Meet the REAL ene-ME…

Today my client was tired. Needed a vacation….had 3 trips coming up in 2 months that he didn’t want to go on. More coming later this year he couldn’t bear to think about it.

“Actually”, he told me, “I’m depressed. I can’t do this anymore. How do leaders of even bigger systems do it? How does a President last even ONE term? No matter how much I do there’s always more. 16 hours a day and it’s not enough. It’s never enough. I’m having no fun. I can’t do this anymore…I can’t keep this up… I’m not as young as I used to be.”

After about 5 minutes I interrupted. “Congratulations, my friend” I replied, surprising him, more with my cheery tone than my words. “You have finally met the REAL ene-ME.” He squinted quizzically.

“I’m looking at him.” A hint of a smile broke out, then a grin. Finally he laughed. He laughed even more when I asked him where his WRITING was that he had (STILL not) done on his “I LOVE tos” and his “BIG dream.”

“You’re right,” he confessed.

And then we got to the real root of it all.

“I feel like I can’t be myself, here… when I bring up an idea or challenge someone’s thinking they get real quiet…and so I’ve just been nodding my head and saying ‘you’re right’ to not create any more trouble.”

“So how’s THAT working for you?” His smile winced with pain, nodding.

“It’s KILLING you. And if you don’t face your REAL ‘ene-ME’ you will be DEAD. Do you see it? And you could just LEAVE but the problem is your REAL ene-ME would just leave with Y.O.U. and you’d run right into this again wherever you go.”

He nodded, exposed but grateful.

“Let me play back to you what I’ve heard…part of your BIG dream is you would LOVE to be part of a real TEAM where you can surface CONFLICT and challenge the WHY of our thinking in search of the best IDEAS without the leader or fellow teammates shutting each other down.”

He viscerally came out of chair — “those are EXACTLY the words I’ve been searching for!”

If you’ve been following this blog, you know what the rest of this BUILT TO LEAD session looked like. A high-performance culture doesn’t happen by itself, it must be FOUGHT for. It takes humility to look in the mirror and see how you’ve contributed to the current situation you find yourself in. It takes COURAGE to choose the ACUTE PAIN that may result from speaking up against the “equilibrium” to not live in the CHRONIC PAIN of shutting down and dying in the status quo. It takes a strong CORE to make the culture of your own 20 square feet one that will attract and inspire others to do the same. It takes not rushing to judge but seeking to be a master CONNECTOR with others, whether you are at the head of a system or somewhere in the middle.

At the end he surmised that you can feel so RIGHT in what you discern and yet so WRONG in how you respond. So true.

His team got a little stronger today because HE got a little stronger. We are on the Builder’s Journey toward becoming ONE…which begins WITHIN. God help me. God help us all.

Together we Improve.