49 Ways to Walk a Tightrope

For all the awesome new subscribers (and old, as well):

If we haven’t connected yet, this is me (click to?connect with me on LinkedIN ). I post some super useful stuff there, as well :)

Whether it’s the first time, or if it’s just been a while, let’s connect and get to know each other (better) as humans.

Put 30 minutes on my calendar to chat. ?No strings attached whatsoever.

Let’s get to know each other (in many cases after not chatting for a long time) as humans, friends.

Of course, if there’s something I can help you with, just ask and I’ll do whatever I can to ask.

Here’s my calendar link, again .

Don’t be a stranger, friend.

—

Well, on the subject of?#letsconnect , I have a quick (but really important) ask of you today.

Just click the picture below to go directly into the?LinkedIN post about being newly #OpenToWork .

Really appreciate you and any advice/connections/tags/guidance/projects you might have in mind for me.

—

In this issue: Tightrope walking has many flavors, turns out

—

I’m partnering with Wavy (a kickass remote-hybrid work platform) to bring you this awesome event.

Deets: May 11th (LIMITED SPOTS, REGISTER ASAP):

Click on the picture below to register.

THE WHAT/WHY:

We’re at a pivotal moment in the evolution of work. Workers want to stay out of the office, working from home indefinitely. Executives demand the opposite–a return to the office. The most successful companies have adapted to these polarizing perspectives by introducing hybrid working strategies that are founded on community and connection.

Wavy, a platform that makes event planning a breeze for remote & hybrid teams, is bringing together a virtual panel of People & Culture leaders to explore how they navigated this post-pandemic shift in work, and successfully developed hybrid working strategies within their companies. Join this free event on May 11th and learn how you can successfully introduce, or cement, hybrid work as a permanent solution.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

—

49 Ways to Walk a Tightrope

We’ve all been drilled ad nauseum about how lonely it is at the top.

Leadership is hard, ultimate power corrupts ultimately.

Everything must of necessity be hard, between systems, finances — and especially people.

Leaders are supposed to be some sort of immutable, stonelike creatures, preferably with chiseled jaws and holding a sword (or hammer/sickle or iPhone), looking down on us, mere mortals, from the stage.

Leading by example, barking orders, knowing everything and showing no vulnerability.

Ok, that’s a somewhat outdated model, as most of us would admit.

Tied closely to the Great (Usually White) Male model of historical development.

In our modern world, there are lots and lots of other leadership models that work better in certain times and contexts and business (or political) models.

Servant leadership, democratic leadership, community builder, etc.

Clearly, there’s no single model that’s inherently successful and all deserve a look, with adaptation/careful change being the key piece.

Being as it is, Sunday morning, I took my usual hike today.

Lots to process from a great Shabbat of learning and lots of new reading.

I went to a place that’s a monument to the?Great Carmel Fire of 2010 , which killed 44 people while burning a massive 50,000 dunams of forest (below is a monument to the firefighters).

36 of those 44 were new Israeli Prison Service recruits. [More on that angle later.]

I wasn’t too much the wiser on the detail, but I knew the hiking would be excellent.

I arrived and saw two large groups of school kids with their teachers, and promptly went in the other direction, away from them.

Need me time to think and process.

I walked along a cliffside toward the top of the hill.

As with most of these mountain trails, they look very small from far away, making one wonder about safety, rock slides, etc.

There are road signs to this effect in the area, warning motorists.

The trails took my mind in the direction of two things - the?Counting of the Omer? and?tightrope walking .

Today’s count is 17 of a total of 49 days, Tiferet shebe Tiferet (the beauty element of beauty).

Every day during this period is an opportunity for reflecting on our character traits and how to improve them vis-a-vis our daily life.

My Hebrew birthday was two days ago, when we counted Chessed shebe tiferet (the kindness aspect of beauty).

Beauty is such that it’s made up of a balance of kindness and severity/discipline (gevura).

While I was born on the day when the kindness of beauty is celebrated (much in line with my character), there is no beauty possible without discipline/severity and the enforcement of rules and laws that comes with it.

And it’s certainly no less true in leadership.

Effective leadership, with beautifully effective, is very much a balance of kindness mixed in with discipline.

Of course, few leaders these days (or throughout history, for that matter) meaningfully access this element in their daily interactions, most instead resorting to platitudes and year-end holiday greetings, while firing mercilessly (see latest layoffs).

Both are needed in some measure at every moment and just one will either make people complacent or jaded, both leading to poor motivation and results.

People are not fooled by bullshit kindness or arbitrary (hypocritical) severity.

And what about the tightrope walking paradigm?

Well, it would appear from the cozy remove of popular culture (and even an outsider’s common sense) that tightrope walking is like, say, threading the needle or sharpshooting, manufacturing computer components like silicon chips or some other ultra-precise process that’s a 0 or 1 endeavor.

Either you’ve got it or don’t even bother.

But of course, reality is both more complex and more colorful than that.

Yes, of course, leaders are made, not born.?Blah, platitude.

Just as the victors write the history books, the leadership personas we’re spoon-fed through books, main-stream media (MSM) - and yes, history textbooks - are carefully curated, always with an agenda.

Everyone loves to see the trappings of power and wealth and influence.

Nobody much likes (or often, even knows) the sacrifices involved - ruined families and relationships (Musk, Bezos, all too many powerful men; women too), ruined health, ruined trust (everyone suddenly wants something when you’re rich and powerful; whom can you?really?trust?), ruined anonymity, everyone doubting your motives (rightly or otherwise), nowhere to run from your fame/notoriety.

And so on.

But this isn’t about that sort of leadership.

Leading yourself effectively is hard enough.

The vast majority of us will never do it systematically or for very long at a time, except when pressured.

Maybe because of poor self-awareness, maybe due to poor discipline.

Those damned circumstances always seem to bite us in the ass, #amIrite ?

So let’s say it’s a tightrope walk to be a leader.

On one side, your family; the other, your work.

To the left, your ambition climbing up a hill.

To the right, your desire to self-sabotage, toward the abyss.

One side, doing the right thing. The other, doing what scores the most points for you or your business.

Listen to your employees or customers first?

Take the VC funding or boot-strap?

Stick to your guns or try something totally new?

Tie yourself to the mast or succumb to the sirens?

It all comes down to balancing action with reaction.

And not just any old simple balance.

But knowing how to?slow down the time between the two,?especially?when you’re in a rush or under pressure to decide.

The magic happens when you hold both poles in your hands (action in the left, reaction in the right - try it!) and default to first-principles thinking (if I were to act according to my core values, how would I react here)?

This isn’t an ask-GPT or Google or your Slack group sort of situation.

Not choosing software or swag or what to have for lunch (although, G-d bless, if you use first principles there, as well - I’m all for radical consistency :)

We’re talking ethical, moral, bet-the-business sorts of decisions.

Each case is different.

Where a seasoned CEO might spend $3K on a team lunch without a second thought, a new entrepreneur might agonize over spending $299 (hell, even $29) on a course.

The “glamor” of making thousands of decisions on your own, whether or not with help from others, is damn near non-existent.

It wears on you and wears on you like invisible sandpaper. Sure, it sharpens your decision-making and instincts about people and products and markets and where things are going in your life and business.

Once you make some progress, it can be swift and catch you unprepared.

Correction, it almost certainly will, at some point.

In that way, leadership is much like hiking alone up on an isolated mountain.

You can appreciate every stone and flower and bush and lizard and butterfly, but you’ll almost certainly be the only one.

Is that an insect buzzing or snake hissing?

Is that plant medicinal or poisonous?

Is that a dog’s or wolf’s or jackal’s jaw bone?!

Are those trails up there even passable?

Everything looks like a tortuous tightrope from far.?

The tightrope walker knows every muscle, has effective instant reactions, doesn’t get nervous, trains his reaction like crazy, is single-minded.

Sure, preparation is much more important than a “perfect” tightrope walk.

You still need the tether and all.

But as an amateur or first-timer, how in the world do I manage all that, without the years of training? I’m lost, afraid, unsure of myself suddenly.

But you walk on anyway. You enjoy the journey, no matter the dangers - real or imagined.

In my case this morning, I walked up and up and up and on top of the hill, there was a… prison!

Proper high-security prison, barbed wire and barking dogs and orange jumpsuits and all.

Strange metaphor, seemingly, but quite apt.

When we “make it” to the top of our field, we often just enter a new prison, of our own choice.

All that work, and willingly enter a prison that’s dressed up as something else.

A board room, a bank vault, even a 3-D bucket list.

So many things suddenly accessible that weren’t before, but at a prohibitive cost.

If it’s not jumpsuits, it’s Armani suits.

If it’s not dogs barking, it’s pretenders to your “throne.”

If it’s not barbed wire, it’s your own desire to keep up with the Joneses/Jetsons in your new stratosphere.

Say you “escape” the greasy pole, the rat race, the knives-out battle for the corner office.

Interestingly enough, a group of my friends and family are in exactly this situation now, leaving or having recently left, their highly paid exec positions in Fortune 500 companies.

Say you want to hide out in a cave to rest, due to burnout.

Maybe you want to sit under the tall trees on your walk.

It may sound paranoid, but what if these trees were planted to tip off your enemy as to your presence. (There’s the example that comes to mind of an Israeli spy, Eli Cohen, who tipped off Israeli soldiers to Syrian bunker positions on the border by planting trees for shade; I know, random, but humor me :)

As you walk back, recording your thoughts on your phone, a bicyclist zooms at 40 miles an hour down the hill right at you on the tiny trail, out of nowhere.

You look right.?Is that an ant hill or someone digging out of prison (DANGER)!

Oh, and those annoying flies buzzing the whole way in your ears, at every step! Haters gonna hate, LOL.

You stop and see bright red flowers. Poppies, beautiful and stupefying.

You look back at where you parked and started. It looks quite insignificant in retrospect.

You walk back, take a wrong turn and come back through a different route with a better appreciation of how you’ve changed and how to deal with what comes next.

The scenic route is more dangerous, as usual.?

At the end of your hike, there’s a chance to sift the baggage you’ve collected and collect the acorns to take home to plant.

And now, I ask.

What are some acorns YOU’ve collected recently from leading yourself or others?

Comment below (or Reply directly, I read all messages :)

—

**Remember to register for this awesome event with Wavy!!**