Are You Enslaved to the Ordinary?
There's always so much to do...
I was looking through some of my old sketchnotes recently and came across one from a book that didn’t make the cut for the 12 that I will be walking through starting in August. Actually, this book wouldn’t make it on any ‘top leadership books’ lists, but as I sat reviewing the sketchnote below, the lesson that it presented is one that leaders should definitely not skip.
The book is The Screwtape Letters by one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis. If you haven’t read it, the book is a series of letters written from one demon named Screwtape to another one called Wormwood on how to lead humans away from God. Screwtape often shares insights about our human nature, and offers tips on how to manipulate them to the demon’s advantage. I first read this book when I was in high school, but reading it again as an adult, it hit me very differently…which is what books often do when you read in different seasons of life.
The book’s very first letter feels like Lewis looked at our lives today and had Screwtape shine a light on one of the most prevalent issues affecting everyone (especially leaders) today: DISTRACTION.
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Screwtape’s encouragement to his fellow demon is to keep humans focused on ‘the stream’ of life so they won’t have time, or energy, to go deeper on anything. Lewis calls this being enslaved to the pressure of the ordinary. He writes about how the human condition has changed since introduction of the printing press:
“At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as a result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head.”
And that was just when they had newspapers! Cut to now when we have a 24-hour world news cycle, social media, email, etc. Our lives are bombarded with information and we are just doing our best to process it all. And our jobs are no different. Every day is filled with daily meetings, tasks to complete and fires to put out, it feels like we are just doing all we can to keep the wheels on the bus. Do you feel enslaved to the pressure of the ordinary at work? I know I do.
So what does this have to do with leadership? In a word, EVERYTHING. Most leaders often have more to do than just lead a team. They are given goals, projects, or already have a full time role to perform before leadership is layered on top of it. And those all come with daily tasks, problems and deadlines. These tangible responsibilities are often the ones that other people are counting on you to complete and expecting you to report on. So they feel important. They feel essential.
But leadership is different. It doesn’t come with these same external expectations because much of it is intangible. It’s not something that you easily put on paper, and so it gets drowned out by the pressure of the ordinary. What does that look like? Well…
You often cancel 1:1’s with your team because more important meetings keep getting scheduled over them.
You talk to your team more than you listen to them.
You don’t learn your team member’s kids names.
You keep all interactions focused on the task at hand and never consider what is going on outside of the office.
I have been guilty of every one of these at one time or another. I often justify it as just being too busy right now, but will focus on them when I get my head above water. But we all know, that unbusy season never comes.
HOW TO GET ABOVE THE STREAM
Screwtape urges Wormword to keep his human immersed in the stream of life so that he will be distracted and never deepen his faith. And if we are not careful, we can fall into the same fate with our leadership. So what is the answer? Actually, Screwtape mentions it in the chapter as well. He cautions Wormwood to never let his human get into a debate about his beliefs. Because true debate, causes a person think about something longer, if only to try to win the argument. And the act of slowing down and thinking about something may be all that is needed for him to realize he’s off course.
The key is choosing to slow down. It’s the exact reason I read leadership books and write this blog. Not because I am the greatest leader that has ever lived. Far from it! I have found that when I read these books and discuss them with my others, I am more likely to grow. Not because these books have all the answers, but because it slows me down enough to see what needs to change. And we all need to find more ways to slow down a little more. So, I hope you join me over these next few months on this journey here at Drawn to Lead. And even if you don’t agree with everything that I write, I hope it will help you slow down enough to think more deeply about the type of leader you want to be…and maybe gives you some ideas on how to get there.
Looking forward to digging in even deeper with you soon!
More to come.
Kacy @ Drawn to Lead
NEW STATIONERY!
Speaking of letters, I recently created some new stationery for Drawn to Lead. I absolutely love the way they turned out. There is something special about receiving a handwritten note nowadays in our world of digital communication. Let me know if you would like to receive one!
I've read the Spanish version haha, and I remember that every chapter I read had confidence in it while I was living in that moment haha. I made pauses between chapters haha, some of them very large.
And in a particular way of slowing down, I did it, haha, because it coincided with other books and other things I was studying. In fact, I love to go deeper into the things that I love haha and I tried to lead others into the path, but it's hard haha a lot of them didn't find enough significance to lead themselves to take off the drug of streaming haha that's why the first thing I recommend to people is: "Ask God for your significance project", "to take the risk to do what you really love and go as deepest as you can". 😅