The Radically Curious Leader
January 25, 2023
A few newsletters ago, I shared that I had recently purchased the book 'Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up' by Jerry Colona. I had set it aside for a while, but finally got around to picking it up. And how glad am I that I did! There is no question that this is a book about leadership. But it is so much more than that. It is a book about being human. It is one of the very few leadership books I have read (and I have read many!) that acknowledges all of the personal baggage each of us brings to the role and work of leadership. And Colona doesn't simply acknowledge this - he delves in, deeply and personally.
With incredible honesty and compassion, Colona names many of the hard truths of what we often witness and experience in our organizations and businesses; the fact that leaders are humans. And that every one of these humans has endured difficulties and suffering of some kind in their lifetime. And from these many experiences of difficulties, we learn to adapt our ways of doing and being. Sometimes we adapt well. Sometimes we adapt poorly. And the only way we truly know how well we have understood, learned from, and integrated these lifetime experiences into our leadership work is through radical self-inquiry.
Self-inquiry, or choosing to be genuinely curious, may involve asking the questions such as: 'How am I complicit in creating the conditions of my life that I say I don't want?' or 'How am I contributing to the very thing that I find frustrating or annoying?'
But radical self-inquiry is a whole other level. A deeper, more honest and compassionate level. Here's how Colona sees it:
"Radical self-inquiry. The process by which self-deception becomes so skillfully and compassionately exposed that no mask can hide us anymore. Radical in that such inquiry is rare. Radical in that it demands that we stop blaming others for our lives. Compassionate in the way a good teacher is compassionate: stop bullshitting yourself."
Radical self-inquiry is when we shift from thinking about our conflict avoidance to, instead, the consequences of our fear and our anger. It's when we realize that our need to be in charge or the one in control of most decisions may, in fact, be about fears of failure, of being truly seen or not seen, or of being worthy. It's looking at our leadership style and recognizing just how much of that style is rooted in old patterns from many years ago, often from our childhoods; and how such patterns become replicated and amplified with time - and with promotion.
Why does a book like this matter? Because leadership matters. Because when you choose leadership - especially a formal leadership role that comes with authority - you are choosing a role that directly impacts others. It is a role that can help people see themselves in ways they never envisioned; help them accomplish things they never thought possible; help people feel a part of something larger than themselves, with meaning and purpose.
But it also puts you in a position to undue people. To make the workplace a place of frustration and anxiety. A place of fear and sadness. A place of resentment and simply going through the motions. That's why a book like this matters. Because it gets to the very heart of what can be so challenging in our workplaces - that we are humans, and we therefore bring our human experiences, memories, emotions and dysfunctions along with us into our respective workplaces.
In other words, if better humans make better leaders, then perhaps the first question to begin with is this: "What is my work to become a better human?"
Jerry Colona, and a little bit of radical self-inquiry, might just be the perfect place to begin such work.