The Question We Love to Avoid

Imagine…

10 financial planning leaders.
Around one table.

10 minds and hearts wrestling with one question.

“What’s it like being on the receiving end of you?”

It surfaced again at our September ‘Inner Circle’.
And it’s one I’ve been asking leaders for more than a decade.

Yet I’ve met few who have actively sought the answer.

Back in the Jurassic period of my career…
I tried to discover it for myself.

The context wasn’t my leadership of my team.
It was the leadership of my clients.

I started to ask them.
And they started to tell me.

“I just wish you’d let me get a word in edgeways, when we meet.
You’re so eager to prove your knowledge and skill.”

And…

“I know you’re a Christian Minister.
But you don’t need to write an epistle… to prove your recommendations.”

These were clients I had started to regard as friends.

I’m glad I didn’t have the energy to try to defend myself.
Because the minute their words landed…
I knew I was facing the truth.

The truth might have set me free… eventually.
But first, it hurt.

Nowadays…
when I pose the question to leaders, before a coaching relationship is even a glint in the eye…

The ‘dancing’ tends to start.

I’m told about employee surveys… 360 exercises… what team members love… why Monday Morning Meetings are so, well, ‘buzzing’.

Dancing.
But still no answer to the question.

And I recognise something of myself.

We can care deeply about our clients.
About our team.

And still build a story about what it’s like to be on the receiving end of us.

One or two kind words…
Scraped from hundreds of relationships…
Turn the gossamer strands of a narrative into our robust reality.

We do that, don’t we?

We listen for words that will help build our stories.

Stories about our care and compassion.
Our generosity of spirit.
Our ability to keep the complex simple.
Our inspiring leadership.

But what happens to the words that don’t fit?

When our impatience brings a sharp response to a team member who “just doesn’t get it”?

When any spare space in our Monday Morning Meeting is filled with our words of inspiration and encouragement… and vision and values… and…

Our words.

Where do theirs go?

And what happens when the people around us discover that keeping us comfortable…
is easier than telling us the truth?

I asked my clients.
And they told me.

But asking the question is one thing.

What we do with the answer…
may decide whether they tell us again.

So…

What’s it like being on the receiving end of you?

Perhaps the most troubling answer…
isn’t in what people are saying about you.

It’s in what they’ve stopped saying.

To you.