Leadership is a serious meddling in other people’s lives. –Max De Pree
Decades ago as I was thinking deeply about what it means for me to take on the role of being a depth-educator and the role of being a thought-partner I strove to remember Max De Pree’s observation about ‘Leadership.’ I adopted the following as both guides and reminders: Finding Your Voice and Living Your Story. Max’s reminder and my two guides have continued to serve me well during these many years as I have striven to help designated leaders find their voice and live their story as they meddle in the lives of others.
This morning, Gentle Reader, I invite you to join me as I briefly explore ‘Voice,’ ‘Story’ & ‘Metaphor’ not as they apply to the ‘Leader’ but as they apply to each of us.
VOICE. ‘Voice’ involves a process of seeking first to examine and understand who I am and who I am choosing to become and why I am choosing this becoming. Thousands of years ago the Oracle directed each of us with ‘Know Thyself.’ A few centuries later a guy named Socrates noted that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’ Then, a few thousand years after that another guy, named Robert K. Greeneaf, upped the ante when he offered us this: ‘To refuse to examine the assumptions one lives by is immoral.’
In order to ‘Bring My Voice’ I must seek to understand myself. Here are a few guiding questions that I continue to hold:
- What are the core values, the core guiding principles, the core assumptions, the core prejudices, the core beliefs and the core stereotypes that I have integrated and that I express via my ‘Voice’ (verbally and through my choices-behavior)? [By the by, ‘Core’ means: that to the best of my ability I will never compromise my value, guiding principle, etc.]
- Do these get me what I want? What do I want? (I begin by responding to the second question first).
- What is the impact of my ‘Voice’ upon the other(s) and upon myself? What are the consequences – intended and unintended?
- What do I ‘espouse’ as important or crucial AND what do I actually ‘live’? What are the ‘gaps’ between the two and what do I do to help close those ‘gaps’?
STORY. Each of us has integrated a life-metaphor. We live as if this metaphor is ‘real’ rather than as something we have integrated and can change if we have a need to do so. ‘Story’ is one life-metaphor: ‘My life is a story that I write and live.’ There is a paradox here: I am BOTH the author and the subject; I write the story AND I live the story. Here are a few other ‘life-metaphors’ that others have identified as having integrated:
- Life is a Struggle to be engaged.
- Life is a War to be waged.
- Life is a Journey to be taken.
- Life is a Play to be lived.
- Life is a Game to be played.
- Life is a Mystery to be solved.
- Life is a Garden to be tended. [My thanks to the great Spanish poet Antonio Machado for this metaphor.]
It is crucial to understand that the metaphors we use will determine the paths we choose. Conflicts with others occur when there is a conflict of metaphors. Organizations also integrate and live into and out of a metaphor as does our National Culture (Organizations and Nations are individuals and relationships writ large – hence they are, indeed, living organisms). For example with the advent of the Industrial Age (1900) our Nation and many of our organizations embraced and integrated an inorganic, mechanical metaphor: People are cogs in the great machine. After World War II our Nation and many of our organizations embraced and integrated an inorganic, banking metaphor: People are assets, commodities and resources. We also have combined two metaphors: War and Sports into a War-Sports metaphor.
Our Voice is modulated by our Life-Metaphor and our Life-Metaphor frames and directly influences the Life-Story that we write and live into. I invite you, Gentle Reader, to spend some time discerning, naming and ‘owning’ your Life-Metaphor and then I invite you to seek to discern how your life-metaphor impacts your Voice and your Life-Story. Remember: YOU are the AUTHOR and the PROTAGONIST of your LIFE-STORY.
Your life is your message. –Gandhi