You talk yourself out of leading
Two hikers on a trail. Photo by Toomas Tartes on Unsplash
Last week I talked about the duality of following and leading, two sides of the same coin. For that newsletter, click here.
But I left with a question: if following helps leading and vice versa, how do you know when to lead, and when to follow? The short answer is that you already know, you just talk yourself out of it.
Let’s go back to a hiking analogy I used in the last newsletter. If I’m taking you for a hike on the lovely trails near Beacon, NY, and I lose my way, the moment of knowing I’ve lost the way is a moment of consciousness — I’m aware something’s not right. I can stop and share with you that I’m lost and invite your help to rediscover the route.
But what happens if—just after I become aware we’re lost—I worry how it will look if I say so? What if I imagine you’ll think less of me?
This is the talk track of self-esteem, and it stops you from leading or following even when you know what’s right. Self-esteem is the way you measure your self-worth by what you guess other people will think of you. If I guess you will think less of me, I may pretend I’m still leading. But I will actually be mis-leading you.
Think about when you stopped yourself from following or leading, Were you worried that people might think less of you if you spoke the truth?
You can flip to the other side of the hiking analogy too. Imagine you’re following me on this trail, and you notice something’s not right. Maybe the path has become a wild mess, or you see I’m hesitant. That’s your moment of consciousness, the moment to stop following and start leading, by saying, “hey, this isn’t looking right, can we slow down?”.
What happens if just after that moment you think, “well, I don’t want to be rude!”, or “he must know what he’s doing”, and you stay quiet?
Instead of sharing your awareness, and switching from following to leading, you’re just colluding in getting lost.
It’s not always easy to rewrite the self-esteem scripts that we carry around, but it is possible, and that is the work I do with clients. The first job for us is to see how fear and self-esteem are involved. Then we address the root causes so you can live and lead with ease, presence and deep satisfaction.
By the way, those are also the qualities of a good hike. It’s spring, time to get outside!
To less fear and more communication,
Tom