“If the spirit of the student is in you, the lessons will be there.* ” Sir William Osler
It was the last few moments before dashing out the door for the drive to work, and my daughter was lamenting the fact that the Life cereal was almost gone. She had watched her sister eating handfuls of it for a snack. “It is just annoying that she sits there and just eats it” my distraught daughter said to her mother and me, but really to no one in particular.
Next, I did what unfortunately comes naturally: I told her that she had no right to feel that way. “You are the one that drinks all the orange juice,” I told her. “And how many times do you take the last of the ice cream?” My wife told me that my daughter was surly for the rest of the morning.
As I drove to work I realized that I had committed the classic father and as it turns out, the classic leader mistake. I told her that her feelings were not valid. She did not wake up that morning planning to be vexed over the shortage of Life cereal. The feelings came when she realized that there wasn’t a whole bowl left. And of course there is always a history of subsurface resentment, the sense that older (or younger) siblings get away with murder, the injustice of it all. And when she turned to us to share her feelings, I attempted to convince her that she shouldn’t feel that way; that her feelings were not valid. The reasons for my response are also complex and may include the fact that I occasionally feel some of the same vexation toward her sisters. So my efforts to suppress my daughter’s feelings might really be a complex attempt to suppress feelings of my own. Regardless, it was a lesson I have had to learn repeatedly.
The two most important skills that a leader can develop are to understand what his or her own feelings mean and to validate the feelings of others. So many of our leadership shortfalls will come when we fail to recognize what motivates us, and when we fail to recognize, appreciate and empathize with the feelings of others. People come with all kinds of frustrations and concerns. The first best thing we can do is to listen and attempt to understand how they might feel.
Writing more than twenty-five centuries B.C. the Egyptian official Ptahhotep whom I have quoted before said, “Those who must listen to the pleas and cries of their people should do so patiently, because the people want attention to what they say even more than the accomplishing for which them came.” Listening to what is said includes listening to the feelings behind them in a way that the one listened to knows that they were truly heard.
“Honey, I know that you feel frustrated that your sister killed the cereal because I know you were looking forward to having it for breakfast. I am going to talk to your sister about eating the breakfast cereal as a snack. But for now, I need you to find something else for breakfast and I need for you to finish getting ready for school. Can you do that?”
Think how often we would be more effective – at home and at work – if we took the time to recognize and validate how people felt: “the people want attention to what they say.”
(* Brief observations on leadership and life.)
Chuck Callahan Henry V 4.3 – Lead from the Front https://henryv43.wordpress.com/
Henry V 4.3 