Five Factors for Renaissance

The summer before we were married, my wife and I worked as counselors at a summer camp in Upstate New York. She headed up the Day Camp program while I was the Waterfront Director. It was a great gig for two kids out of college looking to enjoy a summer in the north country. Our respective positions were part of the “Leadership Staff”, four senior counselors who were responsible for guiding younger, less experienced staff members through the program season.?

May is not a summer month in the Adirondacks. The lakes are still cold and the nights are chilly. The staff bonded through lifeguard training and sessions on policies and procedures for camp operation. We told stories and shared laughs around campfires. We drank case upon case of Fanta, so much so that I swore the stuff off forever (a previous camp session had overbought their soda by several hundred cans and donated them. We took it upon ourselves to help clear the stock). After a few weeks, everyone was cold, tired, and edgy, leaders included.?

One particular night, I was in a foul mood and wanted to hide in my cabin much more than the forced fun that was waiting for us after dinner. Rightfully so, my wife pointed out to me that the staff was taking their cues from me. She recognized that my mood and presence was infectious, for better or worse. It was my responsibility to take care of them by setting an example and protecting the positive culture we had built instead of selfishly abandoning it. She was right. I went back into our main building, took the final remaining case of Strawberry Fanta, and plopped it on the table in front of my legal pad and declared that I wasn’t leaving the evening training session until I had consumed the final sodas. “Who’s coming with me?” Though silly, that move turned the tide of negativity and brought the staff back together again.?

I’ve thought a lot about moments like that, where a small change made a large difference in the direction of an organization or a group. Large changes are easy to understand in the business world, or on a sports team. Large, high-priced acquisitions or dramatic overhauls of structure are obvious. The subtle, delicate adjustments are the curious ones to me. And within those small moves is the role of the leader. What did that person do to ensure the success of their team? What decisions did they have to make? What mindsets did they need to adopt in the moments of crisis or consequence? Who did they have to be? How did they do it? These are the questions that I have whenever I speak with someone who overcame something. I want to know how they did it, and what the critical elements of success were.?

In his book “A Failure of Nerve”, Edwin Friedman identifies critical aspects of functioning that allowed explorers to be successful as they journeyed across the world. He argues that what made people like Verrazano and Magellan and Drake successful was less their knowledge of data or technique and more a function of their nerve and courage. These people, and those like them, had the capacity to be decisive.?

Friedman’s Five Factors

1. A capacity to get outside the emotional climate of the day. With this, the ability to see things differently and possess an understanding of where you, and others, begin and end.?

2. A willingness to be exposed and vulnerable. A tolerance for risk. Friedman states that “one of the major limitations of imagination’s fruits is standing out. It is more than a fear of criticism. It is anxiety at being alone, of being in a position where one can rely little on others, a position that puts one’s own resources to the test, a position where one will have to take total responsibility for one’s own response to the environment. Leaders must not only not be afraid of that position, they must come to love it.”?

3. Persistence in the face of resistance and downright rejection. Relatively self-explanatory. Success requires relentless drive. As he puts it, “no person has ever contributed significantly to the evolution of our species by working a forty-hour week.”?

4. Stamina in the face of sabotage along the way. No good deed goes unpunished. We expect to be side-tracked and dislodged from our aspiration from those who oppose our objectives, but we do not always consider that our colleagues will offer their own resistance and hardships as well.?

5. Being “headstrong” and “ruthless.” The explorers that Friendman references in his book did not allow relationships to get in the way of their vision. Their goals superseded “team-building”, consensus, and camaraderie.?

Friedman argues that these five aspects must be present in the leaders of any social system if it is to have a renaissance. Consider these five factors in the context of organizations or groups in which you’ve been party. Did the leader exhibit some or all of them??

It is important to note that I’m not making a case for abandoning consensus, camaraderie and team-building. Each of those is of significant value in an organization. Rather, as Friedman argues as well, these universal traits (which are divorced from personality traits or culture) are effective at bringing about change in a setting in which the group is stuck in a certain way of thinking or is lacking direction.?

Most leaders I talk to would stop short of describing their teams as perfectly composed and running smoothly. That’s no slight on them so much as it is an acknowledgement of reality. The most successful teams I’ve been a part of didn’t always operate with complete efficiency and effect. They did, however, possess a capacity to find that alignment in the moments that mattered, and that was only possible because of the work of the leader to prepare us for those moments through training, discipline, clarity of purpose, support, and a host of other “backstage” activities.?

As you examine your team, at work or at home, what does it need? How will you bring about that change or alignment? Are you missing one of Friedman’s factors? Do you need to drink a case of Fanta??

To conclude, I’ll go back to his first factor: seeing where you begin and end and understanding your place. One of my favorite questions to ask comes from Michael Hyatt: “What does this moment require of me as a leader?” The same question can be expanded into “What does this problem require from the person in my role?” or “What does this person need from me in this moment?” Detaching and seeing things objectively can be powerful and effective.?

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