MEDITATION: SUCH A CRUCIAL LIFE PRACTICE!

October 21, 2017 ~ ricardolevy ~ 2 Comments

Dear Reader:

My last two posts dealt with how to navigate through complexity. I detailed one approach that has worked for me, but it is by no means the only approach. We each need to discover our own path. What has helped me find my path, and I believe may also help you, is the practice of meditation.

I am frequently asked by friends and students how to meditate. Despite many years of practice, I still feel thoroughly unprepared to answer this question. Since I was first exposed to meditation, I have leaned on my teachers. In the 70s and 80s, I looked to the wonderful author and Transactional Analysis pioneer, Dorothy Jongeward. More recently, my dear friend and mentor, Andre Delbecq, was my stalwart guide and, for five years, it was to him that I turned to teach the session on meditation and spirituality in my Stanford entrepreneurship class. Andre’s class was a favorite of my students, and one of the most impactful of all our sessions. Unfortunately, two weeks before he was to teach the Fall 2016 class, Andre passed away at age 80. Since I had recorded his lecture from the previous year, I decided to play it for my class, rather than attempting to recreate it. It was my tribute to him. His words touched me as if I was hearing them for the first time. His spirit permeated the lecture hall, and many students commented afterwards how deeply he touched them. Several have followed up and, when I see them, they tell me they are continuing to meditate.

Now that I no longer have Andre to lean on, I am struggling to find a way to help students with the practice of meditation. It has, for so many years, been a key in my ability to cope with increasing responsibilities and an increasingly complex business. Looking at my sources, I have re-discovered two books that speak directly to the topic from two different traditions and approaches. Both books have the same title: How to Meditate. One, by Eknath Easwaran, comes from the Hindu tradition; the other, by Pema Chödrön, stems from the Buddhist tradition:

Eknath Easwaran, How to Meditate (Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press, 2016)
Pema Chödrön, How to Meditate (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2013)

You may have noticed that I have quoted both authors in my past posts. I do not presume to describe here what these special authors teach. Their own words speak so eloquently that I would be robbing you of the experience to savor them for yourselves. Instead, I will share with you some excerpts so that you can taste the beauty of these little books, then perhaps you will be inspired to pick them up and read them. I assure you that once you do, you will be hooked.

What is so marvelous about both of these short treasures is that they are each written as an intimate and personal call from the author to enter the practice of meditation as a way to be more completely present in our lives. I could almost say that both of these authors are pleading with us. Eknath’s first chapter is titled “Invitation to a Journey.” He starts by relaying the story of Humphrey, the whale that captivated so many of us when he got lost in the San Francisco Bay in 1985. Humphrey was ultimately “invited” to find the way out, back to his deep-water world. Eknath describes Humphrey’s apparent impulse, when he finally sensed that he was in the open sea:

Then, free to go wherever he chose, he must instead have felt a silent command: “North. Go north. Go home.” No details, no map, no companions, no guide, just a direction and a desire in response to an overriding imperative from within: go home. It is very much like that on the journey of meditation too. Once you turn inward, the words of the passages urge you forward in response to a summons from the very depths of the heart. This need to return to the source of our being is nothing less than an evolutionary imperative – the drive to realize our full human potential.

Pema subtitled her book “A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind.” In her introduction she says:

…meditation is about a compassionate openness and the ability to be with oneself and one’s situation through all kinds of experiences. In meditation, you’re open to whatever life presents you with. It’s about touching the earth and coming back to being right here. While some kinds of meditation are more about achieving special states and somehow transcending or rising above the difficulties of life, the kind of meditation that I’ve trained in and that I am teaching here is about awakening fully to our life. It’s about opening the heart and mind to the difficulties and the joys of life — just as it is. And the fruits of this kind of meditation are boundless.

One of Pema’s recurring themes in many of her books is a reminder that thoughts are the creations of our minds. They can lead to physical consequences resulting from stress, anger or fear, which are very real to us. We often forget that these began as creations of our minds, as mere thoughts. Our challenge is not to allow them to become 100% of our reality. Pema constantly urges us to stop before this 100%, and go beneath to uncover the source of the thought, the source of the emotion. Meditation is a path to reach “beneath.” According to Pema, to do so we need to be fully in the present moment:

The present moment is the generative fire of our meditation. It is what propels us toward transformation. In other words, the present moment is the fuel for your personal journey. Meditation helps you to meet your edge; it’s where you actually come up against it and you start to lose it. Meeting the unknown of the moment allows you to live your life and to enter your relationships and commitments ever more fully. This is living wholeheartedly.

For both Pema and Eknath, meditation is a transformative process. What I find so valuable is that, from my vantage point, they arrive at the same end point but come from two quite different approaches. Eknath’s practice, which he calls “Passage Meditation,” emphasizes using a memorized passage as a means to go into a very deep quiet zone, reaching a state that disconnects from the sounds, thoughts, sensations, emotions and distractions that are continuously accosting us. Pema, in contrast, emphasizes being fully present in whatever state we are in at the moment, regardless of the emotions that may be gripping us; to be fully present amidst any pains, stresses, desires, anxieties or joys. She then guides us to go beneath these sensations so we can “see” beyond them and start to understand them and deal with them. For her, these emotions and sensations are the teachers of the transformation:

We turn our emotions into frozen objects and invest them with truth, and as a result they have so much power over us. So we train again and again in coming back to the object of meditation as a way of interrupting that fixated quality. The grasping and fixation — that’s really what we’re interrupting.

Pema speaks of emotions as being energy that we can harness. She quotes a passage from “The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation” by her teacher, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche:

So the intelligent way of working with emotions is to try to relate with their basic substance. The basic “isness” quality of the emotions, the fundamental nature of the emotions, is just energy. And if one is able to relate with the energy, then the energies have no conflict with you. They become a natural process.

In my own practice, I use both approaches: sometimes employing a passage to enter the deep space (following Eknath’s advice, I often use the wonderful St. Francis Prayer that I’ve reproduced at the end of this post); and sometimes, rather than go deep, I go wide, staying with my immediate state of being and my emotions. Both approaches move me, both touch me, and both teach me. For me, meditation is a continually evolving process: I do not pre-plan which mode I will engage. I allow myself to be taken in either direction. In the end, they both become my guides to the same place of appreciation and gratitude. They both help me be more fully in the present. Most importantly, I attempt to follow the “edict” that both emphasize: Meditate every day.

Eknath:

To make progress in meditation, you must be regular in your practice of it… There is only one failure in meditation: the failure to meditate faithfully. A Hindu proverb says, “Miss one morning, and you need seven to make it up.” Or as Saint John of the Cross expressed it, “He who interrupts the course of his spiritual exercises and prayer is like a man who allows a bird to escape from his hand; he can hardly catch it again” … Put your meditation first and everything else second; you will find, for one thing, that it enriches everything else. Even if you are on a jet or in a sickbed, don’t let that come in the way of your practice. If you are harassed by personal anxieties, it is all the more important to have your meditation; it will release the resources you need to solve the problems at hand.

Pema:

Meditation is a transformative process, rather than a magic makeover in which we doggedly aim to change something about ourselves. The more we practice, the more we open, and the more we develop courage in our life. In meditation you never really feel that you “did it” or that you’ve “arrived.” You feel that you just relaxed enough to experience what’s always been within you. I sometimes call this transformative process “grace.” Because when we’re developing this courage, in which we allow the range of our emotions to occur, we can be struck with moments of insight, insights that could never have come from trying to figure out conceptually what’s wrong with us, or what’s wrong with the world. These moments of insight come from the act of sitting in meditation, which takes courage, a courage that grows with time.

So, dear Reader, go and get these little books. And perhaps they will help answer your question about what meditation is all about and why some of us are so hooked on it.

Your friend,

Ricardo

The Prayer of St Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.

And if you want a lighter passage, which I sometimes also use in my meditation, here is a wonderful poem by Mary Oliver: Why I Wake Early:

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety –

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning,

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

To which I usually add: “…and in gratitude.”
Continue reading “MEDITATION: SUCH A CRUCIAL LIFE PRACTICE!” →

Dealing With Uncertainty: From the Crucible of Anxiety to the Chalice of Change — LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP

April 2, 2017May 22, 2018 ~ ricardolevy ~ 1 Comment

Dear Reader:

Last year I published two posts dealing with uncertainty. I have continued to reflect on the events that prompted the posts. I want to share with you some further insights into the challenge of handling complexity at times of crisis, and in particular what they tell me about leadership. My contemplation helped me uncover additional aspects about the leadership capacity within us, and stimulated a continuing search for what makes good leadership and how to develop it. It also made me realize how little I know, and how much help I need to better understand this topic. It has led me to recast my previous posts and focus on the question of teaching ourselves – and others – to be better leaders.

I will be using this article as the basis for a workshop I am leading on May 19, 2017 at the International Association of Management, Spirituality and Religion Conference at the University of Arkansas. The essence of my theme at that workshop is how to discover and unlock the leadership capacity inside all of us.

I very much seek and welcome any ideas, critique, suggestions and insights that you may have on this important topic.

First, a reminder: What makes us entrepreneurs is our consuming drive to bring new products to market to fulfill perceived needs. What makes us entrepreneurial leaders is our capacity to embrace the unknown and guide our organizations in times of difficulty and uncertainty. To be in the midst of this action, either as a driver or contributor, has been my joy for many years, and this joy continues as I serve on Boards and teach. The most difficult element then and now, as I dwell in uncertainty, is to find the right time and best way to act, so as to help shift uncertain situations toward greater clarity and positive resolution. I have come to recognize that nothing helps sharpen one’s capacity as much as living through a difficult experience.

A Situation that Challenged Me — Both Professionally and Personally

One of the companies for which I served as a Board member had reached an impasse. We were making substantial progress in a breakthrough healthcare technology, and were the first to engage in clinical trials. Some of our most recent results were awe inspiring. Yet we were frustrated by the financial market forces making it difficult to continue to finance development of the much-needed medical breakthroughs we were targeting. At the Board’s request, the CEO was asked to consider alternatives. The options were disconcerting: narrowing the research focus; reducing expenses, with consequent layoffs; realigning the ranks of executives to better correspond to a down-sized operation; mounting one more aggressive effort to attract financial resources in a very hostile fund-raising environment. The CEO’s recommendation was to double-down on the most advanced project and discontinue all others, which would significantly reduce the company’s expenses. The focus was to be driven by the COO, who had helped develop the options and was running the R&D. It was a sound recommendation that the Board accepted.

This recommendation was not unexpected, and is certainly not unusual in entrepreneurial ventures as they pioneer new technology. I had faced these same choices in the companies I had founded and grown. So I thought that with my long experience as an entrepreneur, I was well equipped to handle these complex issues as a Board member. As it turns out, I did have the right intuition about what to do, but in retrospect, I failed in several aspects of the execution. And this is where my learning begins.

The selected scenario required a realignment of the executive ranks to better correspond to a down-sized operation. The CEO counseled a measured approach. The Board felt that action needed to be taken immediately, which necessitated a drastically slimmed-down organization from top to bottom. In the course of the deliberations, I saw a clear – and to me obvious – path to reconcile the CEO’s desire for a measured transition and the Board’s sense that immediate drastic action was needed: Ask the CEO to become Chair of the Board and promote the COO to the top executive position. Not rocket science. But the sense of urgency in the moment and the severity of the timeline did not give much breathing room for the “of course” considerations that so often come only in retrospect. To me, “my” solution had all the correct ingredients: It would signal a smooth transition to the outside world; it would allow for a harmonious transfer of power and realignment while implementing the difficult step of reducing and focusing the organization. There was, for me, one more factor, which on the one hand, compounded my personal thought process, and on the other, opened up potential pathways to help resolve the crisis. The CEO had become a personal and very close friend of mine, and he trusted me. Unraveling and appreciating this additional personal pressure on me was to come later. At the time, I simply “knew” what had to be done.

The Board decided to implement the immediate change. They agreed to my suggested approach regarding the CEO. Because of my close personal relationship with the CEO, I volunteered to join the Board Chair in conveying the decision. I just could not do otherwise, unpleasant as the news would be that the Board wanted to accelerate something the CEO thought should be done in a more systematic manner. I was feeling the emotions that everyone was experiencing and, in particular, anticipating the CEO’s likely emotional dilemma. I was not about to leave this tough job to someone else.

The subsequent series of one-to-one meetings with the CEO and the COO – who had to agree to take over immediately from the person who had hired him in the first place – are hard to describe or even for me to revisit. I would not wish this experience on anyone. And here is the hardest part of the story (as if the rest was not hard enough): To my disappointment, in the end the Board and the CEO could not agree on the steps forward, in spite of my recommendation to put in place the smooth executive transition that I had envisioned. The CEO left the company. I had failed, and this weighed heavily on me.

In retrospect, I was obviously not fully aware of the enormity of the inner forces that were acting on me as I participated in these intense deliberations. I could intimately feel the disappointment of the scientists and physicians who had tirelessly dedicated a significant portion of their lives and careers to driving this important, next-generation technology forward. I could intimately feel the struggle of my friend, the CEO who had staked his life on pursuing the goals of this company in which he deeply believed and to which he had dedicated over fifteen years of his life. I also sensed the forces acting on the other Board members as they wrestled to make the best decision possible under very unpleasant circumstances and a tightening timeline.

To make matters even worse, shortly after we took these streamlining and tightening actions and the CEO had left, we received reports from our clinical trials that while the impact of our treatment was still significant, the level of progress of our study patients had slowed — something we could not immediately explain and had never before observed. We could see ways to determine the cause and implement adjustments, but in our current financial circumstances this was impossible. On top of the trauma of the staff reductions inherent in narrowing the operation’s focus and of the change in leadership, our team was now faced with clinical results that would significantly extend the timeline to commercial implementation and render the company’s survival much more perilous.

A Message of Significance

These events led to many sleepless nights for me. Now that the CEO had left, the questions that continued to haunt me were: Had I done everything I could? What was going on inside me, as I struggled with these forces? How was I handling the unraveling of a company I had supported for so many years? How was I coping with the deep disappointment of a very good friend and a threat to a friendship I cherished?

As I was wrestling with these challenges, my friend Bob Quinn, Professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, posted a brief article in his blog entitled “An Elusive Leadership Skill.” [1] It prompted, in me, a cascade of ideas and reflections about leadership, all centered on the issue of coping with uncertainty in situations as complex as the one I was facing. I found two phrases in Bob’s post particularly thought-provoking:

Leaders “pursue their purpose by stepping into the crucible of anxiety,” and
Leaders “communicate the simplicity from the other side of complexity.”

The first phrase introduces the very descriptive and appropriate metaphor of a crucible: a container that can withstand severe conditions, usually high temperatures, which is often employed to conduct chemical reactions under harsh conditions. As I consider some of the most difficult leadership situations I have dealt with, many of which have involved personnel issues, I can picture stepping into such a crucible and standing there with a great “churn” in the pit of my stomach – and the sensation of being overwhelmed and even torn apart by the process.

The second phrase is derived from the wisdom of the early 20^th century jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes who, in essence, said that he cares little about the simplicity on this side of complexity, but gives much value to the simplicity found on the other side of complexity. He is actually reported to have said it even more dramatically: “I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity; I would give my life for the simplicity on the far side of complexity.”

Bob’s post could not have come at a more appropriate time, as it so aptly characterized my state of mind at that moment. I knew I had to remain immersed in the crucible. If I were to act without my full emotional engagement and instead simply ponder the elements of the situation dispassionately, I would be making decisions from the simplicity on this side of complexity — comfortable but irresponsible. I could also, at that point, have just resigned from the Board and left the issue behind — in effect, finding the simplicity for me, without much further regard for the complexity with which the company was dealing.

This put into focus a harsh reality of life: If we are to be players in an important mission, we have to endure the churn of the crucible and hope a new understanding crystalizes – or not step into it at all. There is no halfway measure: Full exposure is needed to appreciate the totality of a problem and do justice to our commitments with integrity and honor.

Full immersion is, of course, the lot of the CEO. It comes with the office. As members of the Board, our immersion should be no less intense, but we are granted a different vantage point and perspective, whence comes the value of our role. But just like a CEO, we need to be willing to absorb the anxiety of immersion and thus be open to learning in real time. And, perhaps most importantly, we must be able to overcome two elements that may easily mislead us: our egos and our prejudices. In the heat of the chemical reaction, we may not even notice these reactive agents.

In this situation, my ego pestered me to find a solution in short order, consistent with my image of being a seasoned executive. Meanwhile, my “better nature” struggled to find a path that would allow us to resolve the situation without damaging the dignity of the key players, in particular the CEO. As I pondered these issues, and at moments felt the natural urge to “escape the situation,” something became clear through the insights of Bob Quinn’s post: While we are compelled to dwell in the cauldron of uncertainty, our equally important task is to find a way to get to the other side of the combustion so that we can discern the essence of the quandary and gain clarity. We need to find the simplicity on the other side of the complexity. Yet it also became clear to me that while I needed to step out of the furnace, I had to do it without detachment. I still owned the situation! I had to maintain my link to the complexity but not be overwhelmed by it. I was not just an observer; I continued to be a protagonist. The admonitions that some were giving me to “be objective” or “be professional” totally missed the point.

No. I was not going to quit the Board. The only viable alternative for me was to fully continue in the complexity: to continue to be totally immersed in the subsequent deluge of facts and unknowns, of pressures and opinions, of perceptions and vested interests, and of major disappointments.

Converting the Crucible

When, in the heat of the Board deliberations, I suggested elevating the CEO to Chair I took a chance. I had not talked to the sitting Chair who had led the Board well for a long time. The Board was about to commit to a decision, there was no time for procrastinate. Many alternatives where considered; none of them sat well with me. I could have let the direction of the discussion continue and “go with the flow.” But I deeply felt the “rightness” of my approach, and had a deep, irresistible urge to express it. I was in what Bob Quinn calls “the state of authentic engagement.”[2] I spoke forcefully. It resonated with the other Board members. And I became the purveyor of the difficult news.

As I walked out of the Board room to fulfill my task one of the Board members, who is not known to be very “touchy feely,” turned to me and said: “Ric, I love you.” I do not believe he was talking about me per-se. He was talking about me as the carrier of the sense of the group at that moment. It was the leadership moment. It transcended me, it responded to the spoken and unspoken needs of everyone. I was just a conduit.

Many individual meetings followed. I was engaged, yet my head and heart were not totally clear. I was deeply immersed in the cauldron and feeling the constant heat of the reaction. I had trouble sleeping. At times, I was unable to think clearly. I was suffering. And it was compounded by the fact that the CEO then left and we were facing the disappointing clinical results. Something needed to change within me, if I was to continue to be a positive contributor to the company.

The change occurred one morning, several weeks later and deeply influenced by my reflections regarding the crucible of anxiety: In my daily meditation, I suddenly moved the crucible from the interior of my gut to just in front of me. While this sounds illusory, it was very real to me. In a moment of incredible clarity, I was able to “see” all the elements churning in the crucible of anxiety in sharp focus, and actual shift them out of my tense interior.

My early morning meditation ritual is a very spiritual time. Everyday, I take twenty minutes of very private time to sit still, quiet my mind, and attempt to move beyond the noises and pressures that crowd my thinking and my psyche (including those that are conspiring to tighten my gut.) Once in a while, this practice allows me to reach a state of deep peace, which carries with it an empathy and caring for everything and everyone, near and far. That is just what I needed, in the current state of affairs, and suddenly, instead of a crucible, I found myself holding a different sort of receptacle in my arms, which contained all the churning elements. But it was now in front of me where I could see it, rather than ominously lurking inside me. Importantly, this vessel felt amicable, not antagonistic. I felt love (yes, love) pouring into it, and a strange new ability to attend to each part of the mix – people and situations – in a warm and caring way. This experience startled me: I had converted the crucible of anxiety into a chalice of change.

The moment was unbelievably liberating. My ego dissolved and I became focused only on the highest good. My purpose as a member of the Board clarified and became not just another job, but a sacred task. My fear turned into confidence, and the chalice enabled me to finally employ all of my leadership tools more effectively: my analytical capabilities, my sense of purpose and passion, my moral compass and my spiritual anchors. This would not have occurred had I not been practicing my daily mediation.

I use the word “chalice” advisedly. The crucible burns with intolerant heat, while the chalice refreshes and rejuvenates, bringing transformation when we drink from it. To me, the chalice connotes a vessel that purifies, transmuting the elements and giving us an ability to see the process with greater clarity.

The moment I embraced the chalice I was transformed. I had a much firmer view of the dynamic whole, and sensed the simplicity on the other side of complexity. Most importantly, I found the strength to be fully present while confronting the conflicts with gentleness. I recognized the best in each actor, and I felt that no matter what I had to do, I could perform my duties with respect for each party. And part of that feeling of compassion was toward myself.

This came as the Board made the wrenching decision to liquidate the company. Several of the other Board members chose to leave. I chose to continue. The chalice transformation made it clear to me that I had to see the situation through to the finish, regardless how painful it was to disassemble a company with which I had been associated for a dozen years. My goal, together with two other Board members, was to implement the wind-down in a manner that safeguarded the dignity of the employees who had worked so tirelessly in the pursuit of our dream of a medical breakthrough and, equally important, to find a home for the technology that would ensure the continued pursuit of the possibilities of a treatment that might save the lives of our children and grandchildren. I also dedicated myself to rebuilding my friendship with the CEO, which had been deeply frayed by the events that had unfolded. I could not have done this had I not converted the crucible into a chalice.

A Crucial Conversion Ingredient

I believe that this flow through complexity to simplicity has deep spiritual significance. It is therefore not surprising that the insight of the conversion from crucible to chalice came to me during meditation. It also indicates that there is a much deeper aspect of this that could have implications for our leadership – and life – journeys: our ability to hold opposites without feeling threatened.

A special passage from Father Richard Rohr’s book Eager to Love keeps coming back to me in this context[3]:

“Paradox held and overcome is the beginning of training in non-dual thinking or contemplation, as opposed to paradox denied, which forces us to choose only one part of any mysterious truth. Such a choice will be false because we usually choose the one that serves our small purposes.”

This suggests that avoiding our “smaller purposes” becomes crucial when we need to transform the crucible to a chalice. This is also true when we face many of our leadership challenges. In my classes and in my book, I speak of the necessity for leaders to continuously move from the specific to the general, from the narrow to the broad. As leaders, we absorb the broad uncertainty of our venture so that others on the team can focus on more specific aspects of the mission, which they are often much more qualified to tackle. I liken this to our breath: When we breathe in, we expand our horizon, taking in the 360-degree vista. We are alert to opportunities and threats without blocking them with our prejudices and small purposes. Yet we cannot just breathe in; to survive we must also breathe out. When we do, we transmit energy, passion, direction and focus. It is a continuous flow. In the breathing-in phase, we must hold opposites. We need to be able to encompass paradox. We need the capacity to fully entertain conflicting positions. And we need to fully understand contrasting positions from those who advise us.

The Leadership Voice

To sense the “simplicity on the other side of complexity” is not enough. Our task is to permit our leadership capacity to manifest. We must therefore unshackle it. The transformation from crucible to chalice is a step in this “coming out” effort. I propose that true leadership springs from an inner well that sustains an inner flame. It is a delicate flame, protected by a lifetime of defense mechanisms that develop as we cope with our personal experience of living. To allow an opening in this armor without damaging the inner layers is subtle and delicate, yet that is the required effort.

The place that I am talking about is difficult to describe. A wonderful passage from Thomas Merton perhaps does so best[4].

“Again, that expression, le point vierge, comes in here. At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it, we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that makes all darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.”

And, of course, the beauty in this is that as our leadership voice springs from a point of light linked to all lights, it speaks directly to the light in other individuals. They feel it. They do not have to go through the intellect to sense it fully: It is expressed from that deeper place. It prompts even the hardest of us to say, “I love you.”

An Opportunity for Reflection and Deep Learning

Bob Quinn, in his book Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within,[5] looks at leadership not as behaviors and techniques, but as a “state of being.” As a guide and teacher, I echo Bob’s thoughts. The capacity for leadership is in all of us. As Bob’s book title suggests, we just have to discover it.

The challenge for us as teachers is to figure out how we can help others (and ourselves) with this discovery; what we can do to “free” ourselves to capture that capacity; what state of mind allows us to manifest it in the right moment. How do we train for it? How do we coach it?

Two words in Father Rohr’s quote are noteworthy, as he refers to paradox: “held” and “denied.” What are we constantly denying as we face situations? What makes us deny? Does therein lie the secret ingredient — the catalyst for a crucible to chalice transformation? How do we train to hold paradox?

Here are some recommended steps for making the most of the opportunity when we come face-to-face with uncertainty:

Recognize the complexity.
Know that our job as leader is to fully enter the crucible of anxiety.
Acknowledge that it will be uncomfortable.
Commit to remain in the crucible as long as you need to, resisting the temptations of “easy” solutions.
Allow the transformation of the crucible into a chalice (by the deep reflection and contemplation that allows a mindset change and converts the problem into a sacred task rather than a burden) thereby gaining the peace that enables the discernment needed to help you arrive at the eventual decision or action.
Then, step to the other side of complexity with the simplicity offered by clarity.
Act only when you have reached the simplicity on the other side of the complexity.
Enact your decision with conviction, confidence and respect. Capture the leadership moment. Speak from your “center.”

Consider the times when you have felt the crucible emerge. Were you able to transform it into a chalice, even if you may not have characterized it as such at the time? What did you learn from this? Examine how you might improve such situations and how, in the future, this might help you in better leading your organizations or teams.

And perhaps even more broadly: Might the crucible-to-chalice model help you in resolving your own personal affairs?

References

[1] https://thepositiveorganization.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/an-elusive-leadership-skill/

[2] Bob Quinn Post June 24, 2016

[3] Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi ( Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2014)

[4] From Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, quoted in Lawrence S Cunningham, Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master, Essential Writings (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press 1992) p 146

[5] Robert E Quinn Deep Change: Discover the Leader Within (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 1996

EXPANDING THE CANVAS AND FINDING THE COMPASS: THE ROLE OF MEDITATION IN DECISION MAKING

March 14, 2013March 15, 2013 ~ ricardolevy ~ 5 Comments

Technical innovation is often at the heart of an entrepreneurial venture. The leader’s role is to create the right environment to facilitate and foster such innovation. This requires bringing together people of different skills and specializations, ideally individuals more competent than the leader in their areas of expertise, very comfortable pushing the boundaries of the unknown in their particular domain. Their domain risk tolerance is likely to be very high.

What the leader needs to recognize is that the risk tolerance of the expert in his or her area of specialization may not apply to their tolerance of the uncertainties in other aspects of the entrepreneurial venture. For example, a scientist who may be one of the best in the world at creating new photovoltaic materials and be very at ease with the inherent uncertainty of the discovery of new PV compounds may be very un-easy with the challenges of financing or selling. Just think of the un-ease that scientist may feel when confronted with only a six-month cash runway. The role of the leader is to absorb any extraneous uncertainty that may get in the way of the expert team member, freeing that individual to do the best job possible, to do the job unbridled.

Taking responsibility for the full uncertainty of the company is the logical task of the leader in an entrepreneurial organization. After all, the senior executive has the whole company in his or her hands, and is the one person most aware of all the known factors affecting the destiny of the company. That is the nature of the office. But how does a leader cope with such a large burden?

Two “capacities” make this possible:

The capacity to “see” the whole picture, and
The capacity to access a compass that will point in the appropriate direction.

By seeing the whole picture, I mean the ability to see beyond the obvious and immediate, to cast a wider vista and recognize all the forces and all the opportunities. As an engineer, I am particularly sensitive to the importance of drawing the full perimeter around a problem. We are trained as systems thinkers. We learn to scope an issue, define the relevant influencing parameters, gather data, and then establish some criteria that will permit prioritization of potential solutions. Then we go into action – until either we find the right solution or find out that we chose the wrong path. So we go to the next one. The key in this process is to make sure that we are smart in outlining the envelope of the issue, in defining the frame of the decision-making canvas. Make it too narrow, and we miss some key elements. Make it too broad and the task becomes too unwieldy and will take too much time. Yet someone needs to have the bigger picture, even while the team is tackling the narrower problems. That is the leadership job.

But it is not the only job. At the same time as “holding” the big picture, the entrepreneurial leader must be capable of reducing the scope of the issue, shrinking the canvas so as to concentrate the attention of the team on the most critical issues of the moment. This skill to breathe with the canvas, to maintain flexibility of the frame’s shape and size, is what distinguishes the brilliant leaders. This “canvas breathing” permits the leader to maintain visual acuity, often threatened by constant external disturbances and frequent surprises. It can reveal the silver lining in unforeseen problems, and permits the leader to discover alternative pathways around roadblocks.

To breathe with the canvas, the entrepreneurial leader needs to distinguish between the forces that are important and those that are distracting, to filter the noise, deflect the arrows, prioritize the demands that are constantly calling. This requires stepping back, and finding quiet zones within. For me, the best way to find such quiet zones is through meditation.

Meditation also helps with the second capacity that allows the leader to absorb uncertainty: access to his or her decision making compass. The need for a compass is perhaps best illustrated by a suggestion made in a fascinating book I just read and highly recommend: Incognito by David Eagleman. I found it to be a brilliantly written overview of the functioning of the brain, by a knowledgeable and very eloquent neuroscientist. His thesis is that the overwhelming majority of our actions are determined by the millions of chemical and electrochemical events in our body, and they are deeply influenced by our lifetime experiences. We may believe that we are making “conscious decisions,” when in reality the sequence of signals that leads to our decisions have already taken place before we are aware that we are taking action. And he talks about how to access this unconscious part of us, how we tap into our vast unconscious reservoir:

“If you cannot always elicit straight answers from your unconscious brain, how can you access its knowledge? Sometimes the trick is merely to probe what your gut is telling you. So the next time a friend laments that she cannot decide between two options, tell her the easiest way to solve her problem: flip a coin. She should specify which option belongs to heads and which to tails, and then let the coin fly. The important part is to assess her gut feeling after the coin lands. If she feels a subtle sense of relief at being ‘told’ what to do by the coin, that’s the right choice for her. If, instead, she concludes that it’s ludicrous for her to make a decision based on a coin toss, that will cue her to choose the other option.”

Meditation has allowed me, at critical times, to “probe what my gut is telling me.” It allows me to withdraw from the mundane hum and the many “demand arrows” that are constantly pointing at me yelling for my attention, arrows that tend to freeze the frame of the picture I am confronting, freezing the size of my canvas. It takes me to a quiet zone within myself that allows the canvas to expand and permits me to “see” problems differently, to hear my perhaps previously undetected inner voice, and to understand the best direction to pursue.

This very important “internal work” of leadership moves to a much broader topic, which I will tackle in a future post. It deals with the ability to expand the canvas to its extreme dimension, to the infinite, where we have a chance to reach a place where everything is one. It is the place the pre-eminent Christina mystic of the last century, Thomas Merton, calls “le pointe vierge,” the place Jesuits are taught in the Ignatian exercises to assess their feelings of “desolation and consolation” as they face difficult moral dilemmas. The seeking of this convergence point, this point of oneness, is my definition of spirituality, and is also closely connected with what I believe should be a holistic vision of the raison d’etre of one’s business or, for that matter, one’s life adventure. This is nicely explored by my good friend Jim Cusumano in his upcoming book, Balance, the Business Life-Connection, to be published this April by Select Books, Inc.

DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO TALK ABOUT “LEADERSHIP STYLES”?

October 14, 2010 ~ ricardolevy ~ 2 Comments

My conversations with groups of MBA and Engineering students are proving to be a rich source of topics and reflection for me. At a recent meeting with University of California Haas Business School students, I was asked about my leadership style. I was unable to answer. This bothered me, and the more I thought about it the more I felt something was fundamentally wrong with the question itself.

I have reached a tentative conclusion: The moment we try to talk about leadership styles, we are missing the essence of what leadership is all about.

We can talk about personal styles, behavioral traits, or management styles. But when it comes to leadership, because the range of behaviors and actions we need to access and apply at any particular moment is vast, it is unlikely to fit neatly into a simple classification. Which behavior we use is a function of the nature of our team, the nature of the dialogue, and the circumstances we face in each situation.

I actually envision the leadership process as an “energy vector.” The leader injects his or her energy and “purpose” into the vector, stimulates the team to add their own energy, insures that the vector is pointing in the desired direction, and foresees some of the hurdles that the vector needs to overcome to reach its destination. I know this sounds amorphous, but that is what leadership is: a continual course adjustment as we move towards the goal, a continuous dance in the face of changing circumstances. And in the end, it is all about people, which means that the leader needs to be ultra-sensitive to human dynamics, sharply tuned into each team member’s strengths and weaknesses, strains and stresses and, in particular, anything that may be blocking them from doing their best.

It also means that leadership is not just the purview of a select few, born with all the “equipment” to lead. In fact, it is in all of us, if we could only “unbottle it.” Barry Posner and James M. Kouzes say it well in the Preface to their very well known book on leadership The Leadership Challenge (James M. Kouzes, Barry Posner, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008, xii): “What we have discovered, and re-discovered, is that leadership is not the private reserve of a few charismatic men and women. It is a process ordinary people use when they are bringing forth the best from themselves and others. When the leader in everyone is liberated extraordinary things happen.” This is exactly what I heard recently at a talk given by Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who landed the US Airways plane on the Hudson on January 15, 2009. He defined heroes as “ordinary people doing extraordinary things.” He certainly displayed leadership in that extraordinary 240 seconds from engine failure to landing.

In his book Build The Bridge As You Walk On It (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004,) Bob Quinn of the University of Michigan raises an interesting view of leadership: Quinn considers leadership to be a “state” into which a person enters (or leaves), rather than a predetermined characteristic of an individual. As circumstances demand, the individual may rise to the leadership need, the leadership occasion, tapping into a wide range of personal traits. In the process, the leader is always balancing between contrasting behaviors, his own and that of his team. Too much of the extremes can be detrimental. Thus, someone who is too visionary, without the right balancing influence, can be unquestioning, ungrounded or deluded. Someone who is too practical can be pessimistic, destructive, hopeless. It is the leader’s job to navigate these extremes and to insure all actions harmonize in pursuit of the goal.

Key to all of these views of leadership is that the leader needs to display passion, using the energy that comes with his or her convictions and commitment to sweep others into the “leadership vector.” In doing so, one of the main roles of the leader is to absorb uncertainty, balancing the different risk tolerances of the team members. As the individual with the greatest understanding of the full picture (limited as that picture may be), the leader unburdens team members from worries that will get in their way, permitting them to concentrate on applying their unique skills in the execution of their tasks. Which brings me back to the Sully Sullenberger situation… From his description of that incredible day, his team had total trust in him and he in them. What is startling is that he had met his copilot only a few days before. Granted, his reputation preceded him, yet I find it fascinating that in spite of this prior lack of personal interaction, the two individuals were totally tuned into each other. They were completely vested in the moment; the dramatic circumstance removing any barriers of ego or self-interest, which so often artificially get in the way of what we are capable of accomplishing.