Mini Episode: An Outdated Model of Leadership

This week, Prentis shares their assessment that the leadership model in our culture feels outdated.  They share the concept of two leadership qualities that we could begin to possess on the individual or collective level -- will and surrender. And ask the questions-- How do we start to practice fluidity along the continuum of will and surrender to embody new ways of being leaders? And where can we start to look for leadership in odd and unexpected places?

The quote Prentis mentions in the episode is by Simon Sinek: 

“Leaders are the ones who have the courage to go first, to put themselves at personal risk to open a path for others to follow.”

If you’d like to come play and explore this theme more, join us over on Patreon.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Becoming the People. I'm Prentice Hemphill. I'm really happy to be with you again this week, back in the mix. I have had some time off to do some grieving, some processing, some logistical work, honestly. And I'm happy to be back in somewhat of a regular cadence with these mini episodes and sharing out new episodes. We will be taking a break soon-ish. I'm going to make an announcement around when we're taking a break, but for the meantime, um, we are back, back in the saddle, so to speak. And I'm I'm really happy to be with you and sharing. I've said to many, I've said to many of you, and I've said this before, that this is a practice, this is a real practice for me. That my comfort is not sitting in front of a camera just sharing off the cuff what is on my mind. That is really not my um it that's not so aligned with my personality. I can be um kind of person that likes a lot of time to reflect and think and perfect. And so this is me really stretching into outside of my comfort zone, actually, to do this kind of thing and just what I've been thinking about just off the top. So um I'm grateful to be back in practice and to be practicing in front of people, to be doing this with you all. Um, thank you for listening each week. And um, this episode, there's honestly so much to reflect on in this moment. Um, there's a number of things I've been thinking about, a number of things that have pissed me off. Um, somebody asked me recently how do I come up with the ideas for the mini episodes? And I said, whatever's kind of in my crawl, whatever's pissing me off this week, that's what I share. Um and there's so many things. There's like a long list of things that I could uh be in conversation with you all about. But one of the things, strangely enough, that is that's really been rolling around in in my mind this week is this thing around leadership. And partly that's coming from a hurt place in me. Um I've had yeah, you know, like heartbreaks from from teachers kind of thing, heartbreaks from people that you looked up to. And it's it's it's uh push me back into this reflection of my own leadership, of leadership more broadly. Like, what does it actually mean to lead and especially lead in a time of crisis? And I certainly don't have really any answers here, but the reflections that I've had this week um are about kind of longing for a model of leadership that I'm not sure that I've seen or experienced. I'm not sure that I do, though I strive to do it. Um I think you will always eventually you'll have your shortcomings as a leader or any role that you try to fill, eventually you will have your shortcomings revealed to you through hopefully through feedback, um, maybe through failure, maybe through disgrace or whatever it might be. I I think eventually you get a mirror back on um what your pitfalls are, where you haven't done your work. Uh, and I've certainly had those moments where I can see myself just a little more clearly and see what I'm hiding or not doing, et cetera. And, you know, I think it's it's not just on us to kind of muscle through, but to get support to either navigate those challenges or move out of the position if that's what the position requires. But all that to say, I've been reflecting on leadership and thinking about leadership in this time really, really broadly. And um, you know, I was thinking about what what is it that we're really, what is it that we accept? I guess this is one what I want to say. What do we accept from leadership? What is the model that we've inherited of who or what a leader is and what they do, what they are capable of doing, what we what we rely on them to do. Because it it occurs to me that all across the board, and I know we're maybe a couple years out from what has felt like a lot of organizational implosion. And I think there are many factors that have gone into uh from my vantage point, maybe because I do facilitation, conflict facilitation, I've seen a lot of organizational implosion in the last period. And I I think one of the factors, not all of the factors, but one of the factors is our model of leadership has been out, I don't know if outdated is the right word, but it it hasn't been working. And I think that model of leadership is not only produced in progressive spaces, but I see this model of leadership actually being becoming more entrenched and maybe more hardened in other places in our society. So when I was um thinking about it, and I've talked about this before, I think this issue of well, let me back, let me back up. Like what does a leader even do? And I'm not saying leader of, not only leader of your organization, but I mean the kind of leader in us. The what is what is that that we're even referring to when we're talking about leader? And I think we're referring to, I I heard this definition years ago, and I'm not gonna remember who said it, but it certainly wasn't me. Um, I think I was listening to one of those like self-help books on leadership, and the definition was a leader is somebody who goes first. If anybody knows where I got that from, please feel free to let me know. But a leader goes first is what they said. And I really liked that definition. I don't think it's comprehensive. I don't think that's maybe all that a leader does. But I was taking that definition and saying, oh, partly what a leader does is that they're the one or they are one of the ones that face the unknown, face what hasn't happened yet or isn't known yet, and they're willing to engage with the unknown rather than um the places in our lives where we're sort of engaging with uh what we think is known or somewhat stable and making moves there or continuing to stabilize. A leader might be someone that is moving into a new space or making new connections, seemingly new connections. So if we work with that definition of um of what leadership is, is going first or going into the unknown, a stance towards the unknown, then I think we can all think of places in our lives where we are leaders and places in our lives where we are not leaders. I can think of places in my life where I'm certainly not a leader where I do not know how to enter the unknown or um I look to other people uh that are maybe further along. And I can be in my own leadership and also look to other people that are further on. So I think it can be a kind of blended state. It's not just one or the other. And it's certainly not, I think I talk about this on the episode with Kazu, it's not an identity that carries throughout every aspect of our lives. Um, though sometimes we pretend like it does. We think if I'm a leader here, then I must be a leader over here when there's actually no correlation to the skills that you need. Um so if if we kind of play with that, that that's what a leader is, I I've talked a lot about one orientation to the unknown being certainty. We want certainty, we crave certainty. That gives us certain certain, it gives us a uh stability. Like I have a sense of what comes next. And um, I feel certain this will happen. And I think given the fact that we are spinning uh on a rock inside of infinite space where the the whole everything that's going on is is incomprehensible to us. The thing that we would crave in in that kind of circumstance where we are aware of our fragility, or we could become aware of the real fragility of our lives, the thing that we would crave is certainty. The thing that we would seek out in other people is certainty. And the thing about certainty, it's like, I know what will happen, I know what is needed, I know what is right, I know what is next. That certainty allows us to for a moment let go of that existential weight that we have of like, what the hell is even going on? And why am I not, why am I powerless or relatively powerless to control my circumstances? And so when someone comes around and they're like, I know what this is and I know what to do, I know how change works here, I know what is next, it alleviates something, some kind of um rub or challenge that we feel internally. It's it's we get to put that down for a minute if somebody else is certain. And I think we have wanted that certainty for a long time. And I think that certainty has lulled many of us to sleep. Um, if someone else is certain, I can just kind of live and play inside of these walls and let those other things be determined by people who are seemingly more qualified. So we let we let go when someone else is certain. And I think that is a quality we've wanted from leaders. We've said a leader projects certainty in the world. And we can put our trust in that certainty. Now, what they have to do in order to either ensure that certainty, ensure the things that happen that they predict, or to confuse us and turn us around when those things don't happen, that's a whole other realm of trickery and magic. But what we're looking for out of someone is a sense of certainty, often. I think the other thing that we are um looking for, or and I'm speaking real broad strokes, but trained to look for is a sense of like dominance or power over is another way of saying that. It's like whatever I face, I will address it and move forward on this agenda. And I think we see this a lot in the current administration, the the kind of um re-establishing of this idea that might is right, that there's some kind of joining with the so-called natural logic of the world to say that those with more uh power, and in this sense, the the the ability to um uh just have you know really heavy, violent power that that means that that's who's in the right. Um we see that trying to be re-established, that that's that's the logic we should live by. Um, dominance. And I think in many ways we have also in all kind of across the board. And I don't, I don't just mean in kind of the the the legislative or government spaces. I mean also in our organizations, sometimes in our communities, it's like those who are willing to um push through whatever it is that they feel. Now, they may do it in manipulative ways, they may hide their hand as they do it, but those who must and do win are often uh seen as leaders. And those are qualities we look for in leaders, especially if you're like, well, you're gonna do that on behalf of my community, that's appealing to me. I want you to do that. Um so yeah, that and I this other piece that is one that I have um, I don't know, kind of felt in my my own leadership in moments. It's like what we've looked for in a leader is someone that is willing to do things that other people are not willing to do. And I think this is just a true statement of anyone who matures is that sometimes you have to make hard decisions. Sometimes you have to make a decision where none of the options are good. None of the options leave you going, oh, that was right. Our world is so complicated and things are so intertwined, and um there's no this is what I talk about when I'm talking about innocence on this um podcast and breaking up with this idea of innocence. I think there are moments where you actually don't get to have clean hands. And if you try to imagine that you have clean hands, either you're going to um put off the decision making to someone else, or you're gonna pretend that what you're doing doesn't have the ramifications that it does. But I think that we're all in many ways implicated in the way the world functions at different scales and to different degrees. But sometimes there are decisions you make that do not result in you feeling good about who you are, but still they are decisions that seemingly must be made. Um, so I think leaders have to make those kinds of decisions and be willing, I guess, to um not have to be good or innocent all the time. They don't have to be seen as good or innocent all the time in order to um act in the world. And I think that's a that's a hard one for a lot of us, but I actually think it's a sign of maturation that we're not clinging to these ideas that we're good all the time. And so we're we're gonna try to recruit people into that image of who we are, or we're gonna we're going to yeah, try to put things off that are ours to do. Um but I think that the challenge of that is sometimes we we end up taking it to the nth degree, and that someone who's callous and doesn't care about other people, this whole conversation around empathy and whether or not it's valuable or not, um, is to me an attempt to go a leader, someone that doesn't care about other people and can make callous decisions, can make those kinds of decisions without getting mired down in feeling for others and the experience of others. And it's it's this kind of portrait that's I think is deeply influenced by many things. Colonization, I think it's influenced by patriarchy, um uh white supremacy, et cetera. This image that is cast of what a leader is is someone that knows or is willing to shape the condition so that they can appear certain, someone that's willing to dominate over others, and someone that can make decisions and not care. And again, I think this is a leadership image that may change and shift depending on where you're positioned and what's acceptable in the world that you're in. But I think persist those those kind of underneath those qualities kind of persist um across the board when I think about people that I've followed over the years, or I think about um people that I've witnessed over the years. So one of the things I was thinking about in this episode was like, well, who are leaders that I have that are leading in a different way, that are doing this in a different way? And I really struggled to produce an image that could sit alongside this other image that I have, of which I I have there's many in that number that I can think of on every scale. So I was like, who are those folks? I can think of a few people here and there, but I think the fact that it's hard to think about a different way of leading is telling. Is really it's really, really telling to me. So I was like, what are the what are the what are the qualities of leadership? Or um how might we step into the unknown? What's another orientation to the unknown? And one of the things that came up for me is like you're also you're still looking for an individual as a leader to measure against this other image that you have. And so it might be that leadership, so-called, isn't best looked at as an individual quality, but is maybe also perceived in a group or a body, like that's the function of a council or something, for example, where you can work with and play off each other's strengths, but it's not just on one individual to kind of maintain um one position or stance over time. And the other thing I've been considering is this thing that I I teach a lot at the Embodiment Institute is almost this continuum. And usually we talk about it as like, what does it take to be a transformational character? And it's this continuum of states that we want to have access to, um, or really a couple states that we want to have access to. And one of those states is will, and that's an orientation to the unknown. So that means that I come to the unknown with a certain kind of generativity or creativity, that there's something here I can create or do or make. Or maybe I have an idea. Maybe I have listened to others, I've considered, and I do have an idea that I want to make happen in the world. And so I organize myself in order to make that happen. That will is not something that we want to let go of or disown, that will does things in the world. When I will myself to uh work outside and plant my garden, that there's all this fruit that comes from that. When I will myself, actually, for me, to expand my presence and ability to be here more often, it has all of these um ramifications for my relationships with the people I care about. Um, when I will myself to write a book, which I had no idea how I would do that, but I created a way to do that, broke it into these chunks. And every day I sat down and I wrote, and every day I sat down and I wrote, that took an in an organization of my power, of my resources in order to do that and to create that in the world. So will is something. You know, it's it doesn't mean that no matter what gets in my way, this thing will happen, but it means I have an idea. There's something we have an idea. We want to move into the world and we want to express our will towards it. The other move that kind of complements will is surrender, having the move of surrender, which I don't think a lot of us even notice that surrender is a thing or value surrender, but surrender to me is that um sense of letting something bigger than you take over. And you can interpret it in a spiritual sense. Um, you can think about it even just on the level of the body that sometimes you need a moment of integration. Like if you've done a lot of studying or learning, you need to let the body rest, the integration happen, the unconscious to work things out. Um, you need to kind of surrender to that which isn't done through your thinking or or willing or doing that there are things that happen, whether it's processes in the body or spiritual processes, whatever it might be, that happen, not uh not on account of you making it happen. There are things that are already logics that are already happening. We live, we die, the sun rises and sets. You your brain operates in a certain way. Um, your heart beats in a certain way, you digest food in a certain way. You didn't invent that, you didn't make that. There are forces and logics that are happening through you and inside of your body, and sometimes it serves us to have the move of letting that which is trying to happen without us thinking happen. And that's surrender. And I always say that's the hardest thing to teach. You can't teach it, you know. But it's really the foundation of body work. It's a it's the foundation of all of the things that I think we do in embodiment of letting the body lead comes from the ability to do this move that only can be done inside of you, which is letting something else move. I tell the story, see if I can do it quickly, of I was reaching. That's a little example. I was reaching under my bed and something was just out of my reach, and I kind of like stretched a little too hard to get it. And I felt in my shoulder my muscles twist up. And I stayed there. And rather than tighten around it, oh, try to protect it, pull out my arm and massage it out. I stayed there and I just felt the subtlety of the muscles twisting. And I waited. I didn't know what I was waiting for, but I was like, let me just stay here, even though it hurts, and see if I can make room for what my body or those muscles might be trying to do. And I waited and I got a little bit of um, it was probably um the muscle moving, but it gave me an indication that I needed to just shift my shoulder a little bit and shift my neck a little bit. And in that moment, I felt slowly and painfully the muscles just kind of unknown. And I felt it happen. I was like, oh my God. And I pulled my arm slowly out. And I had uh pain kind of at the side of where it had happened, but I knew that I would have had pain all along my neck, my neck probably would have been seized up all down my arm, back, um, if I had gone with the impulse to, ah, ouch. I'm gonna seize up everything and and protect that. Rather than, that's what my mind would, oh, something bad has happened. Ah, rather than surrender to the body's impulses, which were clear in that moment. And this obviously isn't true for every injury we have, but the muscles were trying to come back to their position, and what they required was relaxation on my part in order to do that. So surrendering to these logics, so much can happen. So will and surrender, I think of these as is as ways that we can face the unknown, and to me, are qualities of leadership that we might possess either on the individual or collective level right now. The challenge that we see, and where it produces, I think, these models of leadership that can be become so entrenched and not self-reflective and not changeable, where they lose their power is that will with the introduction of fear or just habit can contract into control. And our our willing something in the world can become it must happen. It must happen no matter what. And then we face every obstacle, we face every relationship, we face every opportunity, whatever it is, with that energy of this is control. And it might from the outside look like, oh, well, they have something that they're trying to create in the world, but we lose sight of what the cost is, and we're willing to do more and more in order to make that happen because we are um contracted into control, and that's where we can start to move away from living our values and start to contract into whatever it takes. The contraction of control. And I think that's really the basis of our model of leadership right now. If we swing the pendulum to the other side, the surrender move, that being able to let what is bigger come through, when that is contracted and maybe fear is introduced and we contract around it, that becomes a kind of resignation. That becomes a giving up. That can be really complementary to styles of leadership that are like whatever it takes. But the contraction of surrender is to me resignation. I think these are important distinctions because will without the capacity to surrender, surrender without the capacity to will. There's probably a word of a state that blends these two, or there we might come up with a word, but that is the area of play, I think. That's the area of exploration. That's what we might embody. How do I will and move forward? How do I fall down? Let go. How do I move forward? How do I fall? We practice these because these are the real capacity, these are these are wise skills. Because sometimes you're faced with something that the cost is too high or will take you out of alignment. So you surrender. Sometimes you meet an opening that will be served by you offering what it is that you have and you will. And this fluidity and leadership, I think, is um it's hard to come by. It's maybe hard for me to even recognize, but it's what I want to kind of invite us towards, each of us and and wherever it is that we lead or work, how do we practice in that space of will and surrender? How do we practice into that fluidity? And how this is a challenge for me of being someone that like longs for this but has trouble recognizing it. How do we look for leadership, if that's the word that we want to keep using, in in odd places where we don't expect it? Maybe it's an unexpected configuration. And how can we go, oh yeah, that, that, that's a way of approaching the unknown that I want to play with, that I want to follow, that I want to learn from, whatever it is. Um, looking for it in an odd and unusual configurations and places and moments and identifying it so that we can create more models, collective models for how it could be. Yeah. That that's what I'm thinking about lately. That's what I'm practicing in in my own life. Um, trying to figure out how we do that. Would love to hear any of your thoughts and feedback today. I'm gonna wrap it there, but grateful for you all um listening to this podcast, being in this conversation. You can, as always, join us over on Patreon um where there's a lot of folks sharing their feedback on the episode. Would would love to hear from you all on this particular uh episode, what's coming up for you. And um we will be next back next week with a a really exciting um guest episode that I'm really excited for you all to hear. And um, yeah, thank you all for listening as usual. Uh until soon. Becoming the people is produced by Devin Delania, sound engineered and edited by Michael Main. Our theme song was created by Miyata. And if you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe, rate, and especially, especially leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. And if you haven't already, please join us over at the Patreon Prentice Hempel. We are having a great time over there, building community, learning together. Come join us. And as always, thank you for listening to Becoming the People.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

We're becoming the people, the people, the people, the people, the people and the people we're becoming the people, the people, the people, the people, the people, becoming the people.