Success through Imperfection
Appreciating the flaws woven into our story.
I was standing in the home of my mentor, Barry, waiting for him to join me and noticed an old rug hanging on the wall. I vaguely remembered seeing something similar on Antiques Roadshow a couple of years previous, but in my ignorance, I couldn’t have told you what it was.
As Barry came down the stairs and noticed me admiring the rug, he explained that it was a Navajo rug, which tells the story of a man’s life. In this case, the man was Barry’s great uncle, Hillyard, who late in life became a hermit among the Navajo high in the Colorado Rockies.
In the early1900s, Hillyard lived off the land—hunting, fishing, and trading skills and resources with the Navajo to sustain himself. As he grew old, the Navajo gave him a special gift as a symbol of the friendship which had developed over years of mutual respect and interdependence. This rug told the story of his character and skills, and of who they knew him to be.
Before Barry inherited the rug and ultimately displayed it in his home, his mother found a Navajo chief willing to sit and translate the story woven into the rug for the family. He ran his hands over the rug, explaining the story told among the patterns.
“He was a great fisherman. He was seen as a trusted friend and respected by the tribe. And here is the imperfection.”
For a moment, this caught Barry’s mother off guard. Is it damaged in some way? But the chief assured her that Navajo weavers include an imperfection as an intentional part of every rug. According to the Director of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, Dr. Carla Sinopoli Ph.D., the Navajo call this ch’ihónít’ i, or the “Spirit Pathway.” Recognizing the perplexed looks of his listeners, the chief explained that this is where a person’s spirit can come in and out of their story.
In his book, Breathing Under Water, Richard Rohr says:
Perfection is not the elimination of imperfection, but rather, the ability to incorporate imperfection! You either incorporate imperfection, or you fall into denial.
There’s a lesson in the wisdom of the Navajo weavers that western society is apt to overlook. We are often hard at work, designing a life of perfection and high performance, yet where we get our most profound sense of ourselves is when life hands us something bigger than we can handle on our own. And it’s our imperfections, not our strengths, which invite these moments in.
Look at enough rugs, and you’ll notice they all have an imperfection. Imperfection is a part of everyone’s story. It's part of what bonds us together and calls us to need each other. Through the imperfections in our story, we develop skills that our strengths never would have taught us. In recounting the story to me, Barry said:
“Every leader needs to not only know their strengths but how their imperfections are the point in their life where the spirit can go in and out.”
It’s through our imperfections that our spirit finds its way.
This article was developed in collaboration with Barry Brown, adapted from a workshop we gave on personal growth and leadership development for a division of the Canadian Government. To learn more about our workshops, message me for more information.
Barry Brown is a former community leader, nonprofit organizer and personal coach that works in identity and leadership development for startups and enterprise businesses around the world. He’s a cofounder of human(Ethos), on faculty at Singularity University, and runs be/do labs, a part of Runway Innovation Hub in San Francisco.
Damien Foord is an Air Force veteran and creative entrepreneur that has advised hundreds of brands in Silicon Valley, including LinkedIn, Tesla, Adobe, and many more. He is a cofounder of Prismonde, applying cognitive science to business strategy and brand development and speaks on organizational identity and human-centered innovation.
