Leadership

Last summer, I gave a sermon at The Community Church of Chapel Hill Unitarian Universalist. An early draft included the four stages of competence. The section didn’t make the final cut, but I learned a new way to think about the learning process.

Four stages of competence:

• Unconscious incompetence – You don’t know that you don’t know
• Conscious incompetence – Now you know but you don’t know what to do
• Conscious competence – You know what to do and you’re learning
• Unconscious competence – What you didn’t know is now second nature

The four stages of competence are attributed to management trainer Martin Broadwell. He taught managers that training an employee is a process. Learning a skill takes time and effort. My sermon was about choosing to follow my dream. My first step was to define what “following my dream” meant to me. I needed to know myself better in order to make my dream intentional.

If you Google “living with intention” you’ll find all kinds of articles with tips on mindfulness, purpose, and establishing habits (Disclaimer: I have only skimmed a few of them). All good things. And while I believe in living with intent, I also believe that letting go is part of the process, akin to Broadwell’s stage four of competence.

In the Zone

Unconscious competence is defined by the learned skill becoming second nature. Meaning, I don’t think about what I know, I act upon what I know. The switch from doing to being creates a new relationship with the skill I was learning but now don’t have to think about to execute. Yet, learning to ride a bike or build a stone pathway in the backyard is different than learning who I am and what I want. In order to follow my dream, I had to accept a different relationship with myself.

Stage four was difficult for one main reason: I didn’t want to let go of what I learned because I was afraid I would forget the lesson. Keeping the knowledge front and center in my mind helped me feel in control of my life’s direction. But, there is a difference between trying to live with intent and living with intent, and I believed in the benefits of letting go. So, I did. And guess what? I didn’t forget. Actually the opposite happened.

I liken living with intent to being in the zone, an immersive and energized mental state often exemplified by watching someone like Steph Curry shoot three-pointers. If you’ve seen him, there’s no doubt Curry trusts himself to let go. And what does he do when the game is over? Practice.

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Quote and photo by author. All rights reserved.

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In my early twenties, a friend of a friend needed volunteers to take a personality test for her psychology class. I answered questions sitting on our mutual friend’s couch, and some weeks later the acquaintance handed over her analysis of my answers. The only personality trait I remember was the one I didn’t see within myself: leader.

To me, leaders were the people in charge. The one’s standing at podiums speaking to crowds, making laws and scientific discoveries, shepherding adults and children into unwritten optimistic futures. The leaders-in-making were those in the crowds and in the classrooms.

I worked in a local restaurant and I wasn’t in college. One weekend, I almost ran away from society with the nomads in the Rainbow Family. And, I had spent two weeks in jail (over the course of seven weekends) for a DUI, and reckless driving, that caused a friend’s serious injuries (hence the allure of running away).

I couldn’t have felt further away from “leader” than I did in my early twenties.

Citizen-leader

During the same time, I devoured any words, whether in book or song, to learn what it meant to live a meaningful life. Ironically, one of my favorite passages in the Stephen Mitchell translation of Lao Tzu’s, Tao Te Ching, was on leadership. I was first attracted to this line: “When the Master governs, the people / are hardly aware that he exists.” What? I could serve and support others without being known or seen? A dream come true!

Today, I’m thinking about leadership as a result of pondering what it means to be a citizen. Peter Block, in his book Community: The Structure of Belonging, says, “A citizen is one who produces the future, someone who does not wait, beg, or dream the future.” This sounds like leadership to me. So, if citizens are leaders themselves, then Lao Tzu’s teaching reaches even broader than I first realized. Citizen-leaders already do the work without being known or seen. They’re deliberate and conscientious down to the smallest scale. Therefore, my decision to face my civic responsibility did exhibit leadership. I didn’t just not run away, I chose to be accountable, and more importantly, to learn from the experience.

All by ourselves

I also chose to work on emotional strength, a piece that is often overlooked in society after the court fines are paid and the community service is complete. Yet, the emotional component is the wound that takes the longest to heal and is largely invisible to bystanders. It’s also invaluable to emotional resilience and personal growth, two strong qualities for a citizen, leader, and citizen-leader.

When I whittled through all the emotions I had in the aftermath of my DUI and my friend’s injuries, at the core was my personal shame. So I faced it. I’m talking, moment-to-moment, year-after-year, worked to rectify my shame until I embraced acceptance. And I did eventually embrace acceptance. A lot of my forthcoming writing addresses my process, including the healing I received from repetitious mundane domestic tasks.

I may never be a leader in the common definition, but I’m not afraid to be seen or known anymore. Facing my shame has everything to do with it. For now, I continue to learn from Lao Tzu and Block: I pursue action; I strive to provide space for others to be their best selves; I lead my life instead of it leading me.

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The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, “Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!”

Tao Te Ching

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Quote and photo by author. All rights reserved.

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