What do executive leaders and stone paths in Japanese gardens have in common? VIM Executive Coaching asks this question to immediately force many of you to take a detour off the predictable, logical sequence of an executive leadership post. Yet, the two different concepts are remarkably similar.
The Stone Path
It was many years ago in a quiet Japanese garden in the ancient City of Kyoto, when we discovered a worn stone path that led through a wooden gate about 50 yards ahead. Beyond the gate were shrubs and then a somewhat busy street. Bamboo swayed overhead, rustling in the early morning breeze. The air was rich and easy to breathe.
The path, because of the unevenness and varied shapes of the stones, caused us to slow down and to think of each step. Moss and other ground covers grew between the stones so that each stone was beautiful.
All of it was intentional.
A volunteer at the garden, an affable elderly man who spoke heavily accented English explained that the unevenness and the varied colors of the stone was intentional. “But why?” we asked? He smiled, pretending to not understand the question. Undoubtedly, he had entertained the same question many times over.
It was when we began to explore the concept of mindfulness that the stone path, the bamboo canopy, the wooden gate, the shrubs all leading to the street all made perfect sense. Japanese gardens are exquisite in and of themselves but the designers of those gardens use principles of Zen, harmony and peace. They are often constructed to teach us lessons about ourselves.
The unevenness and varied colors of each stone make us aware of where we are going. In fact, every time we take the path, no two trips are ever quite the same. The shrubs leading to the somewhat busy street tell us that we cannot be complacent, yet – we can take who we are with us. Even the overhead bamboo canopy lets us know that the winds of change can be fickle and unpredictable.
The more we study and think about these things, the more mindful we can become.
Executive Leadership
Yes, but --, you might be saying, what does executive leadership have to do with the darn path anyway? In fact, everything.
“The trip” we take each day is not predictable. In fact, we would contend that the trip itself can either be real or an illusion. The illusion is created when executives go through each day on automatic; not veering from expectations and biases. True, we can run along an uneven path and get lucky, or we can trip and fall.
Sometimes, the smallest bit of unevenness can hurt us: an employee “we favor” who turns us to be accepting bribes; a long-time vendor who we have taken for granted who is cutting corners; a supervisor “who seems to get the job done” who, behind the scenes is a harasser or an abuser. For bribery has indeed led to major law enforcement issues; cost-cutting has resulted in horrific outcomes and clearly harassment has had major consequences. In each case above, the mindful executive leader acknowledges the dangers and acts on them; the executive who loves illusion, simply rushes along the path hoping the unevenness does not trip them up.
While we can carry the path analogy through many nuances, the bottom-line is that an executive leader who chooses to be unaware, in-authentic and unseeing, will invariably slip and fall.
The more mindful an executive leader becomes, the more the slips and falls can be anticipated and circumvented. In this time when it seems that almost everything is uncertain, isn’t it nice to know that if we are truly mindful, we can more easily face whatever may come?