Welcome to the Potential Leader Lab, and I'm your host, Perry Maughmer. So I wanna start off a couple of things, and then we're gonna get into, Rainer Maria Rilke and a quote. We're gonna kind of investigate a little quote he had. He was an Austrian poet novelist who lived from 1875 to 1926. So he's been gone for about a 100 years, but, wow, he, he put some stuff down that's meaningful just as meaningful today as ever. So before we get started, again, if you if you listen to the podcast and you like what you hear, please throw a ranking out there 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 stars, whatever resonates with you. You know, I love those people who are like, rank it 5 star. I'm not gonna tell you how to how to rank something.

If you liked it, obviously, give it 5 stars. If you don't give it 1, right, and then put some comments in because I'm all about getting better. I don't think perfection is never something to strive for, but I always wanna get better. And then more important than that is if you do like it and you wanna you you need to build that community for yourself to talk about these things that we that we talk about here. And it's if you share the concepts with somebody a, share the podcast so somebody else is listening to it so you can have a great conversation about, you know, what they thought, what you thought. But then again, if there's any 1, 2, 3 concepts that you really like, if you share those with people and talk about them within the first 24 hours of listening, you're gonna have a much greater chance of retention of that concept and then be able to integrate it into some changes for yourself so that it truly pays off, which is which is what we all want. And we're trying to build that that community that I like to talk about is the relentless few, and it it is certainly not for everyone. It's a community of kind of unapologetically driven people who know 2 things for certain.

We are beautifully broken, and we don't have the answers, so we have quit looking. So instead of looking for answers, we embrace the truth that we have to act our way into being and forge these identities through relentless action and confronting this absurd world head on. And live by that belief that it's not about finding clarity, but about asking the right questions that push us far beyond our own self limiting thoughts. And failure is not a setback. It's the fuel that drives us. It and we understand that fuel we need fuel to drive, and failure is what drives growth. And this is not gonna be a place of comfort, and it's for those who dare to create their essence through struggle, rebellion, and constant evolution. And quite honestly, if you're not willing to bleed for your revolution, you probably won't last long here because that's what it takes.

And and I recognize everybody can, most won't, few do, then we make the choice if we're gonna be the relentless few or not. And we're not trying to do it a 100% of the time because nobody can. So with that said, let's get into, Rayner Maria Rilke and this, quote, kind of a couple sentences here that I want to talk about today, in in context of how we lead. So here's what he said, be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noting noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Live the questions now. Perhaps then, you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. I love that. I love to live the questions now. We have to live the questions so that someday, gradually, without noticing it, we'll live along into the answer. So as you probably know if you've listened before, this is not a podcast about quick answers and formulas and 123a, b, c, do this and you'll get do x and you'll get y. It really is about patience, embracing uncertainty, and cultivating the mindset needed for enduring the challenges of leading. And so at the root of this, I

think there's a certain speaking to humility. Right? To slow down and let the universe unfold,

and let us see our place in that universe, of which we are not the center. I guess that's what I would wanna add on to the end there.

For us to have the humility to understand our place in the universe. And that's how being in

a leadership role, we can benefit from allowing the space for those unanswered questions. Because our transformation, our evolution comes from forging through that ambiguity and not not getting hung up in trying to find answers, Not being the answer person. Not not pretending that we have all the answers because that's another trap that leaders fall into. Or just people in general, because we feel like when somebody asks us something and we don't have an answer, we're somehow less than. But I think that still goes to humility of knowing our place in the universe and accepting that we're part of an ecosystem. We're not

at the center of the ecosystem. So let's start with, how today, more than ever,

leadership and uncertainty go hand in hand. The world today is probably as uncertain as it has ever been and will continue to move in that direction. And that great leaders, people that lead effectively,

are people who can navigate uncertainty and complexity rather than trying to force it

into a box, rather than rather than trying to force it into a box, rather than saying they have all the answers. In fact, I think it was Voltaire who said, judge a man not by his answers, but by his questions. Because the the the the there is no omniscient leader. That's a myth. And I would I got I have pretty strong feelings about this, but anybody who tells you they have all the answers, you should punch them

in the throat. Nobody has all the answers. Nobody should pretend to have

all the answers. You shouldn't try to find somebody with all the answers.

Good lord. I mean, think about it from

a practical standpoint. We're not defined by answers. And in fact, answers are the easiest thing in the world to come by. I think it was EO Wilson. He said something like, we're we have it's it was something around we crave information, but yet we're starving for wisdom. And it's horrible because, you know, data answers are at our fingertips. Just Google it. Right? There's no shortage of ways to find the answers anymore.

Answers are it's almost meaningless. Like, answers are almost meaningless anymore. They don't we don't need people for answers. We need people for questions. Leaders ask big, beautiful, mind expanding questions. That's what leaders do. We say, you don't we have groups that meet, and we say, you don't come here to get your questions answered. You come here to get your answers questioned.

But some people don't respond positive positively to that, I can tell you. But we have to dispel the notion that leaders have all the right have all the right answers or know exactly what to do. And real leading in real life is about moving forward with increasing levels of uncertainty, but understanding that you can make decisions as you go. And we have to fight this need for cognitive closure. And it's a real thing. It's a it's it's a psychological desire to find clear answers to avoid uncertainty, and it tends to make us risk averse. It kills off creativity, and we're also less inclined to seek high effort resources. Like, we're less inclined to go look for answers if we'd rather just settle for what

we have. Think about that term, high effort resources. People.

Getting to the right people. William Bridges has this wonderful he calls it a, doesn't call it a change transition model. I love I love verbs. Right? I love words. I love the way people use language. And he doesn't talk about change, he talks about transition. I talk about evolution. The same thing.

Right? We're not talking about change because the one thing I will tell you when you use it when you more times than not, when you use the word change, it has a negative connotation to it. And that's because when you tell somebody something needs to change, either something they're doing needs to change, something we're doing needs to change, almost immediately, their mind goes to the negative. Well, if it needs to change, that means

it was somehow wrong or not good before. That's not the case.

We're not changing because it's bad. We're just striving to get better. So we have to be careful of the words because words create worlds for people. And leaders understand the communication we can't lead without communication. We can't lead without being really, really clear on our communication without being effective effectively communicating both in the written and spoken word.

So, back to just took a hard right turn there as I

was talking about Bridges transition model. I wanna get back to it talking about the need for cognitive closure and and that area because his model has 3 pieces, saying goodbye, the neutral zone, and new beginnings. And it's this, it's a very kind of interesting graphic because most people just wanna rip the band aid off and and want things to be like a light switch. They stop doing one thing and start doing another thing and that's it. We're done. When in reality, most meaningful transitions, most meaningful evolution, there's a period of where I am not what I was and I am not yet what I'm going to become. That's the neutral zone for his transition model, and it's where all the creativity and innovation and, wonderful discovery happens that we miss if we just try to hurry through from saying goodbye to new beginnings. And the neutral zone matters, and everybody moves through at a different pace.

And if you're leading groups of people and you have 15 people, they're all going through at a different they're all going through this at a different phase. They're all going through this at

a different pace, and you have to be

able to be the person they need in all those phases. But that neutral zone is filled with ambiguity. It's filled with uncertainty. By the way, the very things that fuel innovation, which is

what everybody wants, creativity, which is what everybody wants. Both of those things take time. That's the time

in the neutral zone where we're not we're not yet what we will become, but we're no longer what we were. But people want identity. They don't wanna sit in the neutral zone. They're very uncomfortable in the neutral zone. They want a label. They want an identity. They wanna know. They have a need for cognitive closure.

Leaders resist that. They push back against it because they understand the value in being in that neutral zone. Sometimes, and so I'll give you the the the analogy, the metaphor that, Bridges actually uses to describe this process is Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. Well, I don't have to tell you the neutral zone for that story was 40 years in the desert. Now I'm not saying you gotta spend 40 years in

the desert, but I am saying you will benefit from that ambiguity, that uncertainty, that time in the wilderness, if you will. Don't fight it. Don't try to hurry through it. Bask in it because there's wonder there. Because

you're gonna get all types of feedbacks as you begin the transition, as you begin the evolution, as you begin these things, you have to listen for the feedback, because it will inform your next steps. Because very there's very few times when any individual organization, whatever you want to call it, anybody, micro, macro, comes up with a plan. And the plan is to achieve some objective. Something I read years ago, I have no idea where they got the data, but they said that 80% of all organizational change efforts fail in large organizations. 80% fail. Now, what I will tell you is, if we think about this as a framework, if we're willing to give up our need for closure, if we need to give up if we're willing to give up our need for clarity and certainty, and we say, we're gonna point to a direction and say, we have a vision, we're going that way. I'm gonna give you some details about why I think it's important and what I think is gonna happen. And if we're using and I love Bridges' transition model.

I've been talking about it for damn near 30 years probably or 20 years. There's 4 p's to communicating transition, purpose, picture, plan, and part. Right? So if we can paint the picture and we can tell them the plan and we can tell them why we're doing it, the purpose, and then most importantly, we tell them their part. Why do I need you to join me on this journey? Those are all general things. Right? I'm not I just loved I forget who told me this, but Martin Luther King didn't have a plan. He had a

dream, because plans don't motivate. Plans don't inspire.

So if we can paint that vision for people, how we're gonna get there becomes less important than where and why we're going. So if the if the why and the where are clear, the how becomes largely irrelevant because I got news for you. The how is gonna change.

But if the if the where we're going and why we're going are

meaningful and important and those don't change, the how is irrelevant, which is, you know, back to Nietzsche. Right? So Nietzsche said a man who has a why can suffer any how. All he meant was, if it's important to me, I will go over, under, through, or around any obstacle. So I want you to think about this in practical terms. If people and if you know people, if you're leading people, or maybe you're one of these people, who, every time a little minor roadblock pops up, it's like, throw up your hands. Well, now what are

we gonna do? Guess, well, it's never gonna work. You know people like this. We've all been this person at some point in our lives. My

argument is when I talk to people in leadership roles and they they get they get exasperated with people and they're frustrated with the team because there seems to be a lot of that going on, my my question back to them is, how clear and compelling is the vision? Because maybe what they're telling you is, I what what you're wanting me to do, I can't see the worth of it later. Because if I clearly connect to the why and the where, and I understand and it connects to me here, heartfelt, then I won't have the same reaction to these little minor imperfections that pop up, these little hurdles that pop up. I'm just gonna barrel over them because I have perspective. I have context. I have commitment. So it is really important that we understand that because it is we are gonna struggle and with

and it's good that

we do. Don't we shouldn't avoid the struggle. We have to have a struggle for something that's meaningful.

But that leads me to my next point, which is we have to have patience. If it's something meaningful and good, it's gonna take time. We, everything we don't, we can't live like this at this pace. We can't just achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve. We can't we can't hap it can't happen every day today.

Everything meaningful does not happen quickly. Not saying nothing does, but I'm saying we need to live in the future. And and to be honest with you, being impatient closes off deeper exploration for truly understanding what we're getting into because so often we've we've come up with an idea, a wonderful idea. It could be an awesome idea. It could be a great vision for the future. But just starting to move forward, then we start to get feedback. We start to try things. We start to we start to complete we we start to,

kind of, I guess, iterate would be the best term.

We keep iterating, and we're open to that iteration because we realize that the how, again, isn't as important as the what and the why and the where. Where are we going?

Why are we going? Where are we going? Why are we going? If you answer those two questions, the how becomes much less meaningful. The how can change. The how doesn't matter. But when the how matters a lot, that's because, in my opinion, the where and the why aren't clear to people.

And that's

where when Rilke says, let me

go back here. Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. You're trying to give people a book they don't have a shelf for. You gotta build the shelf first. And some things we're in an ecosystem. If we understand the universe and our place in it, that sometimes the these things will be shown to us. But we have to do things first before we can earn the right to see the answers.

And and the one, you know, I love the comment, living everything. That's what

we wanna do. We wanna live everything. That ties right into doing. Like, we we define ourselves through our actions. That's how we're living things. We're living answers. We're living questions.

But we have to live the questions much longer until we live our way into the answers. And that's only when we're ready. Anybody that's got, you know, I've got a

lot of it. I've got a lot of gray hair. I got it here. I got it everywhere. Right? I got a lot of gray hair. So I understand this because I've lived through this. I've lived the questions, and I continue to live the questions. I don't wanna stop living the questions, because by you know, to be honest with you, at a certain point, the answers kinda get terminal.

I'd rather continue to live the questions, because I think it keeps us sharp. It keeps us open to the universe. It keeps our mind working. It keeps our brain turning and churning to come up with new questions to live. We shouldn't seek and strive to have all the answers. We have to live everything. The uncertainties of life and relationships and even the uncertainties of personal development, I could not have told you a year ago where this was gonna be right now. There's been starts and stops.

There have been changes. There have been alterations. I've had to repeat things over and over to myself in order to get to where I am, and this is not even, hell, I don't even know if this is the beginning of the journey yet. I don't even know that I'm at the beginning.

I don't even care because I like where I'm at. I like living these questions.

And then get answers at some point. And at some point, again, I gotta be honest with you, the answers become largely irrelevant. But we have to live the questions, and that means we have to be aware. We have to do a couple things. I would suggest writing it down, journaling. You guys know this about me. Right? You have to create a space for yourself to reflect, and you have to pen in hand write it down. You will learn so much about your own thinking by writing it down.

And I'm not you don't spend hours. I'm not talking about like a half hour

or 45 minutes. Seriously, set a timer for 2 minutes and just write out at the

end of the day what your thoughts are about what went on today. And if you wanna formulate it around what went well, what didn't go well, what would I do better, that's fine. If you wanna just write free form, then do that. But just write out how you feel. What happened today? Reflect back on if you would've done anything differently.

Seriously, 2 minutes. Set a timer for 2 minutes.

Just write for 2 minutes. Then if you wanna write more, write more. But do that for a week. Do that for 30 days. And see, now you can go back and say, oh, I realized 3 weeks ago I said I was gonna x and I haven't. Maybe that isn't meaningful. Maybe I need to forget about it. Or it could be it was really meaningful, and I gotta stop letting the world get in the way.

Because journaling is a is a mindfulness practice. We have to get control of our thoughts. Another way you can do this, living the questions, is creating that safety for your team, that psychological safety. Creating an environment where there is no judgment. If you wanna bring this out in your team and you want them to live the questions, then you have to be willing to hear the questions from them when they have uncertainty.

It's not right or wrong, but it but it is that it is the fact that this is what

the people are going through. So you have to create that environment where people are other people are allowed to live the questions. So you have to listen.

Listen to their questions. Because you have to figure out based on their questions, what where's the opportunity here? What what are they what are they telling me?

So you have to engage them. You have to create an environment where they wanna do that. Because if all they're doing is asking questions that you can immediately fire back an answer to, answers answers shut down. Answers end conversations. They don't they don't lead to

creativity and innovation. They don't lead to relationships. They don't lead to anything except the end of the conversation. And then we have this kind of

back and forth now, this game we play where they come in and ask a question they already know the answer to. They get your answer. Your answer relieves them of responsibility. So now if it fails, it's your fault. It's a vicious cycle that you're not gonna want, but we repeat it every day. I see it all the time. And then you can actually create a framework for leading through ambiguity. You you exhibit this.

You show them this. You exemplify this. You you show them how to do it. So now they understand that's something they have to develop. You are showing them what leading looks like. You are building a realistic expectation for what they're going to have to do if and when they move into that leadership role. You build some realistic expectation for them that leadership isn't about having answers, it's about asking questions, it's about striving to move through and bring people through ambiguity, so they still function and we don't get dysfunctional because that's what most people do when it comes to ambiguity, and that's not helping anybody. And in fact, it's really interesting because back in, 1973, Horst Rittel and Melvin Weber came up.

They're design theorists, and they came up with this, this thing called a wicked problem, and it was versus a tame problem. So you have wicked problems and tame problems. So wicked problems had these 5 kind of, these 5 kind of, descriptors. Right? These elements that were present for something to be a wicked problem. So one, it had no definitive formulation, like there was no way to actually formulate the problem. Number 2, there was no stopping rule, so you never really knew when it was solved. Solutions were not true or false, they were only good or bad. No true or false, just good or bad.

There was no way to test the solution, so you actually had to just do it. You couldn't test it. And then they can't be studied, but through trial and error, every trial counted versus tame problems like, you know, math problems or chess or something like that where the where things are known. So think about that. Think about the descriptors I just gave you. Think about those elements that represented a wicked problem, and and tell me that doesn't, in some way, shape, or form, outline what you face on a daily basis.

Ambiguity. Right? We we understand that the world is full of wicked problems. The most meaningful things are wicked problems. That we

imagine as we've already talked about, we act our way into being. Right? As individuals, well, imagine we take that same that same mindset to the challenges we have in organization, and we act our way through them individually and collectively. That's how we define an organization. An organization defines itself through its actions. And an organization is just something we made up that means a bunch of people. So if you imagine, if you have a 25 person company, that company's reality and who and what it represents is made up by the actions of 25 people. So the goal of a leader is to unify those actions so that there is some semblance of cohesion around what other people see it representing. If we all behave if we're behaving in a similar manner, then that's what leads to a strong culture, which leads to people understanding who we are and what we stand for.

But that's the leader's job, Oftentimes, one not many people want.

So, again, I got a couple more pieces here and then we'll kind of, wrap it up with, Rilke. So we have the think about time and and transformation and leadership. Right? The passage of time and and how answers evolve. So you go back to the one of the the last part of this, gradually without noticing it, you live along some distant day into the answer. And focus on some distant day.

What's that mean for you?

Does it give you anxiety just to think about doing this until some distant day? If you have a wicked problem, those things aren't solved.

You merely come up with a good or bad action. And sometimes creating an action creates a new problem. That's another piece

of a wicked problem. Another condition of a wicked problem is that solutions create different problems.

So you're never truly done. Like, it's just it's an iteration.

You could spend years in uncertainty and you have to embrace the long view. If you're doing this, this is not about this quarter, next month, next year. This is about are we are we looking far enough into the future so that we can make meaningful change to get there. Again, the the what are we doing? Why are we doing it? And that's all that that leaders should talk about. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Don't talk about who's doing it. Don't talk about how it's getting done. Because if leaders pull themselves down there imagine everything I cannot stress this enough. Whatever you talk about is what you're telling people is important.

So if you spend your whole damn day talking about how things are getting done, that's what people think are important. So, therefore, all we're concerned with is the tactical. We're concerned with how things are getting done. If I'm not talking about on a regular basis what we're doing and why we're doing it, which is where leaders should spend 80% of their time, then what you're doing is reinforcing to the people in the organization and those that you care most about that this is what's important because whatever you talk about is important. End of story. So choose wisely. Choose choose your words wisely. Choose what you talk about wisely because whatever you're talking about, you're telling them by talking about it that it's important.

So if you are frustrated because all the people in your organization talk about are the tactical things, quote, unquote, then reflect back on, what are you talking about? Is that what you're talking about with them? Are you giving them answers to tactical questions they're answering or asking? I'm sorry. If they're asking you questions all day about how to get things done and and who's gonna do them and all of those things, and you're you're letting yourself be pulled in. Again, choices, you're making a choice to allow this to happen. Then what's happening is they're saying, oh, that must be important because they're willing to spend 30 minutes a day talking to me about it. So then that just builds and builds and builds until we've lost the what and the why.

So therefore, every how is earth shattering.

And you don't transform, evolve, transition, pick your word, just don't pick change. You don't do that through answers. You do it through questions. And it's through that process of living in ambiguity and uncertainty that you develop empathy, and you foster resilience in in yourself and in other people, which by the way, is probably one of the most important things any organization can have. The antifragility, the resilience, whatever you wanna call it is built through questions, not answers, because people get comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity. That's where that's why we're resilient because we don't know what's gonna happen, so we're we have the capacity to bounce back. We have if if you wanna talk about anti fragility, we we actually embrace shock because it makes us stronger. Those are people that thrive on ambiguity and uncertainty.

Those are organizations that that take advantage of opportunity no matter what the macroeconomic environment. But, again, we go back to and I'll just I'll end with just kind of bringing it back to, Rilke's statement. You know, be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart. I I, I gotta stop there. Unsolved in your heart. Now think now he was a poet. Right? He wasn't a business guy, but think about how this changes how you look at things. Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.

Do not seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

That's my wish for all of us, that we can live the questions and live into the answers. So think about the relentless part

of this. Think about bleeding for your own evolution. Think about leaning into uncertainty and challenge and anxiety and effort. Think about running a really long race. Again, don't think of this this is not a mountain you're climbing because you ain't gonna get to the top of it. Now, if you wanna do the mountain thing, if you wanna use the mountain analogy, I'm good with that. Just understand when you get to the top of the first mountain, you then see the whole range. So now you're going back down, back up, back down, back up.

I prefer the long road, The long road that runs off into the sunset. I think it's route 50 in Utah. There's a great picture. I don't I'd have to find it, but I and I could be wrong. But to me, that's it. Because when you look down here, you just you don't see it ending. And that's what we're on. We're we're on that long road.

Now there's off ramps and on ramps and rest areas. There's all that. You don't have to just keep going, keep going, keep going, but you have to keep making the choice to get back on the road. That's what's so meaningful. That's what Rilke was talking about. That long road is living the questions. The answers are irrelevant.

Questions matter. Well, I hope you have I hope this been

I hope this has been interesting. I hope there's something you take away, and I look forward to

the next time when we're talking about something else

just as meaningful, just as impactful. And until that time, please, please, please make sure you know where you're going. Make sure you have a shared vision with those that you care most deeply about, and then figure out who you need to become for yourself and those people because that's the best we can

do. Thanks a lot.