upon the land, as we drink and sail her waters, as we look to the sun, moon and stars, we know where we are and from where we come.

The How.

“The How is the knowing and the doing and the tools that help the Clan to live. We forget the How to our peril. There is the knowing of the Where, the seasons and signs, the hard winter that follows fall of many acorns. There is the knowing of the tools, the wheel that grinds and moves the grain. The How is shared from mother and father to son and daughter, from neighbor to neighbor and it sustains the clan.

The Who.

“Many would say the Who is the Clan. That is true, but I urge you, young ones, not start there. Each of us grew in the Where and we learned the How. But before there was a Where or a How there was a You. The Shaman has helped some of you discover the animal who guides your spirit. Some of you may find a part of a Where that nourishes you. Some will let a How define You. But whether you become makun,  healun, foodun, hunter, grower, warrior or chief. The clan begins with You.

“You are the Clan and the Clan is You. You share the Where and the How with the Clan and the Clan is your belonging. If you become Trader or travel to other clans, you will learn to see beyond the Clan to People. You head-story may say You-Clan-People, but remember,

‘We are each of us unique, our Clans may differ, but we are all one People.’”

Just then Sister Wind blew a frigid blast and the Eldest got up, put another log on the fire and blew upon it till it caught.

“Sister Wind reminds me I was speaking of her” said the Eldest chuckling.

“I think Sister Wind blows when we are too comfortable. She breathes upon the Three sometimes separately, sometimes all at once in a big storm.

Sister Wind blows upon the Where.

“Perhaps the Feedun tells Council that hunters say the game moved or a grower that a crop has failed. Sometimes the Clan has betrayed the Mother and the Healun says the spring makes us sick.

When Sister Wind blows upon the Where the question will be: Windbreak or Sail? Windbreak should the Clan repair the Earth, or sail, should the Clan or some of us move to a new Where?

If it’s windbreak, the Clan must join together, share the work, and improve. If sail, then whoever moves must know they travel to a new Where and those there are also a clan and group of unique Yous. When you meet, connect with your You to the People and let the understanding of your Clan follow later.

Sister Wind blows upon the How.

“The Maikun may find a new knowing or tool. It is the nature of maikuns to do this. It is also the nature of others to think the old knowing is ‘perfectly fine.’ Remember the miller’s dislike of the water wheel and how he protected his donkey who turned the millstone? When Sister Wind blows upon the How, remember to test the new knowing and not forget the old. Think deeply; sometimes new tools change more than the work they make easier.

Sister Wind blows upon the Who.

“Willow bends before Sister Wind; if she did not, she would break, but she gives not up her Willowness. So You must bend and grow and help others in the Clan to also.

“When Sister Wind blows, it falls upon You to decide: Windbreak or Sail. Then you must win others to that choice. This is when you must tell the Why and the Why Now, and Why the other way will work no longer. Then explain the new Where or How and become a new Who, but give not up your Willowness.”

The fire had burned low again. The Eldest smiled and shooed us home. Sister Wind breathed gently on me, as I pondered my Willowness.

An attractive archetype

Americans are a scrappy lot. We’re “cussedly independent.” After all, the United States was founded by “embattled farmers” who broke the rules of war by wearing buckskins and hiding behind trees to shoot at soldiers marching in lines wearing bright red target-coats.

So it isn’t surprising that we love the “pirate” and the “outlaw,” those who “disrupt,” break the rules, or “stick it to the Man.” You can see it in our literature, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn,  our movies, Pirates of the Caribbean  and The Godfather and TV shows, The Sopranos  and Breaking Bad. We idolize business leaders like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.

Fashions change, but the pirate’s earring, the outlaw’s bandanna mask, the gangster’s pinkie ring perpetually resonate.

It is a romantic archetype, daring Outlaw, passionate Revolutionary, swashbuckling Pirate, Maverick, Outsider, Rebel. We cheer Zorro and Batman, rich men turned thieves and justice warriors for the poor.

Americans didn’t invent this archetype. The British have Robin Hood; the French have Cartouche. The Germans have Schinderhannes and the Australians have Ned Kelley, The Keralans in Southern India have Kayamkulam Kochunni, the Irish have Gráinne O’Malley, and the Chinese have Song Jiang. Outlaws with a heart are a global phenomenon.

There are brands that promote themselves as outlaws, Harley-Davidson, MTV, Apple. Some celebrities style themselves  bad-boys, like Erroll Flynn, who famously played Robin Hood, or Charlie Sheen  or bad-girls, like Madonna or Milie Cyrus. Country singers Willie, Waylon, and Kris were called outlaws because they resisted album strings tracks. Hank Williams Jr, and Chris Stapleton carry on the outlaw-country tradition.

Some leaders strike an outlaw pose, which, I guess, is OK until they start breaking actual laws or behaving in toxic ways. Then maybe it becomes a little less romantic and a lot less cool.

The Law is the law . . . except . . . maybe . . .

The United States was founded in the tradition of English common law. Before the Norman conquest of 1066 England was ruled in Anglo-Saxon legal tradition. Crimes were personal. Victims were entitled to compensation. If I killed your cow, I paid you for it. If I killed your wife I paid you, maybe more or less depending on the wife and the cow. If the parties could agree on compensation, great; if not, the chief or a jury of locals decided the crime price.

The feudal Normans built stone castles with square towers and keeps on hills overlooking thatch covered villages. The Normans, a colonial power, needed to keep the peace, so there were rules of accepted behavior. Crimes became less individual, and more crimes “against the community.” Adjudication of the law was centralized, conducted by clerks, literally clerics, literate clergy. These clerks’ knowledge of law came from Cicero, Virgil and the Vatican and was described as flowing from the Divine Right of the King. It’s tough to make exceptions to God.

The outermost rim of an Anglo-Saxon village was called the pale. If someone’s behavior was wild and uncontrollable it was described as “beyond the pale,” outside village acceptable behavior that might get you banished. The Normans expanded the concept of outlawry, to be outside the community and protection of the law.

Everyone had to follow the rules, even Kings. Henry II discovered this when his knights murdered Thomas á Beckett,  Archbishop of Canterbury. Royals were slow to learn.  King John’s barons spelled out the rules in the Magna Carta in 1215.

This is what the Adams, Jefferson, Franklin crew were upset about; George III was not following the rules. So they built a government to ensure “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It was a representative republic, which, despite visionary words, wasn’t all that representative, and we’ve been trying to grow into the words they used ever since.

The founders broke the rules to break away, but they were rule based folks. Sam Adams, the firebrand of the Son’s of Liberty, was an outlaw to the Crown and a patriot in our history books. So Americans had this dichotomy from our beginnings. We love “law and order,” a “government of laws not of men,” “the rule of law.” We also love the Outlaw and the Pirate. Maybe everyone does.

Unintended consequences

I have been rebellious for much of my life. I rebelled against my parents, my teachers, against bosses, against anyone who had the smallest bit of power over me. I broke some laws. I’m not proud of that, but fortunately I never hurt anyone or went to jail. I loved the pirate image; I even once contemplated an earring.

Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean is a fun romp. Captain Jack Sparrow meets up with Edward Teach, Blackbeard. The real Edward Teach was captured and beheaded after a career of capturing ships, killing their crews and marauding coastal communities. Maybe the earing isn’t so cool.

One filmmaker shows the horrific consequences of outlaw behavior. We laugh as Vito Corleon (Marlon Brando) in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather talks about an “offer he can’t refuse.” Then we wake with the man who discovers a severed horses head on his bloody satin sheets.

Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid have been lionized in books and movies, but you rarely hear from the families of Pinkertons guards or Bolivian federales they killed. Al Capone, the bootlegger operator avoided getting caught by becoming a local folk hero. The victims of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre didn’t get a say. Capone was put away by the IRS for tax evasion.

People talk blithely about tax evasion a “victimless crime.” This is the Anglo-Saxon view of crime. The victim isn’t one person or one company, it is a crime against the community.

Some admire how drug dealers “beat the system” until your brother dies of a fentanyl overdose or your little sister is caught in a gang crossfire. We call terrorists “freedom fighters” until they commit an unspeakable crime in the name of “liberation.” The Pirate and Outlaw are too wrapped up in ”rules don’t apply to me” to care about anything but themselves.

But that earring, bandana, and pinkie ring sure are cool.

“The Emperor is naked!”

It is left to a naïve child to blurt out the truth, when so many would not because they were flattering the emperor or afraid of appearing stupid.

In 1837, the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen published the folk tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. The story tells of a vain ruler obsessed with being a fashion plate. Every outfit had to be new and spectacular. Enter two con men who flatter the high king promising to create a suit of clothes so dazzling that only the incompetent and stupid will not see its magnificence.

Andersen, like the Grimm brothers, collected folk tales from around the world.  He based this one on a German translation of a Spanish version of a Persian retelling of an Indian tale. All previous versions make the clothes visible to those of legitimate birth; people praise the unseen clothes lest they outed as bastards. Andersen changed the invisibility indicator to incompetence and so insecure courtiers’ fawning exposes the king’s bum.

The con-tailors elaborately loom an invisible suit. The emperors advisors rave about the garments’ beauty. No one, including the Emperor, admits they might be too stupid to appreciate such sartorial splendor.

One small boy gives the ruler the “straight skinny” when the emperor parades past in his birthday suit.

As leaders rise, the “straight skinny” recedes.

Getting honest feedback at the top of an organization (or a country), is hard. A Mike Nichols and Elaine May song lyric from the movie Ishtar illustrates:

“Telling the truth can be dangerous business. Honest and popular don’t go hand-in hand.

If you admit that you play the accordion, no one will hire you in a rock-n-roll band.”

 There are the flatterers, who might “fib just a little” to better their career prospects.

“You are such an amazing founder. Ignore the shareholder requests for a new CEO. Who else could lead this company as well as you do!”

There are the “sugar-coaters.”

“The people who fill out surveys only complain; we have millions of happy customers.”

“When you cut sales demographically we’ve made some real gains in the those over 65.”

 There are some who are protecting your feelings.

“No, of course that dress doesn’t make you look fat.”

“Everybody forgets things.”

“You look good!”

We old people hear this one so much, comedians now talk about the three ages of man: Youth, Middle Age, and “You look good!”)

It ain’t all their fault

Leaders create the dearth of straight skinny. When you explode at bad news, you ensure others “won’t make that mistake again.”

Are you susceptible to flattery?  When you receive a compliment do you glow in a way that affects critical thinking?

Who do you include in your closest meetings? Flatterers and sugar-coaters? People who believe in you and your ideas? Or “”Difficult people,” “Debbie Downers,” “Nattering nabobs of negativity?”

Are you prepared to believe any cockamamie explanation instead of the truth. ”You know DeNile is not just a river in Egypt.” (Denial is self-preservation for vanity.)

There are consequences beyond your feelings.

Beneath the radar in every disaster there was probably a “straight skinny teller:”

“General Custer, sir, I think there might be more of them than you think.”

“Captain Smith., I’d like to see Titanic set the crossing record too, but they did say icebergs have been spotted.”

At one point in my career I studied large process safety incidents, BP’s Texas City Refinery, Deep Water Horizon, Challenger, Columbia, and many more. In every one I studied there was always someone with the “straight skinny” who was disregarded or even ridiculed. Lives and livelihood are too much at stake not to listen.

Not listening is a tragic flaw

Playwrights and authors have always seen those who ignore the “straight skinny” as creators of their own destruction.

Sophocles, gave Oedipus many who warned about the “kill Dad, bed Mom” thing. Did Fast-Oedi listen? Not-so-much.

King Lear listened to daughters Goneril’s and Regan’s flattery and rejected his truth-tellingdaughter Cordelia. ‘How like a serpents tooth it is to have a thankless child.” When the Earl of Kent tries to inform him of his mistake, Lear kicks him out of the cabinet.

Anakin Skywalker, feared losing Padme, became Darth Vader. Othello feared losing Desdemona and he and pretty much everyone became dead. Neither listens to people trying to give them the straight skinny.

Finding your straight skinny teller

You can look for straight skinny devotes by assiduously avoiding the opposites. What is the opposite of the straight skinny teller? The crooked skinny teller who promises you inside information, but gives you lies that only benefit them? The straight corpulent who is always positive, not just a half-full person, but a cup-runneth-over person.

There are some other ways:

• Start with the person in the mirror. Express gratitude for bad news. Take compliments graciously and move on, steeling yourself against flattery. Ask for all the data, not just the good stuff.
• Notice who agrees and disagrees with you. You want independent thinkers. The person who always agrees with you is gravitating to the power source. The person who always disagrees may be counter-dependent.
• Don’t play favorites. Bring different people into meetings. Ask for opposing viewpoints in decision-making discussions.
• Value you those who help keep your ego in check. When the Roman Senate authorized a Triumph, the parade and celebration ceremony for victorious generals, they placed a Senate slave in the general’s chariot to repeat “Momento mori sic transit gloria” (“Remember you are mortal; glory fades”). My wife sometimes fills this role, with humor that helps me laugh at myself.
• Say “thank you” when someone gives you the straight skinny. Reward those who break you out of denial, short circuit your magical thinking, and identify and challenge assumptions. Perhaps you’ll avoid that embarrassing moment when someone blurts out:

 The Emperor is naked!

My inner thirteen-year-old boy spit Mountain Dew everywhere when I came up with this title, but he thinks it is “way better than ‘Self-Leadership’ – boring!”  Every act of leadership is first an act of self-leadership. Leading change starts with “taking yourself in hand,” (snicker, snicker).

Change requires leaders

I spent a significant part of my long consulting career “training” leaders. I facilitated leadership workshops at British Airways, General Motors, Short Brothers, BP among other companies. I ran countless leadership team offsites to formulate new strategies, or design new organizations.

Eventually, I differentiated between management skill, which focuses on getting work done in a relatively steady state, and leadership skill, which clarifies direction in abnormal states like change, war or emergency, and attracts followers so that “people move as one” in the new direction – transformation, victory or safety. I emphasized the importance of both skills to the organizations with whom I worked. Some companies were more successful at change than others, but I know I reached many individuals in ways they appreciated.

I will always remember the epiphany of one senior manager, who said, “I didn’t want to attend this session, but I now see that change in this huge corporation comes down to me doing different things or doing things differently. I can’t do it myself, but we can’t do it without me either.”

Leadership development

Each of these learning interventions was different. Sometimes clients expected a “secret sauce,” a formula for leadership that had worked many places and would work for them. In my early years, I often used the same themes: vision and visionary communication, empathy, empowerment, trust, tough-mindedness, and exemplary actions. Many of these ideas worked as themes, but the “course materials” were always different. After all, leadership is steeped in the context of the change. We lead toward something or away from something, but the something is specific.

Many organizations, even civilizations have trained leaders. The Periclean Age Athenians educated high potentials in philosophical dialogue and oration and sent them to Eleusis to experience the “mysteries” of the cult of Demeter – the cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth – change and hope apparently aided by ergot fungus.

Militaries have always trained their elite corps from the Spartan Hippeis (not “hippies”), to Rome’s Praetorian Guard, to West Point, Annapolis, and the US Airforce Academy. Many business schools, universities, and even high schools offer courses in leadership. Many of these probably teach a combination of management and leadership skill, along with concepts like initiative, proactivity, and prioritization. All good content, but many will still say that “leaders are born not made.”

Self-leadership

Great leaders are often portrayed as born with certain virtues. Six-year-old George Washington told his father “Father, I cannot tell a lie. It was I who cut down your prize cherry tree with my little hatchet.” His father was so impressed with Georgie’s honesty that he didn’t punish him; perhaps this is where Washington’s famed magnanimous ideals came from. (My father would have slowly removed his belt.)

The cherry tree story showed up in the fifth edition of Mason Locke Weems’ book The Life of Washington,  originally published in 1800, the year of Washington’s death, under the title The History of the Life, Death, Virtues, and Exploits of General George Washington. Parson Weems was a traveling Episcopal minister, who sold his books on the side. He apparently subscribed to the “great leaders are born” theory, describing the President’s natural honesty, athleticism, temperance, and “veneration for the Deity.” He missed that Washington overcame dyslexia to teach himself to read. Washington’s wisdom came from accepting responsibility for and learning from some colossal mistakes. He single-handedly started the French and Indian War by attacking a French scouting party he could have easily gone around and was strategically cautious in battle thereafter. His motto was “99% of failures come from people who make excuses.”

Twelve-year-old Abraham Lincoln borrowed Parson Weems’ book from a farmer seven miles walk from his home. When the tome got damaged by rain, Lincoln worked for the farmer for three days to repay his debt.

Honest Abe is often described as a self-made man. He had no formal education, but taught himself to read. His voice was often as “shrill,” or “reedy” or “sharp and piercing like a boatswain’s whistle.” Yet he was known as a tremendous orator. “His words rang through” and his enunciation and slow, considered delivery ensured that he was understood.

Washington and Lincoln came from vastly different backgrounds, but they each developed themselves. In that sense perhaps all leaders are self-developed, people experienced in “taking themselves in hand” or first leading themselves before leading others.

Taking yourself in hand

Even when I get past my teenage boy snickering, it’s an unusual phrase for self-leadership. Holding your own hand and leading yourself. We have many such phrases:

• “Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” has been used as an unrealistic expectations cudgel for the disadvantaged, but expresses personal responsibility and self-reliance.
• “Steel yourself” implies determination and self-imposed tough-mindedness that will not accept failure or give up.
• “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” advocates a “there is no failure, but giving up” ethos.
• “No. Try not! Do or Do Not. There is no Try!” in the words of Yoda from George Lucas’s Star Wars.

Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, is instruction for self-leadership.

1. 1. Be proactive
   2. Begin with the end in mind
   3. Put first things first
   4. Think win/win
   5. Seek first to understand, then to make yourself understood
   6. Learn to synergize
   7. Sharpen the saw

Whether you buy Covey’s recipe for success or leadership or whether you have your own five or seven principles, you only become successful, fulfilled, a leader, by acting, practicing, learning (perceiving and processing), and acting again – in other words,  by “taking yourself in hand.”

(Snicker, snicker)

I awoke this morning with Jeff Foxworthy on my mind. Foxworthy is a stand-up comedian, a part of the Blue Collar Comedy tour, the author of four books, an actor in thirteen movies and thirty-six television shows and series, and counting. What I remember him for is the way he created humor from a slur that Northern city folk threw at rural Southerners.

“If. . . you have more cars in your driveway. . . and ‘specially more wrecked cars on your front lawn . . . than you have people in your house     . . . you might be . . . a redneck.”

Foxworthy took a derogatory term, owned it himself, got his audience to laugh, while admitting that they “might be a redneck”. . . and feel pride and maybe clean the front lawn. Quite a feat.

But why I woke up thinking about Jeff Foxworthy related more to leadership and management.

“Everyone thinks they’re a leader; nobody wants to manage or be managed. Everyone here has a ‘vision,’ but shit ain’t getting done!”

I remember my client’s frustration. His post-merger integration wasn’t going according to plan. He wasn’t handling it well. He did put his finger on the difference between two distinct skillsets, leadership and management. Leaders clarify direction and attract followers; managers get shit done. In business, and especially in change you need both skillsets.

If you read articles in the business press, or the books of numerous business professors, or dilletante blogs (including this one), you’ll read plenty of words like:

“Vision, mission, values,  clarity, discipline, accountability, development,

recognition and reward, gratitude, empathy, loyalty, trust, caring, service,

inspiration, empowerment, commitment, personal responsibility, example,

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and so on and so forth.”

And if you read social media about people’s experiences at work, sure, there are some laudatory posts about so-and-so “who changed my life” that use words like those above, but all too frequently you read the misfortunes of the misled and mismanaged using words like:

“Jerk, narcissist, egomaniac, asshole, psychopath, bastard, sociopath, bitch, autocrat, jackass or some variant from the following matrix:

Apparently too many leaders and managers just don’t know they are the BadBoss and can’t laugh at their own foibles to begin the process of change.

So I thought I’d try a Foxworthy:

If . . . no one can do anything as well as you can, . . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If . . . you’re ALWAYS in the office or plant after everyone else has gone home,

. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss

If . . . everyone . . . gives you compliments . . . and laughs at ALL your jokes, . . .

. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If. . . you “have no problem with the tough jobs” like squeezing a supplier or letting people go,

. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If. . .  people stop their conversations to greet you . . . EVERY time you walk into a room,

. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If . . . people always have an answer for any negative variance from budget,

and you have very few conversations when things are going well,

. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If. . . you’re NEVER the last one to leave work, and your golf handicap is coming down,

. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If . . . “My door is always open”  is a regular phrase in your work vocabulary,

. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If you NEVER hear bad news until it’s BAD and then they tell you as a team from across the room,

. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If . . . you often hear yourself say “Where did you get that idea?” or “That’s not what I meant!”

. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If. . . every time you say something nice, people stand around awkwardly. . . waiting for the “but”

. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If your team ALWAYS sets “stretch goals” that they NEVER make,

. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If . . . people always do what you want, sure maybe you have to scowl like you’re about to explode, but you’ve mastered that skill and, in the end, they always do what you want,

. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If . . . you hear yourself say. . . “You know, it’s always the same people who do all the special projects,” . . . and then you realize. . . “they didn’t volunteer, I picked them,”

. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If . . .  your door is always closed. . . you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If . . . you say, “This way gang, let’s go”. . . and you look over your shoulder and no one’s there, … you might be . . . a BadBoss.

If . . . you’re the boss, and there was any “ouch” in your laughter, as Jeff Foxworthy would say:

“Check Your Neck.”