The Benjamin Ladder for Leaders

One of the key reasons for some of the fruitfulness we have enjoyed in #TalentEase in our work with children and young adults on leadership skills and values is that we work continuously with them - most often right through the academic year and then from one year to the next. If schools stick with us, we will be able to accompany a Grade 3 child through 10 levels of leadership training till she leaves in school in Grade 12. We're not big fans of the 1-day/2-day workshop so popular in the corporate leadership training world. Part of the inspiration for this consistency is a personal system for tracking skill and value development that I used as a teenager inspired by Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin demonstrated a self-awareness and thirst for continuous improvement that fashioned much of his leadership impact. Franklin was born in Boston in 1706. He was a politician, diplomat, scientist, inventor, author, educator, philosopher, and humanitarian all rolled into one. He was one of the Founding fathers of the United States, and his achievements ranged from the inventions of the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove to being the first U.S Ambassador to France who helped create the foundations of the then-emerging country. Walter Isaacson, one of his biographers called him?“the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become.”

I was fortunate as a teenager to find in my father’s collection of books Franklin’s autobiography. While it was a hard read at that age, I was thrilled with the discovery of Franklin’s system for personal growth. I found in it, a disciplined path to the development of skills and values. I embraced the system with fervor and followed it, through much of my youth. I would credit it with giving me some of the discipline, rigor and thirst for personal growth that were assets in my journey as a human being and aspiring leader. I would strongly recommend a complete reading of Franklin’s autobiography; his growth system alone is a gem worth acquiring.

In his words, “It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection…But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my attention was taken up and care employed in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another. Habit took advantage of inattention. Inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded…that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous was not sufficient to prevent our slipping, and that the contrary habits must be broken and good ones acquired and established before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct.”*

Don’t those sentiments resonate with us! We struggle to grow, to drop old and destructive habits, and acquire new and constructive ones. Poor execution often defeats even our best intentions. Franklin’s "bold and arduous project" shows us how to get better at this task of personal leadership growth.

The system he created to achieve this, was both simple and effective. He listed 13 virtues that he wished to acquire – these ranged from Temperance and Silence to Cleanliness and Humility. To each he affixed a summary note, to reiterate what the virtue meant and what its practice would achieve. Next, he decided that rather than try to acquire all the virtues at one time, he would focus his attention on one virtue for a week. Then move on to the next and as he put it?“proceeding thus to the last, I could go thro’ a course in thirteen weeks, and four courses in a year.”

To monitor his progress, he created a rigorous process. In a little notebook, he allotted one page to each virtue. On each page, he drew seven columns – one for each day of the week and thirteen rows – one for each virtue, which he marked using the first letter of the virtue. His process was that he would review every day, and mark any failure with a little black spot. In his words,?“Thus in my first week my great guard was to avoid even the least offence against temperance, leaving the other virtues to their ordinary chance, only marking every evening the faults of the day. Thus if in the first week I could keep my first line marked ‘T’?(for Temperance)?clear of spots, I supposed the habit of that virtue so much strengthened and its opposite weakened that I might venture extending my attention to include the next, and for the following week keep both lines clear of spots.”

An amazing system because it combines several characteristics.

• First – it is positive. The goal is to acquire the virtue, and at the same time eliminate the vice. A clear line in his notebook row – and by implication a gradual acquiring of the virtue – served as an energizing motivator.
• Second – the system enables focus. By ensuring that each week, attention is paid to a single virtue, there is greater chance of the positive behavior. This focus gives the whole endeavor power.
• Third – the system builds consistency. As we know it is consistency that creates a habit. The occasional practice of a virtue or skill does not make it ingrained or embedded. It needs a relentless return to its practice, while we go about the everyday routine of our lives.
• Fourth – the system contains the 5 R framework. The little book with its columns and rows ensures the?record. The everyday?review?allows a check on progress. The weekly transition from one virtue to another allows time for?reflection?on both the preceding and succeeding virtue. And I like to think, that the completion of each 13-week cycle gave Franklin time to?renew?his commitment to the discipline, and?refresh?his energy for the next phase of growth.

I made some variations to the system over the time I used it, and am outlining some of them here if you find them useful in your own application of the system.?

- I found I was able to use the system not just for values, but also for skills. So, while outlining your own list, it may be a good idea to combine both the skills and values that you would like on your leader wish-list. It could be knowledge in a subject that can complement your core coursework. It could be the skill of getting better at presentations. It could be the value of taking responsibility and not making excuses.

- I felt that a week was too short to make a habit take root. So, in some years I followed a 3-week cycle – with 3 weeks devoted to each habit before moving on to the next and the final 13-week cycle of the year, doing it one week at a time – almost as a renew and refresh. This is also validated by some research that suggests a minimum 21-day period of practice to acquire a new habit.

- I also wanted to focus more on acquiring good habits and practices rather than just the destroying old ones, so I would use a green mark to denote a positive behavior or demonstration of the skill or value I was trying to acquire. This way, I was not aiming for a blank row, but a green spotted one.

I still retain the old little notebooks I used, to record and review my progress, and I continually find in them both inspiration and hope, that if only we stay disciplined and committed to the path of growth, it is a path that rewards us generously.

Let us close with Benjamin Franklin’s own assessment of the system. “I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults that I had imagined, but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish…..It may be well my posterity should be informed that to this little artifice, with the blessing of God, their ancestor owed the constant felicity of his life down to his seventy-ninth year, in which this is written.”

Would love to hear about your own personal system for tracking your growth and development and ideas you've implemented to break bad habits and build new ones.

*All quotes taken from “Benjamin Franklin: The autobiography and other writings. Selected and edited with an Introduction by L. Jesse Lemisch. A Signet Classic Published by The New American Library of World Literature, Inc.

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