Unhelpful Assumptions (for Leading Through Uncertainty) #3 | “We’re in Control”

As some people would have it, even a plane can’t fly without them in it. How disappointing for them when they discover autopilot.

If you’ve been a regular reader, you might have noticed a theme emerging about how we can’t throw ourselves like a missile at reality and expect things to all go our way. And that metaphor is not mine but was lifted from this excellent TED talk by the poet and philosopher David Whyte. It’s called Life at the Frontier: The Conversational Nature of Reality, and it describes reality as exactly that: an ongoing conversation between yourself and reality. He introduces the analogy of the plane flying through the air and the conversation that happens between the shape of the wing and the movement of the air and how that conversation keeps the plane in the air.

Similarly, in the previous episode, we looked at how your plan doesn’t exist on its own as a thing that is either right or wrong, but it exists in conversation with another plan—the rather random, chaotic-seeming plan that is life out there as it happens. (We may think that life out there has no plan, but we use science, which assumes there is order in the universe, so we can say there’s a plan of some sort.)

In this episode, we’re going to look at another assumption, which may look and feel similar to the last one, but which still stands on its own. The assumption is this: “We’re in control of what happens.” Now you may say instantly that you know you’re not in control of what happens, and that’s probably true—you do know. However, in times of uncertainty, we tend to forget what we know and turn to our emergency reactions—or old habits. Here’s an example of how this can play out.

In a recent coaching session, a senior executive wanted coaching on holding people accountable. He called it “being tough on outcomes”. I asked him how he currently does things, which he described to me. I couldn’t see a lot wrong with his approach, to be honest. It was the approach I’m often coaching the more tough leaders to move towards. As a coach, I needed to respect his wish and help him get where he wanted to go, but I did pause him and shared the view that I’ve just shared here: that I couldn’t see a lot wrong with his approach.

He reflected on this for a while and the conversation became about how he compares himself with leaders he’s experienced, both in the past and around him now—leaders who “made it to the top”, who “managed to achieve results”. I prompted him to look a little deeper at those leaders and asked, “Did the people—the organization—achieve those results necessarily because of those leaders, or sometimes despite those leaders?” In other words, would they have achieved similar results anyway, because people are naturally motivated to do well, and respond positively when you recognise that, instead of being aggressive towards them or micromanaging them? He admitted that most of the results might have happened anyway.

This brought us back to his leadership style. He often responded lightly, or even let things go, because he believes that people want to do their best; they know when they’ve underperformed and don’t need to be told. You just need to make them aware that you’re aware when there’s a slip-up, or they’re falling behind their targets. We examined this a little further and he concluded that what he really needed was to embrace his leadership style and trust that it was one to aspire to, not one to change. And, yes, there were things he could improve on, like being more willing to actually have the accountability conversations. In fact, by not having to be that tough aggressive guy, he realised that he would now find it easier to have the conversations he had been avoiding, because now he could have them naturally, authentically.

If life is a conversation, then some people might need to learn to listen.

So, what does this have to do with the assumption that, “We’re in control of what happens?” Perhaps you see it already, but I’m going to spell it out to make sure we’re on the same page. Many corporate leaders think that things happen because of them. You’d swear by listening to them that if they didn’t get up and go to work, the place would shut down. Nothing would get done. Or not properly. Sometimes people like that need to get ill to the point where they can’t go to work for a few days, weeks or months. Some fight that possibility, because the truth that it reveals is quite unpleasant for them: that, actually, things continue mostly OK without them.

This is not to say that they’re not valued or needed, and that’s precisely the point. We saw in the previous episode that the appropriate response the assumption “our plan is right” is not the binary opposite, “our plan is wrong”, but rather, “Our plan is one half of the story.” Similarly, here, the appropriate response to the assumption “we’re in control of what happens” is not the binary opposite “we’re in control of nothing”, or “we don’t matter at all”. Rather it’s that, “We’re a part of what happens.” Those leaders who think it’s all up to them discover that they do influence some things to go in a better direction, but not everything. A lot of stuff happens by itself. People wake up and do stuff. People care. People are capable. You can rely on that.

You can take this same principle and apply it more broadly to the world out there—the world of uncertainty. A lot of stuff happens by itself. There is a bigger picture that wants to emerge, as we’ve seen in past episodes. Instead of trying to impose yourself on it, can you—as David Whyte says—have a conversation with it? (Of course, if it’s a conversation, then some people—those control people—might need to learn to do some listening!) Once again, when you do that, you become responsive and not reactive. You learn to fly the plane instead of trying to singlehandedly hold it up in the air. In fact, when you do that, you realise that most of the flying is done on autopilot.