Here we go again!

After a five-week break of vacation and continuing education leave, I wasn't back to work for more than a couple of hours when someone called to talk about a conflict situation that I had to deal with. It was ok - I felt rested and energized. I met with the people and discussed their feelings about what was happening, and tried to plow through all the second-hand hearsay evidence and get down to facts. I reminded the folks talking to me of their leadership training: to relentlesslessy search after facts, to expect resistance and sabotage when they define themselves clearly, to not accept responsibility for the other's emotional reaction, and above all to stay calm. This seemed to help them. After they left my office, I had to remind myself of the same points.

I went back to my desk and looked at the 30-item long "to do" list. One of the items was "make that documentary film". Another was "annual updates on the website" and a third, "plan the next 10 months of weekly presentations". *sigh* "Here we go again," I thought. I could organize myself all I liked, but the truth of the matter is that a good chunk of time will have to be taken out of that schedule to deal with what I call "leadership items": conflict, process, relationships, teaching, learning.

About five years ago a mentally unstable person in my organization kept leaving gift bags of various dollar-store-type items at my office door. She was eventually arrested and carted off to a mental institution. One of the things in one of the bags was an airplane-serving-sized bottle of gin. At times like this, I make it a habit to open my third drawer down on the left and stare at this bottle of gin, the only gift item I didn't turn over to the cops. (If I ever do drink it, it will be in front of someone else, and for a pronounced comic effect.)


In my purse, one drawer down from the gin, was a $500 prize from an award that I'd just received for being outstanding in my field. Having passed on the gin yet one more time, as well as on the idea of spending the five hundred bucks on shoes or a one-way ticket to Hawaii, I put my feet up on the desk and leaned back in the chair, hands clasped behind my head. My desk faces a window, out of which I noticed that in my absence this summer the Kwik-Mart across the street had gone out of business. Good wake-up call!

I remember the simple, ignorant, yet strangely profound words of a young intern to me about twenty years ago. He was completely up to his ears in conflict and chaos. After explaining the situation at hand, he simply stated, "why can't things just run smoothly?" Indeed! I ask myself this often, and the research on my book was an organized asking of that exact question. To make a lot of research infinitely easy: they can't just run smoothly. Not possible. It's the nature of human beings, the nature of systemic organizations, and the nature of emotional systems/institutions that "things" will not take a smooth course, and leadership will always be required.

It seems that even if you dedicate your career to training good leaders, write books, and win prizes the fact remains that you have to actually lead all the time. Not only do you have to lead, but you have to remind yourself of your own teachings each and every day! No matter how many books I read, how much therapy I have, or meditation/prayer I engage in, I still have to keep on the top of my game 24/7. I will easily slip, and "things" will easily slip. There is no sense that you can just become a good leader and will then have somehow "arrived" and you don't have to learn any more or grow any more.

I guess it's pretty much like life that way.