Where change really happens

Hint: if you don't like the reflection, don't try to change the mirror.

The first time I talk to a certain kind of leader tells me a lot. This particular sort of leader gets on the phone and after some polite introductions begins telling me about how great everything’s going, how they’re doing amazing, how they’re crushing it. And this happens more often than you’d think.

People don’t usually feel the need to tell you over and over about things they know to be true. I know how to tie my shoelaces and parallel park, but I don’t go around popping off about it. If they’re talking about it repeatedly, there’s something there. Quite often it’s insecurity.

So one of the ways I get people to talk about it is I listen to the story about how great everything is and I sit and wait for them to finish. Then I say: it sounds like everything’s going great, why are we here?

In other words, I tell them I don’t see the problem. And once they latch onto that, they begin explaining to me what’s going on, what they’re concerned about. They stop insisting on a story of excellence and tell the story of where it hurts. They make their own case for change.

Reality is dense

Our attachment to the current state can be really strong. Put another way, reality is dense. Once we start accepting it as it is, our ability to see much else is pretty small. Actually, what’s really happening is that we come to believe there isn’t anything else. Or we may have the intellectual faculties to describe something better, but not necessarily the personal faculties to inhabit that reality.

We’re capable of so much more than we think, and yet the rigidity of day-to-day thinking really narrows our options.

What I know to be true is that just about everything you know and can do right now, there was a time you didn’t know those things and you couldn’t do those things. And then there was a time you became aware that there were more possibilities than the ones you knew, but you weren’t yet able to have them. You weren’t able to live into them. You didn’t have the inner capacity to be that leader.

And that was probably pretty painful. You could see what you wanted, but you couldn’t be it just yet.

Then, if you stay with that possibility long enough, you decide to give it a try. Maybe you find the resources or the time or the discipline to give it an effort. Keep in mind at this point you’re still not the person who has the capacity to have the thing you want. You haven’t had that somatic experience of opening to the feeling of knowing the thing to be true. So it’s more of an intellectual hypothesis.

But if you’ve decided to go after that thing, then you’re going to go through a process that looks like you’re chasing the thing, but it’s actually the process of you becoming the person who can have that thing. And along the way, you’ll receive a lot of reflections and challenges.

Those reflections and challenges are the ones that, if you master them, you become the kind of person who can have the thing that you’ve begun dreaming of and working toward.

Having a vision is necessary but not the point

A lot of people get that mixed up. They think they’re going for the thing itself, and they keep their eyes so fixed on the prize that any threat, any hurdle, obstacle, impediment —all that stuff just becomes a nuisance or a threat. And sure, if there are things that imperil your company’s existence or your security in the world, then yeah, those things can present a threat.

But most people, most of the time, when we have our meetings, they’re not telling me about actual threats. They’re telling me about nuisances and annoyances that are popping up. And I think the thing that I would really want for any leader to know is that those nuisances are actually part of the path to success.

If you keep having the same one again and again—maybe it’s a sales team that doesn’t do what you expect them to do, or maybe it’s conflict between team members, maybe it’s running chronically short on cash—if you keep seeing the same scenarios again and again, you need to understand that you are not changing. You don’t yet have the capacity to be the person who has the thing you want.

Your struggles are the gold

So these nuisances, they’re there for you. They’re your gems. They’re where you build the strength and the experience to know what it is you’re doing.

Almost everything that exists, everything that can be known is outside of your current sphere of awareness. And I’m sure you know a lot. I’m sure you’ve experienced a lot. But almost all the infinite experience that’s out there is still not within your circle of awareness.

And the way you bring that stuff into your circle of awareness is you go out and you do things. You don’t think about them. You don’t spend a lot of time planning for them. You go out and you do them. And you observe what works. And then you do it again. And you do it again and again until one day the problem you had is no longer a problem. You know exactly what to do. And the thing that was bugging you becomes essentially effortless.

Your capacity is the real vision

This is what the path to becoming the kind of person who can hold your vision really looks like. And I have to acknowledge that work isn’t always easy. It can be frustrating and awkward and counterintuitive. It can make you doubt yourself. Stuff can be really hard, but it is a necessary part of the process of becoming who you need to be—big enough to accommodate your vision.

Think about it this way: if you were really the kind of person who could hold that vision, you’d already have it. There would be nothing in you that would be lacking. It would be so natural that doing it any other way probably wouldn’t occur to you.

If you’re not there yet, that’s okay. You have to know that as you conquer those limiters inside yourself, you get closer and closer to being the kind of person who can hold a big vision.

It’s not what you do, it’s really who you are, who you’re becoming. There’s not a lot of variation on this planet in terms of size or intellect. We humans are fairly consistent in the aggregate. But that’s pretty good news for you because it means that if it’s possible, it’s possible for you—if you have the determination to try and if you have the discipline to do the thing that makes your stomach lurch, but you ride it out and become less afraid of it, less paralyzed by it.

You keep going at that thing, you’ll break through—permanently.

But when you’re on the path to doing a big thing, it’s really important to see the thing as less of an end state and more of a guiding light. It’s a guide for you becoming—deep in your body, not just in your mind—the sort of person for whom the thing you want is obvious. And that’s really the whole game.

If someone’s telling me about how great they are, about how great they’re doing, that’s the big sign to me that they’re pretty strongly attached to reality as they’re experiencing it. Not only that, but by continuing to repeat that reality, often in contrast with the evidence, they reinforce it.

That’s really what change looks like in my mind. You set your goal and set out to do the thing, but the real work is who you are becoming, how wide your aperture is.

It’s always an inside job.

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Quick note: I didn’t include real-world examples in this piece, but I see them every day. Having a vision is not the same as being the person who can realize it, and almost every leader I work with is in the process of becoming the person who can hold it. The wise ones know that’s where the real work is.

But it’s also worth noting that the “crushing it” story is the one we reward. This might be the core of imposter syndrome. It also makes a great case for humility.

I’ve found faster, more direct paths to creating alignment between inner capacity and outer results, and I’d be happy to share them. They’re unlike anything in business today. Send me a note and I’ll be happy to tell you more.