Entrepreneur, Know Thyself
Disentangling Fact From Fiction
“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and also that difficult.” — Warren Bennis
What does it mean to become yourself? The answer does not always appear quickly and in high definition. It requires effort and time and happens within our heads and hearts, not while reading the most current blog post or article. Becoming ourselves requires understanding ourselves. Understanding that who we are now is influenced by what happened to us in the past and the myths we create about why it happened.
When we use a word like myth or another equally vague term like stories in reference to our own life, it can carry the connotation that those myths and stories are untrue, false, and even supernatural. Yet, there are very real lessons to be learned and deeper truths to discover if only we are willing to unearth those myths and see them anew; to look inward as opposed to outward for answers, and to suspend our beliefs about ourselves and the world.
Often, the way to becoming who we want to be is waiting to be discovered just beneath the surface.
My coaching client Rik is the CEO of an early-stage startup and to all outward appearances a successful one at that. He has steady funding to keep the company afloat and a great product loved by his users, due in no small part to the brilliant team he’s surrounded himself with. But recently Rik had been hesitant to fully engage with the team. He was worried about how his role as CEO would affect others on his team’s perception of him. Would they go along with whatever he said just because the CEO said it?
To him, the idea that something as arbitrary as title would impact how others on his team behaved bothered him to the point of anxiety. Anxiety that good ideas wouldn’t rise to the surface, or worse that members of his team would feel uncomfortable at work and that he’d be the reason why. This belief led him to over-communicate his worry to his team that they might be holding themselves back from sharing their thoughts or contributing their ideas. As an unintended consequence, Rik found himself holding back from sharing his thoughts or ideas. His anxieties weren’t just affecting the areas where cross-functional collaboration was important, they were spilling over into his responsibilities as CEO.
A helpful analogy is that of a soccer team, where Rik as CEO is the goalie. He has the responsibility of being the last line of defense and with it the privileges of using his hands. It was those privileges that worried him, and so he would do his best to make sure everyone understood that it was okay for him to use his hands, and it went beyond just the members of the team, to the spectators as well. Imagine a goalie constantly explaining to his teammates and the audience that it’s actually okay for him to use his hands where others on the team cannot. Wouldn’t that get in the way of the goalie's ability to be as effective as he could be? Wouldn’t that be confusing for everyone else who understands the rules of the game and wouldn’t think to judge the goalie for using his hands? Yet Rik felt he would be judged, and so acted based on a myth he had created about what it meant to be the CEO and more broadly about what it meant to be “the authority.”
But where did this belief come from? And how much of it was true? Surely we can all resonate with the experience of acting differently around those with positional power or acting differently when we hold that power. So the question becomes not if we will act differently around those with authority, but how did we learn to act in the ways that we do. Where did we each learn what being the authority means? Rik and I started to dig deeper, asking these questions in order to shed light on where he learned that being the authority meant preventing others from being fully themselves.
A story emerged that brought clarity to both why and how Rik’s relationship to authority solidified.
As a freshman in high school, Rik was extremely bright and motivated by learning for more than the sake of a grade. He wanted to push himself to fully be the best that he could be, and so was testing not only his own boundaries but the boundaries around him. At times, for good or ill, these boundaries seemed arbitrary and limiting. In his computer science class, for instance, Rik took an assignment and pushed it beyond what was expected. He gained access to the school’s computer system and innocuously reprogrammed it. Perhaps naively he hoped to be congratulated by his teacher for his ingenuity and ability, but instead, his teacher chastised him for breaking the rules even if the rules were preventing Rik from learning. He was hurt and dismayed that the teacher didn’t see his actions as those of a clever student pushing himself while making sure not to hurt anyone. This example and others like it led Rik to internalize a belief that authority figures are not right just because they are the authority and at worse can be dangerous to the growth and emotional well-being of those around them. His attempt at self-expression was shot down by someone who was maintaining their authority and the status quo.
The belief wasn’t limiting for Rik until years later when he found himself as the very authority he had become so skeptical of, and it wasn’t until uncovering how his relationship to authority was formed that he could disentangle fact from fiction. Yes, his teacher had used his power in a way that stifled Rik’s enthusiasm, but that didn’t mean that Rik had to follow in his footsteps. A new question began to form in his mind. “How can I be in a position of power and create a company where my team (including myself) can show up fully as we are? This question has created new possibilities that allow for Rik to be in alignment with his role at the company instead of at odds with it.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller
What are the myths and stories you hold? How do they influence the ways you show up in your work and life?
