Moments of Mastery

Bill Murray and Stephen Tobolowsky

“Groundhog Day” is the greatest movie about leadership ever made. Its lesson? We build mastery in our lives one moment at a time.

A great life, and great leadership, is really just a collection of smaller, individual moments of mastery. Bill Murray’s character unlocks this secret about three-quarters of the way through the film, and no longer sees the day he’s condemned to repeat as an endless hell, but as an opportunity to master his life — to build one small victory at a time, one encounter at a time.

It is a wonderful metaphor for our daily lives. We are condemned to repeat everything, every day unless we change. Unless we change, or achieve mastery, we are each living the same hellish day over and over again, with the same results, the same undesirable outcomes. Yet, each day, in as many conscious moments as possible, we’re given opportunities to rise above and set aside our ineffective beliefs and behaviors, and strive to live and lead against a standard — not perfection, but an ideal — of what it means to be as effective a person as humanly possible.

Every action, every thought, every decision -- even every little word that escapes our lips -- is an opportunity to exist in a single moment of mastery, to elevate ourselves and others.

Then, one day, with hard work and perseverance, we find that we’re able to string these moments together — like one bead after another — in a work of leadership and behavioral art. And we become free.

This is the journey of a leader, regardless of our definition of leadership, or the set of leadership principles you and I have chosen to follow.

Leadership is a Love Affair with The Truth

It’s so much more comfortable, most of the time, to live in the fantasy of who we think we are, how we see ourselves and how we think others see us. “My people love me. My people think I’m a great leader.”

The higher up the leadership pyramid you go, you create a fantasy for everybody else. “The boss said we should do this, the boss says it’s a great idea.” The boss’s fantasies become everyone else’s fantasies. The boss says, “we’re a great customer service organization.” And no one challenges the boss’s fantasy because, well, he’s the boss.

All organizations think they’re great at customer service. They got the posters and the talk down pat.

What is the point of these motivational posters? “Commitment. All it takes is all you’ve got.” Nice sentiment. Take it down. No one believes it anyway. The posters are instead like good luck charms; if we hang them there long enough, maybe they’ll become true!

You have to embrace the truth no matter what, no matter how painful, no matter how uncomfortable it is to assault your own biases, your own fantasies, your own ego.

Cheap Leadership

The common.

The unremarkable.

The crowd.

Fear.

Paralysis.

Faithlessness.

Cynicism.

The selfish.

Grasping, hoarding.

Focusing on emotional needs instead of the quality of the solution to the problem.

Love of the title.

Relying on the title for compliance.

Love of one’s own power, influence and control.

“Me first…”

Telling yourself lies.

The perceived immunity of title, power, and position.

Lip service to values and ideals.

Lip service to hard choices on leadership and personal growth.

Superficial attention to improving yourself.

Superficial attention to improving others.

Short-term horizon.

Instant gratification.

Giving up too soon.

Moving on too quickly.

Giving up upon resistance or failure.

Yielding to the demands of unimportant issues. 

Entropy.

Gravity.

Unconsciousness.

How to Give People Something They Can't Get Enough Of

Being a source of something scarce makes you valuable to the people in your life — family, friends, your employer, your community.

So, speaking of scarcity in today’s environment, here’s something very valuable you can do:

Be someone who starts and encourages upbeat conversations.

People are gloomy. The news is gloomy. The sky is falling.

Be the person in your environment who’s the optimist, who celebrates what is going well (it’s there — look for it…). Encourage people, pat them on the back.

Talk about how the world is being reinvented. Talk about all the opportunities on the other side of the anxiety and disruption. Tell funny stories. Laugh a lot.

I guarantee you will be very nearly alone in that effort. This makes you the source of something scarce. This makes you valuable, and valued, among the people you care about most. 

How To Be Safe -- In Good Times or Bad -- For the Rest of Your Life

Great problem solvers are among the scarcest things in the world. There simply aren’t enough of them, and there never will be.

What do the laws of economics teach us about scarcity? That the things of which there are very little or never enough, but which are in great demand, are the most valuable things in the world.

If there’s anything the world needs desperately right now, it’s people who are great at solving problems. In fact, if there’s anything the world always needs, in good times and bad, it’s people who are great at solving problems — in short, who are great at what they do.

No matter what you do, you have an opportunity to be great at it — to solve the problems and challenges you encounter on a daily basis with a high level of skill, and with passion and enthusiasm as well.

Almost without exception, the people in organizational life that I encounter are feeling exceptionally insecure — worried, understandably, about their jobs. A great deal of their energy is spent fretting about their short-term professional safety and security.

I tell them that the only thing they can control — in a time when it seems so much is beyond our control — is their ability to solve problems. It’s also the only genuine source of personal security and safety.

So, put your energy into:

One. Building your problem solving skills. Learn, grow, practice, experiment. It’s the best investment you can make, in good times and in bad.

Two. Embracing the opportunities created by today’s problems. The whole world is being reinvented. It’s painful, of course, but the more innovative and clever you can be, the more adaptive you prove yourself, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

Three. Understanding that the better you and your colleagues are at solving today’s problems right now, the safer and more secure you’ll all be — personally and organizationally.

Four. Being great at helping others be great problem solvers. This is the essence of leadership. 

Of course, being a great problem solver is no guarantee of personal economic security in today’s environment. Many people are suffering what is, we hope, short-term pain.

You simply have to have faith that, over the long-term, there is always a place in the world for a great problem solver.