by tashmcgill | Dec 8, 2014 | Leadership, Mind, Strategy
There are three stumbling blocks that prevent me hitting the publish button or sometimes even picking up the pen, metaphorical or otherwise.
They are three questions.
Can I do this well enough and will it be good enough?
Can I make it and let it go out into the world?
Can I show this much of myself to the world, will anybody care?
These are questions designed to help me avoid risk. Which is stupid, because if I want to be in the business of ‘making’, then I want to be in the business of risking myself in vulnerable ways. I know that it’s stupid, so I thought I’d share my strategy for avoiding the trap.
There will always have to be bad writers, for they answer to the taste of the immature, undeveloped age-group; these have their requirements as well as do the mature. —-Nietzche
I hate the idea of not being good at what I do. Regardless of what I’m doing. My pride does cartwheels in the tension of doing something new without knowing whether it will be good. Logically, I understand that in order to be good, I must risk being other-than-good; but every time I open the page to write or try a new recipe, the process begins again.
Why is it sometimes hard to write? Because the risk is so great that it won’t be any good. That it will be too honest, too vulnerable. That people won’t engage or respond or understand me. So the questions run through my mind and my desire to avoid risk stops me in my tracks.
The better way to answer these questions is in editing, refining, fine tuning and optimizing. In my business, it’s called the process of iteration. We make something, we learn, we craft, we make it better. We make it again.
Will it be good enough? becomes How can it be better?
The other questions are not about the creation but about the creator. Ouch. Even in talking about vulnerability I have to be vulnerable.
I find myself wondering how those flawed and tuneless auditions for TV singing competitions make it to air – with all that bravado and self-confidence. It appears that there is no pride or ego to filter the risky and non-risky behaviours.
I’m learning that if I want to be truly vulnerable (and I do, because it seems to matter and connect more with people), I have to de-tune my ego too. I have to put away my pride and concern.
The easiest way I have learned to do this is by facing the consequences of risking something big. Really, in being more vulnerable than I want to be, I’ve learned that it is really not so bad. There’s not a single moment that I truly regret. A few painful bumps, for sure, but that’s to be expected as the rough edges are smoothed away.
It might sound a little mad, but truly – in being a little braver, in saying a little more, in choosing not to edit away the thought, the moment, the possibility.. I’ve learned that it’s rarely as bad as I thought. Mostly, I’m afraid of feeling hurt, feeling bad or feeling ashamed or embarrassed when my ego starts talking.
These ego-driven, risk-averse questions stop me from starting. Starting is the step that produces raw product that can be shaped, redrawn, remade, improved until it’s ready for the world. I can only be a writer, a maker, a speaker or a creator if I begin.
Here’s the strategy to overcome the questions:
Accept that the risk does not exist.
Until you make something, there is nothing that risk can be attached to. Once something is made and re-made, it is no longer dependant on you. It may carry the reflection of the maker, but it is a separate entity. So the risk (to your ego) does not exist.
So just make something, damn it. The risk is the art itself, the risk is the proof that you are creating something unique and authentic.
Read more about Makers here.
by tashmcgill | Nov 7, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Leadership, Strategy
“A leader is a dealer in hope.” Napoleon Bonaparte.
By all accounts, Bonaparte was such a contradictory character that it is hard to imagine he inspired much hope or empathy with those he led. Yet, he led hundreds of thousands with a vison of triumph. His words are still true today. Whether you promise or deliver a vision of an alternative future (which eventually you must, or perish as Bonaparte’s men did); you are dealing in hope.
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by tashmcgill | Oct 26, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Leadership, Mind, Strategy
It’s Friday night at 6.01pm. I’ve just clocked out 43 hours in a 4 day work week. I’m about to go to dinner to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I’ve managed to see friends a couple of times this week, smashed fewer than usual gym sessions but still lost weight. I’ve meditated, left room for spiritual things and even caught up on a favourite TV show. I’ve eaten right, but not too right. I’ve been well-behaved but not too well-behaved. I even managed to do an early morning daycare run for one of my best friends; playing aunty to their 2 year old girl. And I’m telling you honestly, if this is my life, this is not enough.
This is not about being too busy. This is not about being tired or trying to achieve higher heights at work. This is not about the tension between the corporate career life I’m in and the not-for-profit, youthwork and hospitality life I love. This is not to complain because I know I’m blessed. It’s not because I’m lonely or pining for what I don’t have. I am wringing the marrow out of life on a daily basis. But this is not enough.
I live between two conflicting philosophies; one that compels me to use whatever I’ve got in my hand to do whatever is in front of me and the other, calling my attention to the horizon and all the possibilities beyond it. One hand holds tight and says, ‘be good, be useful’. One hand reaches out towards what might be and says, ‘be more, do more’.
I have to get comfortable telling the truth, to myself as well as others.
No matter how hard I work at my job and how much better I can be, or how much I achieve,
(with strengths and weaknesses)
No matter how rich and deep the social circle,
(too good already)
No matter the gracious chance to love other people’s kids,
(I’m so grateful)
No matter how healthy or strong or skinny I might become,
(with all the trappings of vanity)
This is not enough.
I am a Futurist, as well as a few other things. I’m always looking to the future possibilities and trying to figure out how to get there. But that’s not why this is not enough. It’s not enough because these things are meaningful for other people, not for me.
I’ve come to know that I work better when I am part of a team, because I find meaning in the dependency that we have on one another. It propels me forward. It gives me a story to tell, a story that is ours. It’s not always easy to form a team or to form a team that has shared meaning and story but it’s even harder to be one person who’s lost the meaning of their own story.
I once had a singular focus and ambition and I’ve spent a few years now trying to find my meaning in other stories and in new places only to circle back around.
I can only imagine that this is close to what some mothers feel, when their careers and life paths change to centre around newborn babies and growing children. A re-orientation, losing a sense of self while becoming part of a new team. Sudden, the story of our kids tends to be centre stage.
So this, what defines my life right now – is not enough, simply because it’s not the story I want to tell at the end of my days. Or even today. The meaning I’m after (the ambition that has simply been buried and biding it’s time) is still the same. The values that drive me are still deep at the core of who I am and the story I want to tell.
I wrote a collection of these lines in 2008:
there are the dark days
that cloud the mind right from the start
there are the eulogies i compose
melodies i’ve learned to sing
by heart when i’m alone
afraid my life might be a song of sorrows
unless i find the meaning
there is a quietness that i have never shaken
a terrifying absence and conviction
that most of what i dream will never come to pass
i imagine life too big before i start
but my ambition is to make a difference
as large a one as i might ever conceive
if my name is never known
the ambition is the same
i’d make a difference in your heart
i’ve read ten thousand names
and whispered them aloud
i’ve spent long nights awake
perfecting every part
i’ve listened to the heartbeat
of a thousand lives
and heard the same refrain
and my ambition is to make a difference
collecting all the stories my life is made of
and if i could somehow remember all their names
my ambition was to make a difference
and their names would make the finest start
The truth is, I do want more. Maybe it’s because I want to have children of my own to invest in and it could be that’s selfish. But I also want to make a difference to the world at large. I don’t want or need fame, but I crave influence – to enable change for the many. I’m ambitious enough to believe I could do it. In fact, in my deepest secret self, I believe I’m meant to, somehow, be part of something bigger and more significant than my life alone.
At high school we completed the clichè ‘write your own eulogy’ assignment. I wrote simply, ‘She made us think differently.’
I still want that, and so this is not enough.
by tashmcgill | Oct 23, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Leadership, Strategy
“You just kind of run on instinct,” he said, “but that has to be validated. People can’t just take your word for it.”
It was a late afternoon conversation with a colleague and I was informing him of progress on a current project. I mentioned that I’d put that progress in a presentation deck ‘because I’ve been told people will take me more seriously that way’. He replied immediately, “Yes, it will help. You just kind of run on instinct, but that has to be validated. People can’t just take your word for it. Other people don’t just wing it like you do.”
While I’m almost certain it wasn’t his intention, I felt belittled. It’s frequently surprising to me, how one little paragraph can leave you feeling so … misunderstood. Instinct is not about gut feelings. Or even feelings at all. We might use that language to express ourselves, but Instinct is a science. Instinct alone is not a complete solution to understanding people or what must be done. It’s a tool that gives insight, but it must be applied alongside pragmatism, strategy and with a dose of compassion if Instinct is to get you anywhere at all.
The subtext of his statement was that instinct is somehow not an equal science (artform) to rationalization. A repeat of the centuries old tension between the Schools of Humanities and Sciences, despite both originating from the foundation. The rational view is that because Instinct is harder to define and quantify, it cannot be as reliable or as trustworthy as the other sciences. Instinct is something more primal than our civilised, evolved selves. This is far from the truth, however.
Instinct is as much as a science as mathematical theory. It is the collective noun we give to layers of distinct and meticulous habit, discipline and skill. It is a finely tuned practice of reading the visible and aural signals that human beings give one another. It is listening for the minutiae and tracing countless details about people, projects, relationships, influences, priorities.
Mostly, it is about understanding and knowing how to observe and engage with people, both as individuals and more challengingly in a room of people. It is about filtering important information from really important information and disregarding the trivial.
The trouble with Instinct, is that it is a science masquerading as a mystery. People with these skills can turn up into a room with little context or history and make enormous progress in single meetings, because they are tuned in to decipher what people want and what people have to give. What appears to be pulling something out of thin air, is actually closer to extracting what was sitting there all the time. Sometimes Instinct just helps you articulate it with people, or for people.
Why is it that salespeople sometimes have that ‘pull it out of thin air’ appearance? Why someone thinks I’m ‘winging it’ in a meeting room? Because the science of instinct is rarely a visible one. It’s mapping the details of what you see and hear at a million miles an hour, against what you already know and what you understand people want. It’s about seeing the connections, visible and invisible. It’s the observation that will tell you who the powerful people in a room are. Observing how they engage and interact will teach you how to approach, gauge and influence them. In the same way no-one is born with fully-formed speech, you cannot expect to have good Instinct, if you do not practice and craft the skills required to execute it. You cannot simply ‘turn up and perform’.
Most rational sciences you can teach to people with formulas and technical examples. But how do you teach someone to see or teach them to listen? Really, how do you? I have tried to explain how I am listening and observing in a room. It gets too complicated far too fast, but I understand that I must come to understand it, if I am to explain it.
How do we explain it?
There are all sorts of words for instinct. We call it intuition (I am highly intuitive on the Myers-Briggs scale), awareness, being tuned in. The more spiritual you are, the less rational and scientific your vocabulary for instinct is likely to be. Words like prophetic and healer appear. And while some people are wired with empathy, to read and respond to emotions and circumstances around them, the truth is sometimes the most emotionally disengaged have the best instincts around. Divulged of their own emotional entanglement to a situation, they can comprehend the information in front of them most appropriately.
When we make decisions because we ‘feel it was right’, often that means we have layered in our own conscience, our fears or agendas, our hopes or our risks. Instinct is collecting clues and paying close attention to where they map together and belong.
Spiritual abusers and manipulators are often masters of Instinct, seeing exactly where vulnerabilities exist to be taken advantage of. Many false spiritual leaders have enjoyed how instinct masquerades as mystery, in order to propagate their own mythology.
Instinct Is Fallible
Lastly, if anything solidifies instinct as a science, the sheer fallibility of it does. The finest instincts can be taken by surprise, miscalculate the signals and falter when it ought to stand firm.
So you train and develop your instincts in every setting, the same way you would to go to war. Work them, stretch them, test them. Recognize that you are a practitioner of a science and Instinct is something you should work hard for.
Then, one last thing. Respect those who have invested time and energy to fine tune their instincts. It’s not a strength that stands alone but when added to your talent pool, it can make a difference. When someone says, ‘that person has good instincts, let’s get them on the team,’ it’s because they know how to close a sale, how to progress a job, how to bring people together and how to listen well. They decipher the fantasy from the reality. You need them, even if it feels like their science is a mystery to you.
by tashmcgill | Aug 19, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Leadership, Strategy
I was talking with a recent design graduate the other day. They were talking about how they were never going to ‘sell out’ by working for a big corporate agency. Their philosophy was pretty simple – as far as they were concerned, working for a big agency would mean working on big client accounts that would always be driven by money, not by the integrity of the art.
I hear this all the time – first from cynical Generation Xers and now from optimistic Millennials. And every time, it frustrates me to see intelligent, smart and talented people constraining their own potential to influence amazing creative work and see demonstrable change. Here’s why the graduate is wrong and you should consider encouraging more people to ‘sell out’. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Jun 17, 2014 | Community, Culture & Ideas, Strategy
As kids, we’re taught that honesty is simple. Tell the truth, it’s better that way. We learn that honesty is black and white, everything is either true or untrue. We learn that lying is usually a tactic employed while trying to cover up something else. So we get schooled in confession – the act of coming clean.
Truth is so much more than confession. Confession (and honesty) is like a doorway for truth-telling. It’s opening a door for truth to take a more prominent and transformational role in your life. Honesty is a philosophy, a habit, a way of speaking and sharing – it is a practice. A way of engaging with the universe and others, but it is not a substitute for truth.
When people talk to me about their search for identity, for meaning and purpose or when they talk about their relationship and work struggles, often I find myself observing the bigger truths that people avoid through focusing their honesty in the wrong place. Honesty has become a series of trade-offs we make to fake intimacy and avoid discomfort. It’s not how honesty was meant to transform us or weave us together through sharing our victories and struggles.
Honesty might be admitting you’ve had a tough day at work. Truth is admitting you’re not making it any easier fo (more…)
