Leaving Prisons

The manner in which we reflexively navigate through life is holy. Our maneuvering habits are telling as to our freedom or our rigidity. As leaders, we take our jails with us in the air, on the road, or on the water as we travel. Consider the following three navigational archetypes of rafts, motorboats and sailboats, and reflect on your reconnoitering. I worked with Ken some years ago. Ken’s quintessential talent was that he always made sure he had someone to blame if anything ever went wrong. Behind his back, people called him Teflon-Ken, because nothing ever stuck to him. His accountability avoidance boomeranged, and after being promoted several times, he was eventually fired. Ken was a raft. Rafts adrift choose submission to the forces of nature, living at the mercy of wave whims. Subjugating to the fear of ownership and responsibility, we sometimes choose the raft of abdication. We choose to separate from our power and accountability. We choose to view our existence as effect rather than cause. At some point, life was just too difficult for the raft. To survive, the raft rejected birthright accountability. Rafts blame others; rafts feel helpless. It is comforting not having to “show up,” not having to be responsible, not being exposed. Rafts are nice places to hide. Rafts are frustrated and feel debilitated, but they salve that pain with whining. Whining is easier than the frightening freedom of living fully. Rafts are afraid to lose, to be wrong, to be evil, to live freely. Things happen to the raft. The raft doesn’t happen to things. The raft’s core assumption is that the elements around it, including people, are the cause of everything in their lives. To lead, the raft must manipulate the elements covertly. To complicate the matter further, the raft needs to hide its chosen victimhood when leading. Thus ritual whining and wailing is disguised in sophisticated analysis, approvals, and controls. The raft leader doesn’t want the inherent ownership that comes with being alive; they have given away their power so that they are unable to empower others. The raft can only accomplish anything through rescuers. Rafts collect rescuers through playing helpless, fussing, murmuring, threatening, and spinning stories. Raft rescuers unwittingly become the powerless minions of the complaining, endangering raft. Unwilling to live its own life fully, the raft lives through micromanaging others’ lives. The raft’s prison is its separation from itself. It divorced its free will and created a vessel, a life, devoid of self-acceptance and self-accountability. To be or not be a raft is not our only choice; sometimes we choose to travel through life like Barbara. People referred to Barbara as “the Tornado.” She was a high potential business leader who habitually left human debris and destruction in her wake. She ripped loudly through the environment. Instead of exhaust, she left behind toxic emotional residue and high body counts. After her staff meetings, most people typically felt demoralized, hated, worthless, and isolated. Regardless of the environment, she motored through it. Her agenda was paramount. It didn’t matter if a storm was already brewing and the waves were high. Her direction was predominant. It didn’t matter that the conditions were not safe to go on. Her opinion was the only one she accepted. Barbara was a high-powered motorboat, hell-bent for the perfect storm. Motorboats are cause, not effect. Motorboats, however, are oblivious to the fact that they are not the only cause. Motorboats don’t depend on or respect the elements around them; they use and abuse the elements. Don’t get in their way; they’ll motor right over you. Sometimes we are Barbara. We are most important. Our will must prevail. We assume to know best. We motor, we steam-roll, we squash, we bulldoze, we drive, we muscle, we push. We must accomplish, we must succeed, we must win. It’s not about the team; it’s about us. We are tenacious and determined. There are acceptable sacrifices to our almighty goals. We must continually feed our insatiable dependence on accomplishment. People are the means to our end-goal. People become impersonalized objects to the motorboat, easily used, abused and discarded. Motorboats are highly articulate with a well-polished vocabulary, embedding the impersonalizing of others in everything they do. “Drive labor productivity.” “Maximize utilization of human resources.” “Optimize outcomes.” “Get rid of the deadwood.” “Upgrade the talent.” The motorboat hides its illogical wish to be God behind the veneer of controlling aristocracy. Everyone within reach is the attendant-slave of the motorboat. Through ascendant domination, they separate from humanity and sever any possible connection with those they pretend to lead. Whether the motorboat is benevolent is beside the point; they do not view people as equals, they view people as objects. They repel followers from within their prison cell of supremacy, where they have a room with a view, a point of view: they view humanity inhumanely. While we may occasionally choose the raft or the motorboat, Vern chose otherwise. When in the presence of some leaders you just know instinctively that they are great, but when you were in the presence of Vern, you knew that you were great. He possessed quiet strength and connected deeply with people. He respectfully interacted as though he were a part of them. As tender as he was fierce, he had a special awareness and wisdom that helped him to read people and the environment, and to know just how to set his sails. While his presence was powerful and often disruptive, it wasn’t forced; it didn’t feel foreign, it fit. Vern was intentional and inspirational, yet so flexible that it felt like he was part of the environment itself. Vern was a sailboat. He constantly matched his intentions to the power of the elements around him. He knew well the wind and the waves, and they knew him. He did not...