Share Your Ideas
by Alan Sobel
Key messages:
Discovering the beauty in what you and others do creates a compelling platform for leadership.
Great leaders learn to recognize how others see beauty and learn to speak in ways that resonate for them.
For some, beauty rests in the fine details. For others, beauty can be found at the confluence of large trends. Leaders need to understand the levels of detail they need to work at to:
- perform their own duties,
- lead and inspire their followers,
- influence their peers and superiors.
Connecting to the Beauty of Your Work
I once enrolled in a series of woodworking lessons at a local community arts centre. The instructor was a master cabinet maker who loved beautiful woods and aesthetic joinery. I needed a tonic to my first job and wanted to build furniture to fill our first home. With these utilitarian needs and an intermediate skill level in woodworking, I embarked.
Our studio was filled with table saws, scroll saws, drill presses and planers, and our instructor knew how to use them. I was terrified of them. My father had sung the evils of power tools and missing fingers. In his basement workshop, I learned to use hand held planes, spokeshaves and all variety of saws. My challenges were in measuring and marking – anything numerical. Hence, I built excellent table tops, skirts, legs and rails, but lousy tables – nothing fit together.
I was in love with the aspects of the woods I used–open grained white and red oaks, closed grained maples and cherry, and unusual woods like birds-eye maple and pauo ferro. I enjoyed deciding which pieces of lumber would work best together to form a table top, or would be most stunning as a drawer front. I enjoyed finding the grain, the direction in which to best move a plane or scraper across the wood surface. I enjoyed caring for my tools – grinding blades, stoning them twice, lapping them with compound on glass. I spent hours in the studio on my tools while others were building their projects.
The instructor encouraged me to use the power planer to bring the wood to working form, and I tried. I could never seem to get the boards to square and I chewed-up two inch rough boards to ¾ inch finished boards trying, shaking in my boots all the time. I was wasting time and money and becoming emotionally distressed, and so, I went back to my hand planes, knowing that I should never give up my day job and wondering whether my instructor had dismissed me as a student who was unwilling to learn.
One evening, I was rounding the base of an oak coffee table with my spokeshave. It was the only project I had managed to get to near completion. My instructor approached me, smiled, sat down at my bench, and told me that he had admired my work. He had noticed how careful I was, how slowly I worked, and how much I seemed to love the wood. I was very flattered. Only much later did his power as a teacher-leader become clear. He had recognized how I saw the world of woodworking. I was not, in his eyes, a failure. I had a place in the studio that he valued and admired.
I began to think about how I saw woodworking. I thought I was just afraid of power tools. There was more, though. I saw beauty in texture and colour. I saw beauty in the pieces and in how they could possibly fit together. I was less focused on the whole – that is, on the finished piece – than I was upon getting the right curve on a part. I enjoyed easing fine shavings from the wood with sharp tools, hoping for rather than calculating precise joints. I worked where I was skilled, and I derived a sense of accomplishment in a small world that I found very beautiful and pleasing. The experience of woodworking was more than a “good enough” enterprise, and I was much more than a failure. I was beginning to make a connection between myself and the activity. My instructor had accepted my preference for hand tools, and I became more connected with my work. I had the sense of becoming an artisan, and I was ready to be more patient at measuring and marking!
Working as a leader in an organization is much more complicated than teaching woodworking as an avocation. But I tell this story often to let leaders know that they need to understand where they, their staff, peers, and bosses find beauty in their work. What they focus on are the details that are meaningful to them. They are the signposts that give them direction and lead them to the next step. For some, the signposts might rest on a map of how to build a circuit board. For others, the signposts might rest on a map of how to make enormous capital and human resource investments. For both groups, there are details to observe and details to ignore. For both, there is beauty in what they see, in how they synthesize information, and how they act to create value in the world.
Most people seek a way to connect with their work, to find a way to approach their work as an artisan. Leaders who can help them do that can also help them get ready for new skills and personal growth. If leaders can understand the maps, the signposts and the beauty that they and others are seeing, then they can help themselves and others to more carefully and compellingly build skills and chart a way forward. And if needed, they can help them to get a new map.
Recognizing the Map
Maps present a big picture, or at least, the picture one believes one needs to see. The map of the circuit board, as seen by the assembler, is filled with small connecting parts that exist in space and time. They are tangible. The map of a circuit board is far different from the map of economic and political events as seen by the strategic corporate planner or the map of market and supplier events as seen by the business development officer. Their maps are filled with interconnecting emotional relationships and probabilities. Yet all these maps are important to the future of the same organization, and at any moment, the assemblers, the planners and the developers might need to appreciate each others’ maps.
In general, as a leader’s responsibility for people and objectives grows in an organization, the leader’s map becomes less connected to the details of objects and more connected to the values, attitudes, and behaviours of people. Their maps become increasingly less connected to time measured in minutes and hours and more connected to trends and time measured in larger and larger increments. As tangibility and measurable time fades in the leader’s map, ambiguity and grey creep in. Decisions are a matter of finding balance or the lesser evil, rather than a matter of finding the correct solution. As leaders progress, they must navigate in a growing fog while inspiring and maintaining the confidence of those who need to see the details clearly.
Seeing the Signposts
Appreciating the maps that our followers, peers, and bosses are navigating from is the first step. The next step is to understand the signposts that are telling them they are on course. A distinction needs to be made between the signposts they see and the signposts they should be seeing (see table 1). As a leader interested in helping those around you to be successful, you need to see both.
The signposts we see are indicative of where we find beauty in our work. Seeing what others see begins by observing what they attend to, how they are careful or mindful in what they do, and what they are proud of. The assembler might attend to the neatness of his workbench, ensuring that his tools and parts are organized. He might attend to working quickly, leaving checking to the quality control expert. Or he might work slowly, ensuring that each step in the process is correct before moving on to the next step. Perhaps the assembler sees beauty in being organized and ready. Perhaps she sees beauty in being productive or on time. And perhaps she sees beauty in each piece of work, in the absolute precision and correctness of what she makes.
The corporate planner might attend to collecting mountains of information that provide proof. Another corporate planner might attend to how trends could come together in one way or another to create a picture of possibilities. And still another might attend to engaging others in building meaning from what can be known. Perhaps the first planner sees beauty in the immutability of the moment. The second planner might see beauty in the absolute inability to know and the importance of gut feelings. And the third planner sees beauty in consensus or democracy and the futility of seeking a “correct” path.
There is beauty in all these ways of seeing, and there is something missing in each of them, as well. For me, the woodworker, there is something missing in not measuring well and in not using power tools. Nothing I build will come together, and I will take a long time doing it. For the assembler who sees only the vastness of her output, a concern for quality might be missing, creating costs for the organization later in the manufacturing process. For the assembler who admires every step of her process, there could be a concern for meeting production targets, creating immediate costs for the organization. For the planner who values information and proof, a lack of appreciation for the dynamism of relationships and events could lead to an organization that is always one or two steps behind the present and a mile behind the future. For the planner who seeks consensus, an inability to make decisions or speak truth to power could be present, leaving the organization in a quagmire of opinion.
Where Beauty Lies
Appreciating where a performer sees beauty in her work creates an opening to speaking meaningfully to her about what she is doing well, and what she is missing. Leaders who progress from one level to another in an organization often need to be invited to see beauty in new ways, to look at their work from a new map, with different signposts.
Leaders in new roles use their old skills to advantage and seek new skills. They also need to learn new ways of seeing. The assembler who becomes a floor supervisor must move his attention away from the map of the circuit board to a map of schedules, performance measured by time and the absence of mistakes, and by employee satisfaction. Beauty might be construed in bringing diverse corporate elements together to create greater productivity, to increase the happiness of employees, or to increase the skill levels of new employees.
The analyst who becomes a director of analysts needs to divert his attention from the collection of information and analytical processes to ensuring that his staff are committed to the veracity of information and the credibility of analysis. He needs to ensure that they are able to speak truth to power in ways that vice-presidents and presidents can comprehend, have time for, and accept. And he needs to ensure that these same people are ready to hear the truth. For the director of analysts, beauty might be seen in the ability to create solutions to present, but temporal, issues compatible with the organization’s more ephemeral values and interests. As my woodworking instructor might have said: “there is beauty in ‘fit’”.
The director who becomes vice-president needs to shift attention from the creation of knowledge to the creation of a strategic future for a portfolio of products and services, the people who make and market them, and the investors who believe the firm will be successful in the market place. Knowledge is a component of this map, but as on any map, nothing is central. Elements become more or less critical as time passes and the pieces shift. Beauty for the vice-president might come in understanding the elements and what makes them shift.
The vice-president who becomes president needs to shift attention from products and services to how the company is present in the world. He needs to comprehend the entire firm as a living organism that has a presence for others. He needs to understand when the organism is thriving and when it might need medication or surgery. He needs to authentically and obviously live the values of the company. He needs to shift his focus from the activities of the firm, to the “being” of the firm. For the president, beauty might be found in the authenticity of the organization’s presence, in an organization that produces what it says it produces, treats people the way it says it treats people, and grows in ways that are sustainable and profitable.
Leaders need to find beauty in what they do, and they need to appreciate how others find beauty in what they do. In addition to their own maps, great leaders need to begin to see the same map of the organization and the world that their superiors see.
Leadership |
Map |
Signposts |
The Possibilities for Seeing Beauty |
Assembler |
Detailed map with firm, tangible boundaries. Includes the parts and how they fit together to create unique, tangible outputs. |
Blueprints and templates. |
Accuracy, precision, correctness. |
Supervisor |
Detailed map with tangible boundaries that might change, but are recognizable. More parts, including human performance & satisfaction, are present. Parts fit together to create a unique tangible output. |
Clarity and “do-ability” of blueprints and templates. |
Meeting performance targets that include the right mix of quantity and quality. |
Planner |
Best map they can possibly create with as much information as they can gather. |
Equations that create solutions that “fit”.
|
Being “correct” or “nearly correct”. |
Director |
Detailed maps are less useful. Needs to know they exist for others. Constantly seeking alternative maps and new details. Focuses on how others can comprehend fuzzy maps. |
Options. |
Problems with many solutions.
|
Vice President |
Map of relationships within and among organizations. |
Collaboration within and among organizational sub-sets. Collaboration with suppliers and customers. Employee satisfaction. Understanding where markets are headed. |
Making decisions. Mitigating risks. |
President |
Map of the company in the world. Details of relationships needed with key individuals among customers, suppliers, governments and investors. An understanding of the values the organization lives by, and how they need to guide policy and behaviour at every level. |
An executive team that understands and lives the organization’s values.
|
Building a sustainable company that will support employees and their families for many years. |
Failure to See
For all leaders, beauty is only skin deep if the people they lead cannot deliver on their responsibilities. Leaders have followers. Unless the followers are attending to their own maps, leaders will find that their line of sight must come to a level below where the organization ultimately needs them to be.
The president who focuses on the “being” of the company can only direct his attention to these lofty thoughts if he knows that others are “doing” what the organization needs them to do and are doing it well. When leaders move from one level to the next in an organization, they often fail to recognize that they need to see their role on a different map. With their old map in hand, they can be perceived as micromanagers, who contribute where their followers do not need help. They check performance based on their own, rather than organizational, values and standards. Assemblers who become floor supervisors might insist that a neat desk is a productive desk. Analysts who become directors of analysts might insist that multi-regression analysis is the only way to proof or that a footnote is more appropriate than an endnote.
Post Script:
I am building a deck at the back of my home. I began by believing that I did not have the knowledge to do it. I enlisted my brother to help me figure out where the piers should be. I enlisted my friend to inspect, teach me, and from time to time, help me to execute difficult tasks. I am using hand-held power tools. I cut the cord on the power saw. I can’t seem to make the scroll saw go where I want it to go. I am thinking of returning the hand-held router because it is far too scary to use.
My business colleagues have come by to see the work in progress, and they laugh because every screw is where it should be and is drilled to precise depth. I can point out the one screw among 2,000 that has been improperly placed. I can show them where I cut notches in the wrong places and where I glued in patches. They think it is funny that I am still not done after two years. They think I am something worse than careful and precise.
I love how the cedar deck smell and looks. It is solid, and everything fits. I am progressing.
© Leap Corporation 2009