Everything begins with awareness

I was listening to a podcast recently with a leadership expert who said right at the beginning of the interview "Leadership is about making the people around you better".

Then in answering every question he undermined and insulted the host. Every time the host asked a question, the 'leadership expert' would reply first with a disparaging remark; "Well that's a softball question", he would say, or "That question doesn't really get to the point, let me ask a better question instead".

It seemed like almost every response was designed (whether consciously or otherwise) to belittle or denigrate the host. The host maintained a professional veneer and continued the interview as best they could, but it was easy to hear their discomfort and empathise with the challenge of negotiating their way through the rest of the conversation as productively as possible.

Strangely, the expert seemed utterly unaware of the situation they were contributing to, and the degree to which the advice they were dispensing (which was, for the most part, pretty good leadership advice) seemed utterly at odds with their presence in the conversation. The hypocrisy was almost laughably blatant. Nothing he was doing was encouraging the people around him (IE, the host) to be "better". It was almost the total opposite.

And yet, he's only human, as are we all. We all have blind spots, even (or especially) around our deepest expertise.

No matter the field of enquiry or endeavour, everything is about awareness first. That which we are unaware of we cannot influence.

The project of getting good at anything is a project of becoming more and more aware.

Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash