The Promises Of Giants - Exclusive Excerpt

We are all Giants to someone…

People never get used to giants. We’re always new and curious and inviting of strange behaviour. As you might expect, at night about town, being a giant intersects with my Blackness in a way that frightens people, causing them to cross the street or pull their children close. But, conversely, in controlled environments, I find my size attracts people—people who are not necessarily seeking notice or engagement but, rather, protection or security of some sort. In shops or in conferences, people collect and linger near me with no apparent intent. It’s as if they’ve been drawn into the lee of a vast reef—a safe harbour should trouble arise.

Giants play by different rules. “Letting your hair down” does not apply when the hair is on the head of a giant. Everything we do and say—everything connected to us—is magnified, scrutinized, interpreted, and obsessed over. Every casual interaction walking to the break room, every punctuation decision in an email, every tweak of your face during a video call. With nothing more than a glance, you can make or ruin someone’s entire day. And the higher you ascend, the more this is true. Actions that could pass unnoticed early in your career have seismic implications when you’re a giant.

Our words as giants amplify and echo and carry the capacity to inspire or destroy. Nothing we do is ordinary. And there are no “breaks” from being a giant. Giants don’t get to pick their spots.

We wish it were otherwise. As a giant child, I fantasized about the “Drink Me” potion and “Eat Me” cake concocted by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writing as Lewis Carroll, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In truth, I fantasized about all types of cake back then. But this cake in particular, paired with the potion, allowed its consumer to be a giant only when it served them and to shrink when they wanted to go unnoticed or retreat from sight altogether.

Such shapeshifting is never that easy, though plenty of leaders delude themselves to think otherwise. They eat the cake before delivering good news or soaking in the glow of praise that is perhaps due also to those left in their shadow. But when things get bumpy or they want to blend in and “let loose,” they drink the potion. They drink it when they feel too busy to expend energy on personal exchanges. They operate under the false illusion that, fuelled by an endless supply of potion and cake, they can move fluidly from kingmaker to rank-and-file and back again. But the truth is, that just can’t be done.

With great power comes great responsibility…

You can’t be a “conditional” giant. It would be brilliant if you could, because being a giant has obvious advantages. The appearance of having power alone feels pretty great for most people. The fact that this appearance is often accompanied by higher salaries, prestigious titles, and increased resources? All the better.

But, as Uncle Ben warned, with great power comes great responsibility. The onus of being a giant is unyielding. It requires vigilance from the second you begin your morning commute. We are predisposed to believe in pivotal moments—the idea that we will be able to predict and prepare for the most significant events and interactions. We’ll see these moments as they approach at a measured pace. Some will even be booked in our calendars well in advance. And because we were ready and recognized the importance of the moment, we will handle it with aplomb, give a textbook response—we’ll be amazing.

But that’s bunkum. That’s not how it works. The most lasting interactions are seldom planned, and you will rarely know which will be the most consequential. Think about your own life and career, and you’ll see that this is true. When we reflect on mentors or managers who’ve inspired and shaped us, we rarely think first of their performance in formal or familiar situations—the sales meeting speech or the annual performance review. We remember how they treated us in everyday moments or unexpected periods of strife.

Giants play by different rules…

The ethos of The Promises of Giants is to approach each moment like it’s pivotal and acknowledge that we cannot prepare for the moment of impact because we will rarely see it coming. If you cannot embrace that and start thinking like a giant, the rest of this book will be useless. Because the underlying premise to the Promise is an acceptance that you are—by virtue of your title, your expertise, your experience, or your network—a disproportionately powerful entity. Indeed, a giant. And more is required from giants than what is covered by codes of conduct or performance objectives.

Giants will always set the tone, but giants should never dominate. In most workplaces, it is the preferred style of named leaders that shapes the dynamic of their relationships with direct reports and the broader workforce. In the Promise model, leaders must tailor their style during every interaction—planned or spontaneous—to engage that specific individual in that specific space and time.

The Promises of Giants guarantee a certain type of lived experience under the umbrella of that leader. It is an assurance that we will view people as just that—people. Complicated beings, not interchangeable bots on an assembly line. The “who” of them will never be incidental. We commit to recognizing and preserving their differences and idiosyncrasies not as a diversity check-box exercise but as a strategy for winning. Embracing people fully allows them to arrive at work each day with every available asset focused on collective goals and no parts shrouded by doubt or the fear of disclosure.

Being a Giant is not about you…

But it’s not a one-way street; we’re not offering a free or easy ride. Conscientious, effective leadership involves a quid pro quo of sorts. As leaders, we make an immutable promise and set the standard for an enduring lived experience. In return, we can expect our people to commit wholly to the work and to their colleagues— to share credit and blame as appropriate, to disagree constructively, to provide managers critical feedback, and to perform to their peak ability. We can expect all of this, but only if we are providing compassionate, consistent, and clear direction.

Leadership is a promise to support people not only through the inherent demands of work but also through the unique challenges that we put forward to stretch and develop them. Whether they meet those demands and challenges is not determined by output alone. As leaders, we promise to assess effort, process, diligence, and the individual’s willingness to learn, adapt, and grow into a true colleague and, in time, a fellow custodian of the culture.

The Promises of Giants is, as its title suggests, a collection of promises. Some are made to the people you work with most intimately, and others are made to your workplace as a whole. But we start with the promises that you make to yourself alone.

None of the promises are just about you—even that first group. Those promises are directed to you, yes. But leadership is never about the needs or desires of the leader or the external pressures that influence that leader. Leadership is not about the leader at all, in fact. It’s about the people that leaders elevate and inspire and those that they leave bloodied on the dance floor.

Throughout this text, I refer to “leaders.” But leadership is not the exclusive domain of people managers or high-level executives. Leadership can be demonstrated from any level of any organization. It’s accessible to anyone who is willing to invest effort and emotional energy. Anyone who is willing to take a proactive role in maximizing their influence and shaping the world around them.

Because on their own, the promises of leadership are neither profound nor difficult to grasp. They ask for nothing that exceeds your capability. But they are promises that have an enormous impact when kept by giants. And a devastating impact when broken.

When axe meets wood, only the axe forgets...

When I was a boy, my mother shared an African proverb that said, “When an axe meets wood, only the axe forgets.” These are useful words to bear in mind as you travel through this book and embrace your new life as a giant. We could spend time arguing about whether you’re the biggest or the smallest axe, but fundamentally that’s time wasted—an indulgence to avoid considering that even a tiny axe can fell a tree—and that, consequentially, we all have a responsibility to act with vigilance and care.