You’ve got the promotion. You’re in your new role. You’re putting on a brave face. You’re maxing up the ‘positive self-talk’. Come on, you can do it. They wouldn’t have put me in the role if they didn’t think I was up to it. And remember that project for Asia last year – this can’t be more difficult than that. You know you have what it takes to succeed – intellectually, you know. But sometimes, the intellectual knowing just isn’t enough.
It gets worse. It gets personal. You know that, in order to succeed, you need to make headway in developing new skills. Perhaps you need to rely less on your technical skills (as an accountant, lawyer, doctor etc.) and cultivate skills in a whole new area – leadership, emotional intelligence, call it what you will. Perhaps you have to let go of doing what you’ve always done best and start to deliver with and through others. You’ve always got huge plaudits for your ability to deliver – but can you get others to deliver in the same way?
Maybe it gets even worse than that. You know – you know – that whether it’s in this job or another there’s no turning back. Doing everything yourself was barely working for you in your old job – you have to find new ways of working, whatever your job. You were on your way to burn-out and you know it. Or perhaps you’d got as far as you could go by getting angry with yourself, or your staff, and you know you’ve got to find new strategies.
The trouble is, you’ve acknowledged the problem – but you don’t begin to know how to address it. You’re in one of life’s most tender spots – you’ve crossed a threshold and you don’t know where to go. Joseph Campbell highlighted this aspect of the human journey in his research which I briefly summarised in one of the most often visited posting on this blog, entitled Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey. Crossing the threshold means stepping out of our comfort zone and accepting some challenge or ‘call to adventure’. Campbell’s research – into the myths of many cultures on this subject – shows how we have to accept the call to adventure before the resources we need begin to show up.
What’s it like to stand in this most tender of spots? Recently, a conversation with a colleague reminded me of the feelings that can – if we let them – overwhelm us in this place. Sometimes, there is intense sadness, grief and loss as we acknowledge the impact on our lives of the choices we have made in the past. We may be overwhelmed with compassion for our younger self who learned, for example, how to do everything personally rather than to face the ire of a parent or teacher when we asked for help. We may be sorrowful when we realise just how much this early choice has shaped our lives, keeping us from reaching out for help. And we may be intensely scared when we think of what we might have to do that we have never done before.
Navigating this stage of our own journeys requires a large measure of compassion, both for the way it shines a light on those areas in which we need to develop and for all the emotions that comes with this. The language of leadership development – ‘areas for development’, weaknesses’, ‘growing edge’ marches on past this level of emotion with barely a side-glance of acknowledgement. It helps if we are not alone in holding our emotions in this tender place – if we have a trusted coach, or mentor, or peers, or family. All the love and support we need is available to us, though learning to receive it may be a hero’s journey in itself.
Campbell talks of the hero but we might equally talk of leaders. Leaders are made in this place, because they are the people who constantly step across each new threshold as they meet it. And if they can only stand close to the fire of their emotions, they are also the people who learn how to understand themselves and others – an essential quality if we are to lead others in ways which engage and inspire.
If you want to read more about Campbell’s work, I recommend his books (especially The Power of Myth) and also The Hero’s Journey by Robert Dilts and Stephen Gillighan. For now, though, I wonder, what are the thresholds you face right now?