Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up
by Jerry Colonna
Software developers, borrowing from writer Arthur Koestler, define left-over, outmoded code, no-longer-useful subroutines, buried deep within a current version of a program as ghosts in the machine. While once useful, this outmoded coding starts to get in the way of current operations. Like everyone, I have millions of lines of such code, operating instructions for how to navigate the world and relationships, which add up to hundreds of ghosts in the machine of my mind. Radical self-inquiry is the path to seeing habits and patterns. Questions that drive us toward that insight are endlessly helpful: “What parts of me are being projected onto the other person?” “How do I reclaim those parts of me?” “What do my reactions say about me?” “Why do I do what I do?” “Why do they do what they do?” “What need for love, safety, or belonging might they be trying to meet with their irrational behavior?”
Learning to lead ourselves is hard because in the pursuit of love, safety, and belonging, we lose sight of our basic goodness and twist ourselves into what we think others want us to be. We move away from the source of our strengths—our core beliefs, the values we hold dear, the hard-earned wisdom of life—and toward an imagined playbook listing the right way to be.
We forge our truest identity by putting our heads into the mouths of the scariest demons, the realities of our lives. Only by facing our fears, our prejudices, our passions, can we transform the energy that is the source of our aggression, the source of our confusion, the source of our struggle.
I believe that better humans make better leaders. I further believe that the process of learning to lead well can help us become better humans. By growing to meet the demands of the call to leadership, we’re presented with the chance to finally, fully, grow up.
But in all cases, allowing yourself to be eaten by the demon that remains—acknowledging how you have contributed to the problem without descending into pointless self-flagellation—turns up the heat beneath the crucible. Without heat, there is no alchemy.
Stand still. Let the forest find you. Then you can begin to ask yourself the hardest questions: Who am I? What do I believe about the world? What do success and failure mean to me (and not to everyone else)? What kind of adult do I want to be?
"Software developers, borrowing from writer Arthur Koestler, define left-over, outmoded code, no-longer-useful subroutines, buried deep within a current version of a program as ghosts in the machine. While once useful, this outmoded coding starts to get in the way of current operations. Like everyone, I have millions of lines of such code, operating instructions for how to navigate the world and relationships, which add up to hundreds of ghosts in the machine of my mind."
"Radical self-inquiry is the path to seeing habits and patterns. Questions that drive us toward that insight are endlessly helpful: “What parts of me are being projected onto the other person?” “How do I reclaim those parts of me?” “What do my reactions say about me?” “Why do I do what I do?” “Why do they do what they do?” “What need for love, safety, or belonging might they be trying to meet with their irrational behavior?”"
"Learning to lead ourselves is hard because in the pursuit of love, safety, and belonging, we lose sight of our basic goodness and twist ourselves into what we think others want us to be. We move away from the source of our strengths—our core beliefs, the values we hold dear, the hard-earned wisdom of life—and toward an imagined playbook listing the right way to be."
"We forge our truest identity by putting our heads into the mouths of the scariest demons, the realities of our lives. Only by facing our fears, our prejudices, our passions, can we transform the energy that is the source of our aggression, the source of our confusion, the source of our struggle."
"I believe that better humans make better leaders. I further believe that the process of learning to lead well can help us become better humans. By growing to meet the demands of the call to leadership, we’re presented with the chance to finally, fully, grow up."
"But in all cases, allowing yourself to be eaten by the demon that remains—acknowledging how you have contributed to the problem without descending into pointless self-flagellation—turns up the heat beneath the crucible. Without heat, there is no alchemy."
"Stand still. Let the forest find you. Then you can begin to ask yourself the hardest questions: Who am I? What do I believe about the world? What do success and failure mean to me (and not to everyone else)? What kind of adult do I want to be?"
- →Stand still. Let the forest find you. Then you can begin to ask yourself the hardest questions: Who am I? What do I believe about the world? What do success and failure mean to me (and not to everyone else)? What kind of adult do I want to be?
- →“If you bring forth what is in you, what is in you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is in you, what is in you will destroy you.”
- →“I am not what has happened to me,” taught Carl Jung. “I am what I choose to become.”
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