Welcome back to Sunday Story! We just wrapped up our Disruption Prep for Leaders series, and candidly, after seeing that display in the Oval Office yesterday, I know a lot of our readers are probably feeling the need to go back and read that disruption prep series again. From a leadership perspective, yesterday’s exchange was hard to watch. And from the perspective of a human being on planet earth, it was even harder. Aside from one's personal politics, it's not how a meeting like that should have gone and our world is not more safe because of it.
Since we started this Sunday Story series, we’ve been talking about the major disruptions that are on the horizon. The drivers of these disruptions are legion, though there are a few big ones. The birth of AI as we now know it seems to be furthering a massive technocratic drive for control, and speaks to the complexity of disruption processes - it’s rarely an A -> B -> C flow of logic; it’s more like the proverbial butterfly flapping wings in an American park and causing typhoons in the South China Sea. And a lot of butterflies appear to be flapping their wings right now. The big disruptors are ones we’ve written about - systemic economic instability is one we’ll tackle in the near future, but our analysis suggests that UAP and AI are “source disruptors” that are driving a lot of the other disruptors we’re seeing manifest themselves in our global state of polycrisis including the challenges in Europe. This polycrisis - the state of multiple crisis happening at the same time with local to global impacts - are showing a massive shift in who we look to for global leadership, and risk the established understanding of norms that date back to the lessons “learned” from the horrors of World War 2. The quotes there are intentional, as it’s easy to wonder if we really learned anything at all given the current state of things, but this time it’s a lot more scary. We have the ability to destroy ourselves a few hundred times over and we’re dangerously close to that precipice.
That’s all pretty heavy, isn’t it? What kind of a world are we going to be living in 5 years from now, or 10 years from now? It is fairly easy to see the state of things around us and come away with the impression that things are rather bleak and hopeless.
But It’s not hopeless. With every fibre of my being I know that this is true, and I have a list of reasons as long as my arm that I can share with anyone who asks as to why I believe this. In fact, I feel it’s quite the opposite; I think the future is bright. And not in a “nuclear flash on the horizon” bright - I’m serious. We’ve never had a bigger opportunity to reach the next level for our society than we do right now. Like the discovery of fire or agriculture or the Industrial Revolution, the change we’re going through is not without discomfort and difficulty and likely will come with consequences we cannot currently predict (and would prefer to do without), but I firmly believe we have a real chance for this transformation to be a net positive for humanity.
To be clear, I’m not saying things are going to be easy - I’m saying it’ll be worth it.
One of the reasons I know this to be true is that I’ve spent my career facing the darkness of humanity head-on. In my student affairs world, I’ve had the honour and privilege of being next to other humans during some of the most difficult times in their life - when they think there’s no hope, and that the only solution is to end it all. I’m proud to say that I’ve been able to help a few folks see that there is still hope, and that ending it all wasn’t their last option that day. The preservation of life in these moments are some of the most difficult things I’ve had to do, but also what I feel are the most important contributions that I’ve ever made. Life is precious.
I wasn’t always successful in this work, and those stick with me too.
I’m in the minor leagues here - there are many more people in our society who have done far more than me in this important mission of helping others who are facing their darkest moments. But, I think every single one of them will agree with my sentiments in this work: When I’m sitting next to a human being facing down the darkness, I don’t see weakness. I don’t see hopelessness. It’s the opposite - it is the abundance of hope and strength is what has kept them going for so long and is the only reason I have the chance to talk to them in those moments. There’s a webcomic I saw on the internet that sums it up nicely, called "Boggle the Owl" (Go throw the creator a few dollars if this resonates with you; that's a link to their Patreon)
So what’s this got to do with the state of the world and leadership?
Everything. Leaders must always believe they will find another stick - your people are counting on you to do so!
We’ve written about the importance of hope before, but a post came across our LinkedIn feed today that inspired today’s Sunday Story, and it’s about the important distinction between optimism and hopeful ignorance.
In these dire moments when folks are facing down the darkness, the human reaction is to say “everything will be OK” and try to give them comfort. While I believe that sentiment is true, it’s often not effective on its own - these people are not stupid. They are not incapable of understanding their situation. If they believed everything was going to be OK, they wouldn’t be in where they are, telling you through their words and actions that they don’t see a way for things to be OK and thus want to take a permanent exit. These are people who have taken stock of their context and do not see a path forward, and when we approach them with that simplistic bit of encouragement, we are ignoring all of the factors that are present in a form of hopeful ignorance that is tantamount to a lie from their perspective. We are ignoring the hardship, the pain, and the minimal opportunities for the future that define that context and sweep all of these things under the rug when we simply say “Everything will be fine”.
Leaders do this all the time - the post on LinkedIn post was from author and thought leader Andrew Rosenberg, an expert in finance and asset management, and he shared the following quote by psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman:
"However, optimism is highly valued, socially and in the market; people and firms reward the providers of dangerously misleading information more than they reward truth tellers. One of the lessons of the financial crisis that led to the Great Recession is that there are periods in which competition, among experts and among organizations, creates powerful forces that favor a collective blindness to risk and uncertainty."
This quote resonated, because it’s not just about the finance sector - it really is about leadership. But there’s an important distinction to be made here between optimism and hopeful ignorance.
Hopeful ignorance is the belief that everything will be fine, and arriving at that belief by ignoring, covering up, or rug-sweeping the metrics, indicators, and evidence that tells you everything is NOT fine. This is not leadership; if you lead this way, you are covering up a truth and not letting your people see what it is. This is often a fear-based response in my experience; there’s a sense that if people know the truth, they will be disrupted and thus that will bring tension to your ability to achieve a goal as a leader, or you'll lose your control over a situation. You may even have really good intentions for doing this - wanting to spare people’s feelings or protect them from emotional distress. But the thing with truth is it eventually comes out, and when it does, the people you lead will be faced with the stark contrast between what is now apparent and what you told them to be true. This isn’t leadership, it’s manipulation, and when people realize they are being manipulated, they immediately lose trust. It is impossible to lead without trust.
Optimism, as we define it at Authentik, is not at all the same as hopeful ignorance. It’s about taking the measure of the situation and being honest about it. It’s about being clear, being as correct as you can be, and being the first to tell your people what’s really going on, even when that’s hard. This isn’t about using brutal honesty as cover for being a jerk, to be clear - you need to deliver this message with kindness - but you cannot fail to deliver the message of what exact situation you are in.
And then it’s about identifying the way forward. This second part is essential - if you only do the first part, you are basically saying “The ship is sinking. We’re done for”. Remember - you never know that for sure! From falling from an airplane at 10,000 feet and walking through a jungle and surviving to winning the lottery twice, the second time on camera, humans are lucky all the time in ways that defy the odds and comprehension, and if nothing else, that chance of good luck is always grounds for a sliver of hope even on the darkest days.
There is always hope. Always.
When I’d meet with those young people who didn’t see a way out, it did them no good to hear “Everything is going to be OK”. In fact, most often it didn’t do any good to really tell them anything at all - in those cases, I didn’t know their context when I first met them, so the best approach was to listen. A simple “Tell me what’s going on” was often enough - like Boggle the Owl said, they just need a stick, but cannot find one, and they are often happy to tell all the places they’ve looked for sticks thus far. My response was to acknowledge how many sticks they’ve found already - these kids are often really good at finding them - and only after I truly understand the context am I able to maybe find some places they haven’t looked, and then we find those sticks together.
Because I believe - scratch that, I know - that there’s always another stick in the darkness. Always.
That is what I mean by optimism - it’s not about ignoring the darkness, or pretending it's not scary to be in it. It’s the hope and belief that there’s always another stick.
Your leadership is exactly like that, and you need to take the optimistic approach. You need to first understand the context deeply, and once you do, engage in the following:
1) Be real about the conditions you and your team are facing - it does them no good to be shielded from it, though you can and must communicate it kindly.
2) Maintain your hope and optimism that you can and will find a way forward, and tell them what that way is. It doesn’t have to be a sure thing - you can count on being a little bit (or a lot) lucky, like the concentration camp survivors who spent a great deal of time (and at great risk to themselves) to build a radio and broadcast a message begging for a saviour only to have an immediate surprise response from General Patton that he’d be there the next day. Your path forward is fine to be riddled with uncertainty - you just want to pick the path that you think has the best probabilities of success.
People don’t need you to be right and 100% sure. They need you to show them that it’s worth a try. And, like Captain Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru - there’s no such thing as a no-win scenario - you may find that if you try, luck will be on your side. It often is.
The job of a leader is to find the path forward that most likely will lead to success — even if that path has only a 1% chance in a sea of 0% options - and try to make that a reality. The human beings you lead deserve the chance, don’t they? But you won't find the 1% without the optimistic belief that it exists, even in the darkest of times.
Our world today is full of chances in the darkness. Leaders like you can help us find them, but you must choose to show up with optimism - not hopeful ignorance, but real, true optimism. And if you need support, you know you can call on us and we’ll help you do it authentically.
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next Sunday.
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