This week’s episode builds on Monday’s article, part four in the series titled “Complementary Contradictions.” Here is the transcript of the podcast.
There are times when you get conflicting words of advice, one which is good and the other which is not, and it requires discernment to determine which is the right advice to follow. But often, you may hear conflicting counsel that seems to be contradictory to each other, but which is actually complementary and, when used appropriately and in the right way, can work together to help you make better decisions. That’s what we are talking about in this series, in both the www.LeadershipEzra.com website articles and on the weekly podcast. We are looking at different leadership ideas or principles that seem to contradict, or at least differ from each other, and we are pairing them up to see how they actually complement each other to make you a better leader. Today, in part 4, we explore the idea that you need to be able to zoom out and see the forest, and next week, the idea that you need to be able to zoom in and see the trees.
In the last two episodes, we talked about two complementary ideas: first, the idea that you see what you’re looking for and then, that you don’t see what you’re not looking for. The point we made was that, whether we realize it or not, we all develop perceptions of how we need to experience the world around us. Those perceptions tend to be based on either past experience or future expectation, or a combination of both. We either have an experience, positive or negative, real or imagined, or we have a specific expectation that we are anticipating, and we then form a perception based on which we look for a certain outcome, and only see the things that confirm that outcome. Consciously or not, we decide what we are looking for, and only see what affirms or confirms what we expect to see.
At the same time, and although we believe we notice everything, especially if we are looking, we tend to miss a lot of what is right in front of us, primarily because we are not looking for that specific thing in that specific way. When I am looking to see or find something, without realizing it, I am expecting it to look a certain way or be in a certain place, so I then overlook it when it is not in that place, or it looks different than what I remember or expect. Because our tendency is to only see what we are looking for, it takes a conscious effort to see things that we are not looking for.
Now we are tackling another pair of ideas.
In my first experience as a head of school, I stepped into a situation in which the school had been struggling significantly. Enrollment had declined dramatically over the previous couple of years, the upper grades were meeting at a rented facility on the other side of town that was in terrible disrepair and not conducive to learning, the new building program was stalled, and there was not a clear and organized budget (the school was under the leadership of a church, and its budget was literally a single line in the church budget). I, however, was young and inexperienced. So what did I do? One of the first things I did was purchase 5” x 7” post-it notes. Then, I started writing down everything I could think of that I needed to know about, take care of, fix, protect, and do. Everything I thought of, I wrote on a single Post-it note. I found a room with an empty wall and started sticking all of the Post-in notes on the wall. After I had them all on the wall, I stepped back to the other side of the room and stared at the wall. After staring at the notes for a while, I started sorting the notes that were there into related groups, and adding new notes of things I could see were missing. I did this for about a week, and by the end of that time, I had begun to form a good picture of the puzzle I needed to put together to bring wellness, healing, and excellence to this school. Only then was I able to begin to zoom in on the smaller groups and individual pieces and get to work.
You see, before I could create, inject, establish, repair, and restore all that I needed to do, I first needed to gain a big-picture understanding of what was in front of me. Similar to mapping out a trip, I needed to see the whole map, with the routes and stops and detours, so that I could plan the individual steps of the journey. One of the downsides of modern vehicle GPS screens is that, in my personal opinion, you can readily see where you are, but not where you are trying to get to. It takes you there step by step, but you don’t see the whole picture along the way. In contrast, the exercise I went through in that first head-of-school role was intended to help me see the whole picture before I started on the journey.
In leadership, it is crucial that you take the time and effort to zoom out and see the big picture before you start your journey, and again periodically, or even frequently, along the way. You need to be able to step back, gather all the information that you can, and see the big picture, like the picture on a puzzle box that shows you the image you are trying to assemble before you put the individual puzzle pieces together. If you don’t do that, you end up with three issues:
- You don’t know where you are. Sure, you can see the spot you are standing in, but you only see where you are relative to yourself, not to the big picture. In marine terms, that’s called dead reckoning. It means you are trying to establish your position and direction based solely on where you think you are at the moment. That will derail your plan if you are not where you think you are because you didn’t place yourself in the context of the whole picture.
- You don’t know where you are going. It only makes sense that if you can’t place yourself in the present, then you have no frame of reference to know the direction you are going in the future. You end up lost and wandering without a map.
- You will end up someplace else. This only makes sense. If you don’t know where you are or where you are going, then eventually, you will end up somewhere, but you will have no idea where. Then you have an even greater mess because you now have to figure it where you ended up so that you can start over and try to get to where you need to.
The big picture today – pun intended – is that successful leadership requires taking the time to see and understand the big picture. You need the vision and mission. You need to know your intended outcome. You need to survey the landscape. You need to see the forest. However you want to say it, you need to be able to get above the clouds and see the whole picture before you can drop back down to ground level and begin the process of directing, guiding, leading, and moving.
I just said GPS systems don’t show you the whole journey, only the steps along the way. Technically, you can see the whole route if you zoom the screen out, but if you do that, you can’t see the individual turns, stops, and steps. You can see one or the other, but not both at the same time. Therefore, you need to choose one or the other at any given time. Isn’t that the lesson of today’s topic? You can’t see the forest and the trees at the same time, so start by first zooming out to see the whole picture. Then you’ll be ready to zoom in, but that’s the topic for next time.