There was a time that I believed leadership meant having all the answers. I assumed straight A's, technical expertise, and an iron grip on control made for stellar leadership. Then one day, while working with horse trainer Bruce Anderson, he delivered a truth that would shatter my carefully constructed worldview: "If you can't give over control to the rope, I'm not going to let you work with my horse." It was a weird sounding statement that exposed a profound flaw in my approach to not just horsemanship, but to leadership itself. What I thought was masterful control was actually getting in my way - and not just with horses, but in every aspect of my life where I was trying to lead. I detail the story of my frustration with the rope in my book Dancing the Tightrope. We were working on my “control issues”, which at one time, I preferred to think of as stellar leadership skills.
Stop for a minute and think about YOUR definition of leadership. What is the hallmark of a truly stellar leader? What would people who watch you in action say that your definition of leadership is? I would venture to guess that most of us would espouse a different definition of leadership than those around us actually experience.
Bridging that gap between knowing something and actually being able to DO that something, especially under pressure, is where the growth lies.
By the time Bruce and I were working on my control issues, I was well aware that being in control was often not the answer. However, tell that to my muscle memory! Whenever things got tough, I defaulted to my old ways.
Bruce would coach me, saying “be the conduit” and I wondered what the hell electrical piping had to do with anything. However, with time, I realized he was talking about an approach I had played with years ago and had forgotten: improvisation. In other words, being the conduit simply meant to listen rather than thinking I had to have all the answers.
Ironically, trying to wrestle the rope into submission reminded me of my first embarrassing exposure to improvisation while working with a large client in midtown Manhattan in the early 2000’s. I was part of consortium of facilitators preparing to teach a new program to senior executives. They were in one of those industries where those at the highest levels had to dance the tightrope between being technical advisors with deep subject matter expertise (i.e., knowing) and also being responsible for bringing in clients to the organization (i.e. learning). Listening didn’t even make the top 10 of the skills they valued as technical experts, and they looked down their nose at selling as a task beneath them. Clients tended to buy the expertise, but only when the experts demonstrated that they understood the problems the clients were trying to solve. It was the second half of that equation that was costing this company millions in lost sales as well as client attrition.
Our program aimed to change their perception of “sales”. Listening, truly hearing, what clients need may be the most fundamental principle of sales. The executives we were working with had been to every listening program out there, and yet still operated with a proving mindset more focused on performing than learning. We decided to use improvisation as a way to shake things up.
But first, the facilitators had to be trained in it. That’s where my embarrassing moment occurred. We were learning an exercise called “Yes, and.” The teacher started with a simple statement. Then the rest of us were to go around a circle, agreeing with the teacher’s statement (yes) and then adding to it to keep the scene moving forward (and). I just so happened to be the first one to go after the teacher. After all this time, I can’t remember the initiating statement; however, I DO remember saying something outrageous that had little to do with her statement, and maybe something about people from outer space. The rest of the circle went from there, and it wasn’t pretty. My left turn in the story made it difficult for everyone else to go with the flow. As we were debriefing, the teacher finally acknowledged that she should have stopped me when I didn’t do “yes, and” and given me a sample of what effective improvisation looked like. The truth was, I had never paid much attention to improv, but I definitely was good at proving rather than learning.
Rather than going with what was happening, I took control to make things go my way. That method of responding to the world had been creating fights my whole life.
When the teacher pointed out what I had done, it served as a great learning tool for everyone else in the room, because in a way, I represented the same behavior we could expect from the executives we would soon be teaching. Great for them. But yuck! Why did I have to be the one that did it wrong? I spent a good bit of that day in a swirl of embarrassment, anger and frustration, hating how bad I looked in front of everyone in the group.
Some of those same feelings started coming up when I was working with the rope exercise Bruce had given me. Attempting to wrestle the rope into submission was more about me satisfying my need to look good rather than working in harmony with the way the rope is made.
What happens when you coil a lariat by wrestling it into submission (Made even more difficult when Piper thinks the rope is her toy)
My muscle memory would have sent me down the same “right/wrong” rabbit hole I had been going down my whole life if Bruce hadn’t intervened. Rather than letting me off the hook to hide in the corner beating myself up, he added more pressure. It was a counterintuitive move that turned out to be genius.
The pressure broke through the old programming and showed me the answer was right in front of me: Play improv with the rope and it will coil beautifully.
What happens when you coil a lariat by listening to the tension and going with the way the rope is made
It’s a tiny shift in perception that makes a huge shift in setting the conditions for harmony.
It reminds me of the tightrope dance between being a solo singer rather than a choir singer. I’ve done both. Going from trying to sing a beautiful solo to blending with a choir is a whole different mindset. In order to blend in a choir, we have to listen to the whole and adjust to what’s happening around us. A solo singer has to project their voice in a way that grips the audience. Neither is right or wrong; they both have their place.
But what if we ARE right? What if we have the moral high ground and we absolutely need the other person to come around to our way of thinking? That was the dilemma facing FBI hostage negotiators. Of course, they were right to free kidnapped hostages. Of course they had the moral high ground. However, using the proving mindset did not lead to acceptable outcomes. In his book Never Split the Difference; Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It, Chris Voss shares many stories about how he and other FBI hostage negotiators learned to be the conduit, and let the situation tell them what to do, when to do, how to do. He calls this the “art of letting somebody else have your way”.
Another way to say it was they had to give up control to get control.
Of all the principles I’ve been playing with over the last few years, this one has perhaps given me the most to chew on. Experts on getting rid of bad habits say that you can’t really eliminate a habit. Instead, they say it’s better to create a new habit in place of the old. For a die-hard control freak, learning to be the conduit has been that substitute habit for me.
Whether working with a horse or human or thing, shifting my mindset from thinking I know to asking “what are you telling me” has been revolutionary.
Closing the gap between knowing something and actually doing it involves getting in the froth, making mistakes, feeling like a beginner. In other words, being uncomfortable.
Using improvisation to create harmony is not necessarily easy. Or smooth. Or perfect. It calls on us to be more present, and in some cases accept things we would otherwise like to change.
One of the things I SO wish I could change these days is the road situation. Four months after Hurricane Helene, it may seem like things should be back to normal. Things are not normal. I live at the bottom of the Hickory Nut Gorge. Pre storm we had a road coming in from the West and a road coming in from the East. The storm wiped out the road from the West (and almost wiped out the road from the East.) That’s why the helicopters flew for over a week following the storm. Hundreds of people lost the roads to their homes, and many more lost key arteries to work, doctors, stores and much more. For us, what was a 25-mile trip to Asheville is now 60 or more miles. No amount of railing against the injustice of it all will change the situation. It will take years to get these arteries restored.
In the meantime, I’m learning to be the conduit. It’s a subtle shift in mindset. The road tells me how to get where I’m going. For example, I’ve found new routes to Asheville that avoid the wreck-prone interstate. This mindset shift may not make the drive shorter; however, it changes the whole experience of it. It’s the serenity prayer in action. (God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.)
We cannot control what happens to us; however, we can control our response. Playing with improvisation doesn’t make it any more comfortable. But it does make it much more interesting!
Where have you found it useful to let the situation tell you what to do? Where does your need for control get in your way? How could you incorporate improvisation to bring more harmony to your life?