The Hum أُعيد تغريده
leadership problems magically solved when you remember that every adult carries a helpless infant inside them
there’s one experience that is shared by all people without exception: you were born a helpless infant totally dependent on other people to take care of you
they had capabilities you lacked, and they had the power to give or withhold the care you needed to survive
the state of being a dependant infant is completely universal. therefore, whenever we are in a complex social situation with multiple people, the “parent-child dynamic” is one of the stable patterns that we all know is available. it’s not the only schelling point but it is the most obvious one
so. any discussion of leadership, group dynamics, authority, self-responsibility, agency, hierarchy, consent, power, community etc etc etc must take this into consideration
as this relates to leadership, there are 2 main failure modes
as a leader, you can lean into this dynamic and treat everyone as your inferior. continuously assert the specialness of your role, withhold information, limit other people’s agency, make choices on their behalf, keep making them small so you can enjoy the feeling of being big
OR you can fail in the other direction. pretend this dynamic doesn’t exist. pretend that everyone has equal power to choose what’s right for them. pretend that you don’t have a unique capacity to influence everyone’s experience
the balance point between these two poles is messy & nuanced
for example. if I am hosting an event with a bunch of people meeting each other for the first time, I know that pretty soon some people are going to start feeling left out
as a leader, I can pretend I don’t have a role to play in this. hey we’re all responsible for our own experience. you need to work with those feelings and build some courage. stop alienating yourself. stop alienating yourself
or I can attempt to micro-manage and choreograph every interaction so nobody ever has any bad feelings, thereby squeezing all the life out of the event
too much intervention from the leaders is cringe, too little intervention is neglect. and everyone has a different preference! how much should I intervene? it depends!
ideally, we can learn to relate to each other as equal adults. but I don’t think we ever completely leave the parent-child dynamic behind. your “helpless infant” conditioning is imprinted right down in the lowest parts of your developmental stack
as a leader, I think the best I can do is to stay awake, to notice when you’re parentifying me or when I’m treating you as a child, and call attention to it so we can side-step out of it. we can create systems that keep pulling us back up on to equal footing. we can create a culture where triggers are a source of mutual curiosity instead of alarm or withdrawal.
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