To the Protege: Cultivating a Swiss Army Soul

RW West
Jan 10, 2015
2 min read

Rigidity is an option…I suppose.

I don't know what causes a boy or a girl to approach life with tight hands, furrows for eyebrows, and a measuring rod for themselves (or worse, a measuring rod for others, or worse even still, a measuring rod that uses themselves as the measuring rod for others), but I know it happens.

And although it may masquerade as compliance, critique, quality control, or correctness, it just might be an uninteresting case of a deep need to control. At its root, it is an avoidance of risk and prevention of exposure when wearing Sunday’s best. But it can quickly shed those shiny clothes for work coveralls called command, control, and criticism.

Rigidity feels right. It feels certain. It feels...good.

However, offering stability to a community of stakeholders is indeed a high leadership priority and it is only one side of the leadership coin. Pioneering the new chapter, toward that community's horizon is the other side of that coin...and such a paradoxical mission is going to fail if ruled by rigidity.

Such a mission, by definition, is uncharted. There is no map to the future. It's designed in cooperation with a listening community, usually. And in most cases, pioneering a new path will not only destabilize things, but will require agility, versatility, adaptability, and flexibility. These attitudes and the behaviors that arise from them are on the other end of the spectrum from rigidity.

Enter the Mentor: sometimes we need someone on the outside to watch over the approaches we are taking to our lives, loves, and leadings. We need someone with a different vantage point from us who can tactfully make us aware of those parts we cannot always see about ourselves.

Something so worthy of affirmation could be taken to extremes and deform into rigidity, which we cannot always see in ourselves. So, allowing those who care about our development to make mention of how our strength might be devolving into a weakness, might be just what makes the difference.

To advance in leadership intelligence, we must advance equally in leadership agility. And from my experience, the observational gifts mentors can give us are one of the surest shortcuts to becoming more pliable in a leader-needy situation.

Question: has anyone ever given you the gift of a tactful appraisal of your strengths, especially when they've been taken to an extreme? Let's hear about it.