Leadership Lessons From Ant & Grasshopper
Leadership Lessons From Ant & Grasshopper
In my client’s 3-way goal-alignment session with John (a C-suite leader) and his boss, Bill (CEO), Bill asked John, “Your goals are well aligned with our strategic directions, but how are you going to keep your own sustainability?”
John is a great leader with a strong followership. His 360 feedback results showed that he didn’t have any serious development areas.
He is well-liked, respected and trusted by stakeholders, but John is restless. With his eyes fixed on the top, he pushes himself for agile transformation, works long hours and travels frequently to engage global teams.
Bill continued, “Given your performance, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t think about running a large corporation in a few years. But leaders at the top need support from those who truly care about them.
When you come home after a hard day of work, you want to see a loving family waiting for you. You need to nurture the relationships while they are around.” Bill must have sensed that John’s work-life integration is not optimal. In fact, John himself was concerned about his fitness level.
For the past five years, I’ve noticed more senior leaders name work-life integration or resilience as one of their improvement areas.
According to David Whyte, author of The Three Marriages, “Humans aren’t just in one marriage with a significant other. We have made secret vows to our work and unspoken vows to a constantly developing inner self.”
He asserts that sacrificing one marriage for any of the others will create deep psychological damages. Yet high-performing leaders often admit their strongest marriage is to work. Working mothers confide that their marriage to the self is the weakest.
Three marriages are integrated like the ancient spiral of life; however, strong marriages start with a good marriage to the self. One can’t give what he doesn’t have to others.
