Closing the 3 gaps most leaders secretly struggle with in life
Several years ago, a series of “minor competitive trash-talking” decisions during after-school dodgeball games for my son culminated in his first (and only) “incident”, resulting in a lot of kids in the principal’s office. Amidst the commotion though, he fell, broke his hand, and had to have his arm “set” in a cast to realign and heal. Having grown up playing hockey and a veteran of broken bones, I reassured him of the healing process.
“Setting the break in a cast gives it a chance to bring both parts back into alignment,” I explained. And as most parents would, I seized the opportunity for a couple life lessons. “During that period of rest, the gap between the 2 bones disappears and the limb is restored. But it’s accompanied by enough pain, loss and time to reflect on how you ended up here through the small decisions along the way.”
This concept of resting, realignment and closing gaps stuck with him — and me. So did the other life lesson: Pebbles start avalanches, because no one pays attention to pebbles, until one day something transformative happens because of the slow widening of a gap. However, something transformative happens to us as leaders when we’re willing to ditch the narrative of our life that we’ve publicly written, and recognize that one of 3 gaps has emerged that it’s time to face, deal with, and close:
1. The gap between expectation and reality.
Dr. Sam Chand (http://www.samchand.com/) once wrote about how every relationship has both expectations and reality — If you imagined them both at opposite ends of a horizontal axis, then the distance between the two of them is what is called conflict. Confronting this gap between expectations and reality can bring realignment to an organization and certainly to any relationship. Customers, vendors, kids, spouses, employees all will, at some point, have various points of frustration with you. At the core of the frustration, you’ll find a gap between their (or your) unmet expectations, and reality. The better job we can do clarifying expectations up front, even (and especially) when it calls for us to be transparent and vulnerable and admit pedestals we can’t live up to being put on, the more realistic the expectations will become. When that happens, the gap shrinks between those expectations and reality. Ideally, they align with each other, and the burden of undue and unfair pressure is relieved.
2. The gap between rewarding and fulfilling.
These two words are often used interchangeably, and it drives me crazy when I hear them interchanged by motivational speakers and leadership consultants, because they’re dramatically different. I’ve met leaders who’ve spent 20 years building a rewarding career, but feel like they’ve done very little that they would qualify, at their core, as fulfilling. They’re reaping financial and personal reward, but are silently unfulfilled and wondering what the years of struggle, toil and pain actually fulfilled.
A great leader once said that there’s a difference between job and work. Your job is what you do until you discover your true work in life. When you discover the work you’re passionate about spending your life doing, you’ll never want to retire, you’ll just eventually adjust your schedule.
This type of gap can show up between ideal customers and necessary customers, and between values-based decision-making versus decisions we sometimes make when facing financial road blocks when organizational goals hit market challenges. It’s when the leadership starts taking on compromising work, the stuff that looks profitable but that’s outside core competencies, or customers that may not align with your values. It’s the stuff that pays the bills and earns accolades publicly, but privately erodes our organization’s culture, our team’s trust, and our passion for getting up Monday morning and facing another week.
It’s healthy for a leadership team to periodically step back and ask if the rewards for your hard work and investment also carry fulfillment that aligns with your purpose. If there’s a significant gap, it might be time to redefine what really matters, and challenge your narrative of what’s pressuring you to compromise. When you close your eyes to the rewards, you often will find it easier to see whether true fulfillment exists.
3. The gap between the story of you, and the authentic you.
Most leaders I’ve known, at some point, struggle with isolation and loneliness. Truth is, most leaders will at some point struggle with isolation stemming from the conflict between the desire for transparent relationships, juxtaposed with the fear of loss — “If this customer knew we weren’t really sure we could pull this off…if this employee knew we were struggling financially… if this friend knew about my personal struggle…”
Several years ago, I joined a peer accountability group with seven other CEO’s/husbands/fathers. While the mutual advice has been transformational, I discovered a rare freedom most of my peers, sadly, never discover. And, it was one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever been given. I found myself in a room, every month, free of guilt, shame, loss, or ramifications from sharing the truth about my struggles, knowing others have been through something of comparable weight. It has become, a decade later, a safe place where I can unmask the story of me, and be the authentic me; celebrating my victories without fear of appearing prideful or egotistical, while simultaneously exposing my failures and fears without the concern of judgment, or of people (friends, employees, customers) leaving my life, unable to contextualize the information shared.
The leader of one of the largest organizations in his industry once told me, in the midst of the biggest crisis of his life: “Driving down the road, I pulled over and pulled out my phone, scrolling down for seemingly hours. That’s when I realized, among thousands of contacts and followers…I had no one in my life I could call who I didn’t lead. I had no one to confide in for fear that if I shared the truth, they’d exit my life.”
One of the greatest gifts a leader can receive is a trusted, safe environment with relationship(s) where they can be authentic and transparent. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. At some point we all struggle with identity. There was a kind of leader you envisioned being when you started your journey, but along the way customers and employees entered and exited your life. Pressures forced compromises, and in the fast pace of “trying to keep up” maybe you fell into the trap of comparison between you and others, or between where you aren’t on the journey and the expectation of how far you should be by now. Piece by piece, identity started chipping away until there it was: The gap between the authentic you and the story of you that you allowed struggles, successes and perhaps the perceptions and voices of others to shape and mold.
The good news about these gaps is this: They shrink significantly with a bold decision, a little time and commitment to stay the course. This year, my hope for you as a leader is you’ll carve out the time and do it — I used to say “find the time” but as you get older, you realize sometimes you have to get a sharp knife and cut deep into your schedule to carve away a piece for yourself. When you do, I bet you’ll rediscover what I did; the real, authentic you, and perhaps reset, realign and close some gaps holding you back from the quality of life you deserve.