The pandemic ushered in a new world disorder that can make even the most entrenched insiders feel like outsiders. As our external environment changes, our internal doubts multiply. My coaching clients often tell me, “This is not what I signed up for.” Or “This place isn’t what it used to be.” Or “I’m not having as much fun as I used to have.” What’s more, high performers can be naturally paranoid. They are constantly alert to signals that they’re slipping or losing their relevance—even when those signals only originate from inside their own heads. The curse of competence means never being completely comfortable.
Making others feel safe, however, can never be a function of whether or not you feel safe. Others’ well-being cannot depend on your mood, outlook, or whims. It’s your personal consistency that matters most to them. People often tell me that their biggest source of professional stress is the variability or unpredictability of their immediate boss. They spend so much of their energy determining the best time to approach them or the best way to navigate their boss’s volatility that they have very little energy left to actually innovate or explore new ways of winning.
Being the Keeper of the Safety Flame means forgoing all excuses for not playing at your best. It calls for total ownership of the moment, irrespective of your position. For example, if you’re the leader, you intentionally radiate a warmth and openness that draws people in. You express a relish for the role even though you may be battling with fatigue or frustration. If you’re lower on the org chart, you ask questions or make comments that demonstrate your total engagement. You’re not dissuaded by others’ ennui or lukewarm commitments. You energize by example.
Develop Your Multiple Personality Agility
In 1599, Shakespeare wrote in his play As You Like It,
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts
In that regard, nothing has changed in over 424 years. We’re all players in the production called Our Life. We need to win our own Academy Awards for the way we perform our roles. On the dark days, you need to bring the light. When the force isn’t with you, you must act like it is.
I’m not telling you to “fake it until you make it.” Faking anything will never radiate strength and confidence. I’m telling you to remind yourself of who you are when you’re at your best and how much your team needs you to perform at that level. Then you need to consciously act like that. It takes courage, but courage is easier to muster when you have no alternative. If you hold yourself to the Keeper of the Safety Flame standard, you’ll find ways to sustain it. You’ll also discover that emotion comes from motion. Feel the way you act; don’t act the way you feel. You have a role you have taken on—not on a stage but in real life. Live up to it when you are in it.
When Diane is playing the role of psychiatrist, she can listen to a patient’s traumatic story and respond empathically, but with professional detachment. But when she’s in personal mode, those same stories can reduce her to tears—she permits herself to give in to her emotions. We need to play our professional roles with all the composure that takes. As a psychiatrist, Diane processes inputs through different filters. She is both more sensitive to the data and insulated against it at the same time. She calls it multiple personality agility—the ability to move seamlessly between the various characters she needs to inhabit: doctor, friend, mother, student, author, wife, ambassador, commercial leader, changemaker. She enables the most appropriate character, or a compilation of the right ones, to come to the fore in each situation.
We Are Judged Not by Our Feelings but by Our Actions
When Diane and I are in front of client audiences at marquee corporate or association events, we are held to three simple standards:
- Did we inspire or empower people to do something that they otherwise would never have done?
- Do they feel uplifted because they spent time in our company?
- Would they recommend us to other colleagues or friends?
Unless we get an unqualified yes, yes, and yes, we have failed them. Our internal states of mind are invisible to others and irrelevant to their experience with us.
We are judged not by our feelings but by our actions. Others observe and evaluate our behaviours moment by moment. If we create a safe experience, they will risk doing or saying more. If we don’t, they won’t. The willingness of others to interact with us is the real test of our ability to create a space where they feel like they belong. Diane calls it a compassionate culture—an environment where people can share their ideas, excitement, and successes, but also their anxieties, upsets, and frustrations, without fear of retribution or humiliation.
Compassion goes a degree deeper than empathy. Empathy means sharing and understanding someone’s pain or discomfort. Compassion means being committed to alleviating someone’s pain or discomfort. It’s the ability to take impactful action that makes all the difference. When compassion is your core motivation, you focus on others’ well-being. You see things through their eyes, and you help make it right for them.
Sometimes compassion means coaching someone through a crisis or providing them with the support and resources to navigate through their struggle. Other times, compassion means not coaching or suggesting, but simply providing them the space to find their own answers, so they truly own the win. Compassion can also mean helping someone exit the organization on their terms, so you give them a soft landing. By supporting their narrative, they’re less likely to light fires on the way out. You close out the relationship with civility and respect.
Diane has discovered that a compassionate culture builds her team’s stamina and resilience. They know they will be supported. They know they will be treated fairly. They know Diane has their back. As a result they’re willing to fail fast—which is critical for a technology start-up—work with agility, and experiment with creative solutions. They recover from mistakes faster and share lessons openly. They accelerate their path forward.
Obviously, there are moments when any of us will fall short of the Keeper of the Safety Flame standard. That always sucks. We reflect with frustration and castigate ourselves for being underwhelming. We feel guilty about not delivering a high return on trust. Sometimes, it’s hard to let it go. But, as quickly as possible, we must shift gears and focus on what we’ve just learned. However hard it is to get over it, we can’t let it keep us from playing at our best the next time. As Billy Jean King, the great tennis champion, said, “Champions keep playing until they get it right.” I know it’s not as easy as that makes it sound—I have a strong tendency to ruminate over mistakes that I believe I shouldn’t have made. But the only way out of it is through it, so I focus on learning from it. As is often said, “This too shall pass.”
