A Letter to My Daughter

My Dear Daughter,

My heart was broken this morning when I learned that you had to endure another one of life’s hard leadership lessons having been subjected to a verbally abusive encounter yesterday. I so wish it had not happened. I wish I could always protect you from getting hurt or upset. We both know that is not possible, but still I wish it were so.

You did a lot of work in planning and executing a very special event that, by all measures, was a tremendous success. Many people expressed their gratitude and appreciation, along with a desire to repeat the experience again soon. It was good! That is until yesterday, when one person who was inconvenienced and, in their mind uninformed, about the special event (even though extraordinary efforts were expended to communicate the details pertaining to it), inappropriately expressed their great displeasure. How they expressed their disappointment was totally unacceptable, and I believe the proper actions were taken to address the ensuing situation. Nonetheless, I know you were deeply hurt by how they handled their disapproval, and that breaks my heart.

This situation reminds me of a similar occurrence that happened at work several years ago that was recently brought to my recall in a discussion I had with a leader at GM. This person had planned and carried out a special recognition event for their team for the achievement a major program milestone. It was a terrific event and everybody left feeling appreciated and encouraged to press on and take on the next challenge; until one person who felt that they were left out of the recognition event invitation list expressed ire and vitriol to the organizer. Needless to say, this took the air out of the elation balloon.

This leader came into my office quite upset and made the statement, “If this is how they turn out, I am never going to throw another recognition event!” We both smiled as we recalled my slow, calm response, which was, “Yes you will”. The truth is, in attempting to do something good, some aspect of it might not be perfect. When you try to please a group, someone will likely take offense. You can’t stop doing good just because someone might get upset. In fact, I will go so far as to say, someone always will. In this world, you can’t do work without encountering friction and you can not do something extraordinary, without someone opposing it in some fashion.

Daughter of mine, you learned that leadership lesson first-hand yesterday. Leadership is about enacting a change for the better. When change occurs, there will always be some push back; someone will always get upset that their proverbial cheese has been moved. Lead on anyway. Be armed with this understanding and wisdom and try to minimize the friction to the extent possible. Lead on anyway.

Now while this is a good leadership lesson, it feels a bit academic and sterile in light of the emotional aspect of your experience. To that, I would like to offer a few other thoughts and reflections. I often use the phrase: “stay strong”. This is a good example of why I do that. It is a reminder that in this life we will face many challenges, big and small, many painful experiences in one manner or another. To be a leader, you need to stay strong during these times. One aspect of staying strong is to be tough.

Toughness is actually an engineering and metallurgical term. It refers to a materials ability to absorb an impact and not break. A metal can be hard, that is to say, it is not easily indented or deformed. Take one of your kitchen knives, for example. Due to the material it is made of, stainless steel, it does not easily scratch or take a permeant set when a bending load is applied to it. But when materials are hard, they are usually also brittle. Brittleness means that when a sharp blow it taken, the metal will suddenly snap and break. Below is a picture of a brittle metal part that was hit with a sudden impact. It broke off completely when it was struck. It is brittle.

The opposite of brittleness is toughness. Being tough means being able to absorb a blow and not break. The material may bend and deform, but it hangs on and does not break. In this regard, “stay strong” in a sense also means, “be tough”. You suffered an impact to your soul, but you mustn’t let it break you. In this case, you need to absorb the shot; bend but don’t break. Look at this metal. It took a hard blow, absorbed it and held together. Now that is tough. Stay strong young lioness. Be tough.

May you learn a leadership lesson with this latest experience. May you grow in wisdom and courageously press on doing the good things you know to do, realizing all the time that surely, “You cannot please everybody all the time”. To be strong, and to be tough does not mean don’t be hurt, don’t feel pain, don’t feel embarrassment or discomfort. It means the opposite. It means that in this life, you are going to feel these things.

As a leader, you will feel more than your share of them. What it does mean is that even though you feel these things, don’t let them break you. Don’t let them stop you from doing the things you are compelled to do with the vision and tasks you have set before you and your team.

Let me close with these three thoughts:

Be Tough. To become tough, or to get tougher, we must build within ourselves a character and an attitude that says “I am the master of my own ship”. Emotionally I may be hurt, but I am in control of who I am and how I react to life’s blows, come what may. I do not have to give up or give in to my emotions. Our emotions are like our horse. They are powerful and without any conscious effort on our part they compel us to take action. They are a survival instinct, to fight or to flee, to go or to stop. Our ability to think and to reason however, our rational thoughts, our logic and our minds hold the reins of our emotional horse. We do not have to give in to the desire to stop when we are tired (our emotion) but to push on and achieve something of great value (our mind). Be the master of this situation, steer in the direction you want to go with even greater resolve and with a valuable lesson learned.

Stay Strong. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” I think he was on to something there. Everybody seems to think they are courageous when they face no threat. Everybody thinks they are strong when they face no stress. It is only in the crucible of being under a heavy load, or facing great resistive forces do we actually not only get to measure our true strength, but ultimately it is the only way we can truly grow strong. Let this latest challenge be merely one more weight that you have lifted to grow in strength.

Do Not Let Your Heart Be Hardened. Perhaps the most important aspect of this growth experience may be this, do not let this experience harden your heart. It is only as our hearts stay soft to the needs of our fellow man will we be compelled to take up the burden of leadership. Why the hell else would we do it? To protect and keep your heart from hardening my best advice is, “forgive this person who has done wrong to you.” Only when we forgive can we heal. Only when we forgive can we love the way we owe our fellow man, regardless of how they have acted out their own personal struggles.

Peter asked his teacher how many times he should forgive those who wronged him, ‘Up to seven times!?’ he asked incredulously. He was instructed, ‘No, not seven times, but seventy times seven’. (That’s 490, but who is counting?)

So young lady, again, I am sorry you had to endure the wrath of a fool, that you were hurt and embarrassed by the situation. Don’t let your heart be troubled. Learn your lesson and move forward on your trajectory of accomplishing great things. You have heard me say many times, “The mantel of leadership is heavy, it is not to be placed on weak shoulders.” Yours are strong, and getting stronger with each experience.

This letter is meant for your eyes only, but with your permission, I would share it as a leadership thought of the day. Perhaps someone else could find a nugget of encouragement and gain from your experience too. That would be cool. If not, let’s just keep it as a love letter between us.

Love,

Dad

Added here as a Leadership Thought of the Day with expressed permission of a Lioness

Stay Strong,

Terry