Untangle.
It’s become one of my favorite words.
A simple enough concept yet with strangely powerful implications.
It’s a word that’s been coming up for me a lot lately. I had two amazing conversations with two amazing clients one day and spent much of the afternoon playing them over and over in my head.
The leaders I work with are already really good at what they do. They know how to lead. They’re effective and care very much about the people on their teams and those they work with.
They don’t need another leadership class or theory.
Once in a while they ask for advice on a particular issue, especially if they know I’ve seen it play out in my own life of leadership. But even then, they’re probably just looking for my perspective because they know that what they’re facing is unique. The core elements may be the same but the people involved, the particular situation, etc. are different.
I thought back to how those conversations started.
Each one began with the identification of an issue that was bothering them. They each sounded pretty sure that the simple thing they raised was the roadblock. “If I can do or stop doing 'X' then things will be good.”
Fair enough. Sounds simple; we should get this cleared up quickly.
We probed and got a little deeper. Then deeper still.
In the midst of these discussions I started to see a thread that seemed to be working its way over and under and through everything else. I pulled a little here, pushed a little there.
And then we found it. The knot.
The thread WAS the issue. Everything else was just a symptom.
It made me think of a ball of Christmas tree lights. For whatever reason, the year before you weren’t as diligent in putting things away neatly as you should have and now this year, you’re faced with a massive pile of interconnected loops and strings that seem to have no beginning and no end.
It reminds me of a day I spent in my office towards the latter part of my previous job.
I was under a tremendous amount of pressure and was absolutely inundated with information, expectations and anxiety and had one heck of a self-narrative going full bore in my brain for the previous few months.
And the information just kept coming. More emails, more missives, more opinions, more judgment, more research.
Looking back, I realize I was trying to solve overload with even MORE input.
My brain was absolutely saturated and it felt like it weighed 100 pounds.
I remember staring at a pile of binders on the desk in front of me, packed full of data and believing that somewhere in the middle of that mess was the answer I was seeking.
But I couldn’t even begin to untangle the mess so I just sat there. Where to begin? I don’t know.
And that realization hit even harder.
I had no idea what to do. How to make sense of this mess in my head.
I had already been given far too many opinions. Each of them well meaning but doing nothing to untangle the knot.
We as leaders have a hard time with this because our instinct tells us to get more data, more analysis, and more research.
What we really need is less noise. Less competing input. Less trying to solve everything at once.
The clarity we seek doesn’t come from adding more. It comes from untangling what you already have.
And it’s hard to do that by yourself.
When everything is tangled together, it’s almost impossible to tell what is causing what. Pull on the wrong thread and the knot gets tighter.
The knot is almost never where we think it is. We show up ready and willing to solve the visible problem when what we need is to untangle the real one.
I have found that untangling doesn’t start with finding the answer. It starts with discovering the real question.
Many leaders don’t need more advice, but they do need someone who can hear what they’re not yet saying.
If this reflection was helpful, feel free to forward it to another leader who might appreciate it.
If something in this reflection stirred questions or feels close to where you are right now, you're welcome to book a Leadership Strategy Call - a calm, pressure-free conversation designed to help you gain clarity and a next step.
Dan
Advisor to Leaders
A steady presence when the weight of leadership gets heavy