Many high-achieving people have a spirited affinity for perfection. They want to get it right. They want to meet their own high standards, and they want to meet and exceed the expectations of others. In the real world, however, especially during a time of heightened turmoil and stress, achieving perfection is nearly impossible.
In crisis or change, there is no time for flawlessness. You make decisions and take actions based on incomplete and sometimes contradictory information. Cognitive biases and heuristics come into play. Accepting some measure of tolerable error reduces your own frustration and that of others.
Paradoxically, by doing so, you and others are more likely to succeed in your pursuits. You give people the confidence to put forward new ideas and try novel approaches. Creative problem-solving and innovation thrive as you take small steps to test what works and what doesn’t. Then you are ready to recover and be flexible when all does not function as hoped. You get yourself and others out of the basement. You learn and improve.
The pursuit of the perfect actually increases risk. By liberating the cognitive bias toward perfection, you can let go of an impossible standard. Your thinking expands, your confidence increases, and you are able to better appreciate and respond to situations as they actually evolve. You will demonstrate a better understanding of what you can and cannot control as well as what is realistically possible and what is not. As your perspective broadens, your indecision eases and you become more productive and resourceful. You are more likely to adapt to changing circumstances and to be more resilient when all does not go as planned.
Many leaders become distracted by denying, hiding, and defending their mistakes. This is a waste of energy. Don’t get stuck on one misstep: admitting you were wrong is simply acknowledging that you are smarter now than you were before. Trust yourself and others who merit trust. Accept mistakes, then refocus and get moving again. Live by this wisdom: learn to fail, or you will fail to learn.
The measure of meta-leadership is whether “people follow you.” You are not leading things, like money or assets. The meta-view of the situation you face focuses on bringing together people with a problem to be solved or an opportunity to be harnessed.
Your impact on this situation depends on how you, as a person, engage and motivate the people who will move the stuff and make the desired outcomes happen. This is the gauge of your success or failure as a leader: in the situation, what do you accomplish?
Questions for Journaling
If you tried the suggested connection exercise, what did you experience and learn?
Keep a “basement” section in your journal where you reflect on your experiences there and what you observe of others in the basement. Are you becoming more adept at recognizing that you are in the basement? What is your trigger script for resetting your brain? How are you filling your workroom with useful routine patterns and tools? Are you recognizing and closing gaps as you ascend to higher-level thinking?
Note when you perceive cognitive biases or heuristics at play in yourself and others. How do they shape your perceptions and actions? When and how do they help, and when do they hinder your problem-solving?
* Dr. Isaac Ashkenazi introduced us to this term.
SEVEN
DIMENSION TWO
Grasping the Situation
In the vocabulary of meta-leadership, there are two sides to “the situation”: what is happening, and what to do about it. When you apply the meta-perspective, you see and act according to the complexity of your leadership situation, including all the many people, entities, and considerations that affect what is happening and whose participation is essential to a successful response. You benefit from Cone-in-the-Cube thinking: knowing that neither you nor anyone else has the full picture, you integrate different perspectives to reveal the otherwise unseen. With this awareness, you continuously drive a deliberative process to acquire knowledge, advancing from unknowns to knowns.
Your followership extends beyond your direct command; hence the importance of influence beyond authority and order beyond control. In a thorny situation, it is trust and confidence that earn you the mantel of meta-leader (“people follow you”).
Remember, everything discussed in the prior chapter on the person of the meta-leader clarifies your awareness and action in the complexity of the situation. (And the situation, in turn, informs the connectivity discussed in later chapters.)
Consider the different situations you face and those you see others facing. The generic framework we provide applies to a range of situations—from everyday problems to full-blown crises. The goal here is to perceive more accurately and act more effectively.
The situation is the context in which you lead. It can appear stable and routine until the unexpected upsets your rhythm and distorts your perceptions. The situation could be anything from a great opportunity to an explosive crisis. It could be bad or good, big or small, personal or systemic. The situation signals the approach of a turning point, compelling a response. Freeze and you risk being overwhelmed by the situation. Do you incrementally adjust or fundamentally transform your response? Sometimes a wait-and-see approach is appropriate, though sometimes that approach could be a symptom of denial or avoidance.
The situation also includes you; you are a part of it. What you do or don’t do is watched by people who look to you to lead.
An adverse situation—a crisis or a compelling need to change—most challenges your meta-leadership capabilities. You assess and understand what is happening, predict how it will unfold, make decisions, and take action. This is particularly critical when the stakes and pressure are high. Timing is critical, the risk is great, and there could be much to lose. The longer it takes to grasp the situation and act, the more losses accrue. Will you pivot into panic or into productive action?
We’ll begin with a simple question that has a complex answer: what is the situation? Your analysis of it may be clouded by distortions and distractions—some blisteringly loud, some deceptively silent. Emotions may run hot. You and others may be going to the basement. Different people see the situation from distinct perspectives. Cognitive biases mask emerging realities. It is challenging—particularly in the beginning—to separate fact from perception. What is really happening?
Often, one bad situation spawns additional situations as those involved react in unexpected ways. Suddenly, you no longer have one situation. You have several. You seek out some situations, positioning yourself for the opportunity to lead. Others come to you as circumstances arise. Whether good or bad, your grit is measured by your navigation of this complexity: how nimbly and skillfully you recognize the situation, assess the risks, decide on a course, and maneuver through it.
Ethan Zohn holds no position in a major corporation. Typically encountered in athletic gear or a loose-fitting shirt and jeans, he is no one’s stereotypical power broker. And yet he has mobilized people around the world for causes he holds dear. And while Zohn did not study meta-leadership, he is someone who naturally embodies its traits and sensibilities.
Zohn’s passion is soccer. He played goalkeeper in college at Vassar and later professionally with the Hawaii Tsunami, the Cape Cod Crusaders, and Highlanders FC in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.
In 2001, Zohn, then twenty-seven years old, secured a spot on the popular US television show Survivor: Africa. He endured through one daunting Survivor challenge after another and eventually won the competition.
“I proved that you can win this game without lying and cheating and stabbing people in the back,” he later said. Zohn left Africa with a million-dollar jackpot and the celebrity that comes with a nationally televised triumph.
During filming in Kenya, he won a reward challenge along with the opportunity to play soccer with local young people. He got to know some of the people and was struck by how rampant HIV was among the population. Many people had been born with the ravaging disease and had little understanding of what they could do to stay healthy.
Zohn, who holds deep beliefs ab
out social justice, found himself with a situation—and it was an exceptional one. His personal commitment to doing good (Meta-Leadership Dimension One) came together with an unexpected situation (Dimension Two) rich with opportunity. He decided to devote his newfound fame, his freshly won prize money, and his passion for soccer to working with and educating young people in Africa. His mission: to prevent the further spread of HIV and AIDS.
A year after winning the Survivor: Africa competition, Zohn cofounded Grassroot Soccer (www.grassrootsoccer.org). The group went to Zimbabwe to rally support for their new endeavor. In 2003, they introduced an interactive and soccer-themed HIV prevention curriculum. Its slogan: “Grassroot Soccer uses the power of soccer to educate, inspire, and mobilize communities to stop the spread of HIV.”
Zohn and his cofounders started with a simple idea: “We combined the passion of soccer with education and the passion to save lives.” To promote health, they teach young people about safe sex and HIV prevention methods through soccer-based activities. Their spark and imagination embraced an opportunity and leveraged it for all it could become. From its humble beginnings, Grassroot Soccer grew, securing funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and eventually touching the lives of millions of young people in Africa. Other organizations, funders, and celebrities eagerly signed on to the cause.
Zohn and his cofounders learned to become the leaders that the situation demanded. Some focused on building infrastructure so that the organization could most effectively use donated money and volunteers, including more and more professional soccer players.
Zohn himself had become a celebrity, albeit a reluctant one. Though fundamentally shy, he was willing and determined to take to the field of play and make a difference. He learned to seize his fame and make it work for the enterprise. He attended events, embraced media opportunities, and became the public face of Grassroot Soccer. It was magnetic meta-leadership influence in the absence of authority.
In understanding how leaders respond to a new situation, remember: this crusade was never part of Ethan Zohn’s life plan. An unexpected situation—the bounty from Survivor: Africa—opened up an opportunity, and he chose to take it. His abundant capacity for hope drew others to the cause. Zohn was able to make the most of his situation—his sudden wealth and celebrity—only because he came to it with expansive self-awareness and acute perception. Understanding that the real struggle for survival in Africa was not the game portrayed on television, he saw that he could help.
The opportunity of Zohn’s situation—sudden access to resources he could use to tackle a pressing social issue—was a positive one. Most people understandably fear the opposite: the crisis, when lives, property, reputations, or livelihoods are suddenly at stake.
The Meta-Leadership Pivot
The most difficult situations are characterized by sudden, adverse, and complex change. Remember a time when a crisis happened to you. Step one was to get out of the basement. Step two was to discern the situation. These are always the first two steps in any crisis situation.
The crisis could be a mega-disaster. During the late summer and fall of 2017, the US hurricane season delivered one devastating hit after another: Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria. People caught in the storms were overwhelmed, and responders were inundated. Crises happen when they happen. They don’t follow your timetable.
The crisis can be organizational, such as news that a major bank opens accounts without customer consent, or a global auto manufacturer falsifies emissions data, or a medical breakthrough is actually a sham, or personal data has been improperly released. Perhaps it’s research impropriety at an academic institution. These slow-burn crises have been building for years and might have been prevented had leaders acted earlier.
Or the situation could be personal. The crisis could be a fatal diagnosis, the death of a loved one, or the loss of a job. Eric worked with a company whose CEO collapsed and died at the gym. It was a personal crisis for the family and his colleagues as well as an organizational crisis for the company.
These situations have a common feature: the need for a pivot with the change in conditions and opportunities. A basketball player pivots by keeping one foot at its point of contact with the floor while stepping or swinging with the other foot. The player, the ball, and the action turn. As a meta-leader, you also turn intentionally.
The first impediment to the leadership pivot is the descent into the basement. Just when you need that higher-level brain power, it shuts down. Activate your trigger script and ascend purposefully to your workroom. Grab your tools—your practiced procedures and behaviors. Then give others jobs to bring them up with you.
Your first meta-leadership charge is to ask questions: What is happening? Who is involved? What is known and what is unknown? What might happen next? Be systematic in assembling that information. If you can, write it down on a whiteboard or flip chart. Organize what you are learning. This first snapshot readies you for what comes next. In the basketball analogy, this is your foot on the ground.
Next, working with people around you, start making decisions. Don’t expect to know everything right away or try to make every decision perfect. Situations are dynamic. If lives are on the line, move fast. Then prioritize the rest of your decisions and methodically work through them. Keep observing what is happening and then adjust. Make sure you stay fluid and adaptable. In basketball, this adaptability is your other foot swinging around and changing your direction.
It’s okay to not be fully rational. People are emotional beings. In routine situations, you have the luxury of time and calm for debate, logic, and careful analysis. In crisis and turbulent change, you have to assess quickly, draw on your knowledge and experience, and act.
As you become more fully cognizant of your own ingrained responses and those of others, you can better predict how you and different people respond to the same situation. Some will panic. Others will be cool and resolute. Still others will deny or fail to grasp what is happening. As a meta-leader, you anticipate this array of responses. It is part of the complexity of your situation. Draw upon your emotional intelligence to inform, not distort, your perception of this complexity.
Situations involve people, who are social creatures. You have one view of events; others have different perspectives along with varying definitions of both consequences and opportunities. Well beyond the Cone-in-the-Cube, the many people assessing the situation become invested in championing their divergent perspectives. Where one perceives potential benefit, another sees danger. Conflicts emerge. You may find yourself caught in the middle of a fiery standoff. When the circumstances are contentious, such battles further distort the situation. Not only must you deal with what is happening. You are challenged to cope with and balance the array of strong opinions and emotions.
Whether the situation is good or dreadful, risk escalates when you fail to accurately discern the situation and its surrounding social context. As a meta-leader, you remain open to the unexpected.
Most situations do not fully or quickly reveal themselves. You know that something is happening. At the outset you have only limited information about its scope and scale. Facts unfold incrementally amid a cacophony of rumors and false reports. With each new bit of information and evidence, your understanding of the situation and its direction changes and may clarify. Fixating on one point in time and ignoring incoming information, however, can cause you to lose touch and fall behind the situation’s evolution.
Lenny Marcus was on-site to study the leadership of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina tragedy in New Orleans. Officials assumed that the looming hurricane crisis would be a “wind event.” Once the storm passed, they determined that the wind caused significant though not catastrophic damage. However, the hurricane simultaneously unleashed a storm surge that overwhelmed levees protecting the city, flooding large sections, stranding thousands, and killing nearly 1,500 people. The real disaster in New Orleans was a “water event”—a situation requiring a fundamentally different response
than a wind event. The response was flawed in part because as new information arrived, officials failed to adjust their understanding as rapidly as the situation evolved. This miscalculation was their situational blindness.
This is a common problem. In the most comprehensive research on corporate failures ever undertaken, Sydney Finkelstein and his team at Dartmouth College found that in every case, the causes of failure were there to be perceived in advance—but were not seen. Trouble could have been avoided or minimized had executives perceived all that was happening and looked beyond their rigid framing of what was relevant and what was not. Limitations on what leaders choose to see are built into economic models, business strategies, and assumptions about everything from security threats to competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Our colleague, Harvard Business School professor Max Bazerman, alerts leaders to counter this situational phenomenon in his book The Power of Noticing. Pay attention to the clues around you.
To the extent that your assumptions help you focus, they are useful. However, when you fail to occasionally check that your framing matches the ever-changing situation at hand, that focus can be disastrously myopic. Finkelstein identified a “seriously inaccurate perception of reality” as a consistent blind spot for otherwise smart, capable executives. Continually distinguish between what you think and what you know.
Nokia was an early innovative world leader in mobile telephone handsets. That is, until Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007. This device upended the market, starting the smartphone frenzy. Nokia went from being a successful engineering pacesetter to selling primarily low-end phones in developing markets. Between 2007 and 2012, its total market value dropped by 75 percent.
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