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Reminder to self:  Despair is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It’s not a leadership tool.

A mentor of mine used to say, “You’re either coming out of a crisis or going into one, and the time between is variable.” 

It’s a well-known leadership “trick” to tell folks things like “The whitewater is rough now, but around the bend the river will smooth out.”  It might, but more often, there will be more rapids ahead. 

More effective leadership approaches:

Be plain about current and future challenges.  No sugar-coating.  Don’t promise easy or quick solutions.  Don’t promise things you can’t fully control (e.g., no layoffs, extra benefits). Promise that you’ll be with them.  Help them see a future state of being stronger having come through these difficulties.  Be realistically positive, not falsely cheery.  

Leading at this level will first require excellent self-leadership.  This is where your real work begins.

(This is adapted from a draft chapter of a book I’m writing.  Feedback appreciated!)

I’ve yet to meet a person who says, “I want my ideas to be misunderstood.” (Some people want to be misunderstood, because it suits a personal narrative and offers endless excuses – think of immature teenagers and some world leaders — but that’s not our concern today.)

Though we all communicate, few connect.

Communicating in a way that connects is hard. Mark Amidon said, “Language is a means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery.” Language, for all its power, is messy. I know a patent attorney who describes the process of torturing English into a sentence that can mean only one thing. Effective communication is prized because the payoff is worth the work. Mark Twain famously pointed out “the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

When is communication particularly difficult?

When there is limited shared vocabulary or context.

When someone prefers not to hear, often because it challenges their presuppositions.

When information is presented in fuzzy, ambiguous, or disordered fashion.

When you’re communicating with people who can’t focus for more than 48 seconds. (Which is most of us, today.)

In short, this is a daily challenge. 

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There are at least 400,000 actively used words in the English language. There are perhaps 50,000 words no longer in common use. This doesn’t count slang, jargon, invented technical words, chemical compounds, anatomy structures, and product and drug names.

You’re fluent in English when you know about 10-12,000 words; about 90% of everyday writing uses 3500 words.

I adore words. I am facile with a large vocabulary.  

I also know this: The simpler my sentences, the plainer my words, the more likely I am to communicate effectively. This is true even for the most technically complex information.

The best-converting sales copy is written at 6th-8th grade level at most. This is true in the US, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Sweden, India, and Thailand, across multiple languages.

Most of the seminal scientific papers and political books in history read at a 10th grade level or lower, though they are communicating challenging ideas. Large sections of Plato’s Republic, for example, read at 7th grade level.

The entire Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) reads at a 7th grade level. Howard Hendricks insisted his seminary students structure their sermons to “put the cookies on the lowest shelf.”

What does this tell us? 

Effective communication is simple (not simplistic). The recipient’s brain stays focused on the meaning, not being tripped up by “what does that word mean?” and “I’m lost, where is he going with this?”

Take this to heart if you want to connect.

Use short sentences. Use 3 points instead of 7. Drop adjectives and adverbs. Omit needless words.

This only happens through attention and effort. Writing means rewriting. Even ‘informal’ verbal updates require forethought about content and structure.

Recommended resources: 

How to Speak, How to Listen (Adler)

Elements of Style (Strunk and White)

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You might be thinking, “But when I’m talking with other people in my same industry, I need to use many obscure and fancy words and acronyms. I can’t just use 3500 words of vocabulary to explain something.”

You should use a shared vocabulary when communicating in a shared context. You’re free to use acronyms and jargon – these are intelligent shortcuts unique to every discipline. Working across disciplines is different. A molecular biologist talking with an accountant or musician should limit the buzz words unknown outside her tribe.

Even within a shared context, simple sentences and well-structured thoughts are needed for getting ideas across. Bottom-line up front (BLUF), not a torturous chronology. Keep related ideas together. Don’t force your audience to work harder.

I pull this out periodically and review it.  Perhaps you need a list like this?

What is my why?

Physically strong to care for family members

Lean, fit for longer healthier life – which prolongs contribution

Prayer and meditation, intercession

Understand patterns of events to anticipate troubles and guide others to thriving

Study and Intellectual stimulation

Courage

Wisdom

Aim:  Be a large, clean conduit of God’s goodness to flow to people He puts in my sphere of influence.

A helpful question when I’m faced with (even small) decisions: “What will future Glenn think about this choice?” 

Perhaps this is key to maturity.

Maturity is the ability, in the moment when there are two paths to take, two voices in your head, and they cannot both be correct, to choose the right one. 

I think I’m like most people in this:  I dread the start of intense exercising, and for the first few minutes I think “This hurts, why am I doing this?”.  Afterwards I feel great, with a strong sense of accomplishment. 

The same is true of tackling unpleasant-but-necessary tasks.  Especially tasks that are new or I’m not good at (yet). 

When I eat healthier food, I can better distinguish real hunger from useless cravings.  It becomes easier to say to my tummy, “You’re fine, quiet down.”   

I’m currently working on a training plan for my thought process.  The inner dialogue centers on “This is what progress feels like.”   

What mantra do you need to develop?

Ascendant leaders make good decisions about the focus of their work, especially when overseeing a portfolio of projects.  There’s no formula for this, but here are questions and concepts which I’ve found helpful in project oversight.  Which resonate the most with you?  Any you would add? 

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What problem, if fixed permanently, would make a whole bunch of other problems disappear?

It’s never Problem vs. No-problem.  What problems do you prefer to have?

What’s good enough, so we can divert resources to creating breakthrough and high ROI deliverables?

For what am I willing to be yelled at?

Use imagination in planning: What story do I want to be able to share, with whom, when?  What position do we want to be in, relative to competitors, in 3 years?

Am I solving something just for my area, or something greater? (Greater attracts funding from top-down)

Beware of over-complicating: NASA built a zero-gravity space pen; the Soviets used a pencil.

Who to go with?  Which people (sponsors, leaders, stakeholders, execution team, etc.) give you the best opportunities for brag-worthy results?

Old wisdom: You can’t solve a problem at the same level the problem exists; either go up a level or down a level.

It’s possible to time-slice yourself into zero deliverables.

I’ve spent years working on improving personal and group productivity. When someone asks why I’m so productive I respond by saying “I must be.” I can be easily irritated about wasted time, and inefficient processes.  

But it’s not really about time.  It’s about energy.

Let’s work from first principles in physics.  Energy is conserved.  Time is tied to the fabric of space and is not conserved.  Time is experienced and is not a constant. Momentum is mass times energy.  Friction is about degrading energy of a system.  I’m sure you can extrapolate from physics to human relationships and organizations. 

We’re biological entities.  Just as chemistry cannot be fully explained by physics, biology cannot be fully explained by chemistry.  Somehow, mysteriously, energy and biology have different dynamics which are not fully explained by equations.  Like time, energy is experienced in flexible ways in biological systems.

Think of your personal experiences – there are some activities, some moments, which energize you, seemingly giving you more energy than you expended.  These are always associated with focus and intensity.  There is sharpness, not fuzziness.  They feel crystalline and solid, even if we cannot fully explain them.  They’re memorable. 

The desire for this feeling of focused energized whatever-this-is can be addictive. It’s significant that people who overdose on opioids, when brought “back to life with Narcan,” are not grateful, but angry and furious – you destroyed their high.  Joy in the wrong things leads to anger and dissolution, not integrity of being and purpose.

By contrast, consider your experience with boredom.  No energy for what’s around you, but an odd kind of energy driving you to find something worth focusing your energy.  (Doesn’t have to be good for you, you’re still seeking it!) 

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The Self-leadership paradigm must be energy management (including focused attention), not time management.  You can manage your energy and decide where to put your attention.  You cannot manage slippery, subjective time. 

No one is paid for their time.  Oh, we use the language of hourly wages, and fee for hours.  But we pay for value delivered.  It’s simpler to pre-decide a rate for hour.  If we were truly paid for our time, then we could sit at home doing something else and we’d still be paid.   I’m paid an annual salary, partitioned into pay periods.  I can calculate my effective hourly rate.  There are some hours when I provide amazing value to the Company, and many others I don’t – this is the 80/20 nature of the knowledge work and leadership which I’m responsible to deliver.  “The worker is worthy of his wages” (Leviticus 19:13) but the issue is not time, it’s energy and value delivery.

Sometimes as parents we talk about “quality” time and “quantity” time with kids.  All the quality comes from energetic focus, not passive co-habitation of the same building.  Pastor Kent Wagner used to tell our congregation, “There are only two kinds of marriages; those being worked on, and those which aren’t.”  I think this is true for most relationships.  It’s about energy: input, flow, experienced output.

I frequently recommend The Power of Full Engagement to leaders.  The authors recognized that top athletes develop specific rhythms for recovery after expending energy. There are effective recovery rituals between points in tennis, between sprints, pre- and post- marathons, over seasons of sports.  Recovery rituals maintain one’s ability to perform at high levels over years.  The Jewish people were instructed that sundown the beginning of the day – family togetherness and rest coming before the workday. The Sabbath was God’s recovery design for the work week. These are crucial concepts for lifelong productivity.

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Time does have a certain kind of power.  Creation is affected by time.  Our ability to work is affected by time. Time constrains us as we strain against it.  “Time heals all things” – cute, partially correct in experience, but energy is required for healing.  “Time erodes all things” is true in entropy-reality universe, but there is no erosion or decay without energy transfer. 

The idea of eternity challenges our imagination.  He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV)  I suspect that life in perfect fellowship with God and with one another, unstained by sin, would not feel long, because the energy and focus is in proper balance.  As Seth Godin noted, long is not the problem, boring is.  

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We must pay attention to energy flows for anything and everything we care about.

Our sun releases the energy equivalent of 4 million tons of matter each second, about 4 x10 to the 26th power in watts, of which only a tiny fraction hits planet earth.  Ultimately all our energy, aside from nuclear power we engineer (which imitates the sun) and geothermal sources, comes from this fractional energy of our sun.  Fossil fuels represent a store of ancient solar energy.  Wind and wave power is derived from uneven heating of the planet.  All our food comes from photosynthesis – three cheers for Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase!  Even at our most primitive state we swim in a world of massive energy transfer and interactions. Prior to engines, we relied on the energy of the wind, the rivers, and the bodies of men and animals. Most people are quite surprised to learn their basal metabolic rate, the number of calories our bodies burn at rest.  

Energy consumption is at the back of everything we hold dear.  In geopolitics, agriculture, trade, manufacturing, and transportation, you can always begin with energy.  It’s the single most common factor across every aspect of civilization. 

In all the enthusiasm for ai, cryptocurrencies, robots, and EVs, I rarely see a discussion about the massive electricity requirements.  It’s difficult to find good numbers on the amount of energy required to manufacture and transport the components that are used to build giant windmills and solar farms, and batteries of all kinds.  We should be sober and include these in net energy calculations.

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Have you ever considered the return on the watts of power flowing through your body?  Measured your contributions as return on watts used?  It’s depressing.  Small numerator, large denominator.

Which brings me to the inexhaustible, unending love and grace of God, the most perfect energy source we experience.  Our contributions are teeny, we’re highly inefficient, yet dearly loved.  It’s not about you, me, or us.  We can’t earn it, and certainly don’t deserve it. The beauty comes because God chose people to be the vehicles and conduits of His truth and grace to the people around us.  This is the most important energy transfer of all.

I place a high value on the ability to think clearly, especially in this age of distraction and general anxiety.  It’s useful to consider the enemies of clear thinking:

• Pride, emotional unsteadiness, anger
• Unhealthy eating, and overeating
• Overly sedentary, for hours and days
• Undisciplined or purposeless use of unscheduled time
• Isolation and self-obsession (different than solitude)
• Only using comfortable sources of information
• Trying to be informed about all current events
• Prioritizing urgent and inconsistent instead of long-term and consistent
• Being rigidly unimaginative
• Placing myself outside of accountability and authority structures
• Staying inside all the time

Recognizing these enemies helps us choose alternative and better behaviors.

One step out our back gate is National Park property, the Live Oaks Naval Nature Preserve, established by President John Quincy Adams. Trees from this forest were used in building the USS Constitution, known as “Old Ironsides” We enjoy the easy access to miles of trails; it’s unusual to see more than a handful of other people in two hours of hiking around.

The National Park Service did a controlled burn in the section nearest to us this week. It’s been 12+ years since it was last done, long overdue. This area is a relatively dry place, despite our seasonal rains, because we’re fundamentally on a sand spit sticking into Pensacola Bay.  Most of the native plants have waxy leaves and can stand long rainless stretches of hot weather. The tangle of underbrush, vines, and dry leaves is a fire hazard waiting to happen, given our area has more lightning strikes than almost anywhere else in the continental US. 

NPS rangers closely monitored the fire; our property was never in danger.  Still, the abundant smoke and ash was alarming.  I repeatedly peeked out the back gate to watch the flames. We had a good rain the following day which delayed the opportunity for more burning.  I don’t know if they will do more soon, or if this will be ‘enough.’

Fire is a natural part of the forest ecosystem life cycle, but it’s hard to see so much burned up, and scorch marks high on tree trunks.  Many small animals (squirrels, armadillos, coyotes, lizards, turtles, snakes, possums, raccoons, and many birds) will find new homes for a season.  Our black bears cover large distances regularly. They can easily avoid the burned area. It is the season for the new cubs but I’m not aware of any dens in this forest. I was relieved to see an osprey perched on the nest, high atop a scorched tree, apparently pleased to be able to see me from a hundred yards away. 

I know too from an uncontrolled burn in a different part of this forest last year:  all the plants with extensive root systems will recover, with green shoots in a few days.  This is true for both ‘nice’ plants like palmettos and ‘not nice’ plants like the six varieties of vines that can grow 1-2” per day. The contrast of the green leaves emerging against the blackened ground is remarkable.

All this has made me wonder, “Is there value in a controlled burn in my habits, practices, and ‘stuff’?  Where would the value be in a fresh start?  What are the equivalent of extensive root systems that I should honor?  Can I initiate a burn myself, or does this process require an outside force?”  Worth pondering more.

I notice that when I pray for peace, I will be given more opportunities to be a peace-maker.  When I pray for blessing of healing for my mother’s physical ailments, I have more opportunities to be a comforter to her.  When I pray for courage to speak wisely into a difficult conversation, I’m handed additional opportunities to be courageous.  (I see remarkably things I cannot explain apart from a divine act, but they always come with opportunities.)

A significant part of growing as a leader is the willingness to step into opportunities for leadership, rather than turning aside.  Don’t go to the brink of experience and shuffle away.

Rereading Paradise Lost recently has encouraged me to think more about pride.  Here’s an important observation: Pride is never used in a positive sense in the entire Bible. Not once.

We say things like “I’m proud of you!”  and “I feel a sense of pride over what I’ve created.”  We should be careful about this. 

Pride distorts our internal heroic, causation, and victim stories.  In league with Pride we resist changing our minds even with abundant evidence that we’re mistaken.  Pride is a terrible burden we refuse to lay down. Pride has a loud voice but knows precisely when a whisper will accomplish its purpose.  See a man who refuses to do the right thing?  Scratch the surface to see the handiwork of Pride.

Pride, insecurity, and immaturity are root causes of our struggles to get along well with one another – as well as our capacity for self-sabotage.  (I talked about this in my no-longer-available book, Ministering Effectively to Tough-to-Love People.)  Understanding this is key to seeing below the surface behaviors to what’s really going on – both in yourself and in others.