My Ideas

An excerpt from Chad’s book “Thinking Aloud: Reflections on Ethical Leadership”. We hope you enjoy the essay – and perhaps introduce the questions below as a way to start conversations with your teammates. – ELA Team

Get a free PDF version of Chad’s Book, “Thinking Aloud” now at https://ethinact.com/thinking-aloud/.

My Ideas

I tend to fall in love with my ideas.  Let me be clear: I have many ideas, and while some are pretty good, others are frankly unworthy of the affection I might lavish upon them.  While ideas are hatching I tend to become attached, cultivating or defending them because I thought of them.

This poses a couple of problems.  The first is obvious: wasted time and energy.  I fall in love at all stages of an idea’s development; a fleeting notion may occupy me as completely as a richly-framed concept.  Much time is wasted by my unwillingness to prioritize or – gasp – to edit.  It is sometimes very, very noisy in my head.

The second problem is more pernicious: I don’t always play well with others.  Once I have become attached to an idea, I sometimes have trouble doing what I know is right, i.e., inviting others in to consider, adopt, improve, or implement it.  I teach people how to do this for a living.  That doesn’t mean I find it easy.

There’s a fine, sometimes barely visible line between strength and shortcoming.  Strong leaders maintain and defend core ideas like vision, objectives and values.  Meaningful achievements often require a high degree of resolve (or, less charitably, stubbornness).  However, not all achievements are meaningful and sometimes our circumstances demand flexibility, or nimbleness.  We learn from experience, and our beliefs should reflect that reality.  In almost any situation, our ideas improve through collaboration.

As I work on these traits, I don’t think I’m unique, or even unusual.  We often see people clinging to ideas, unwilling to adapt or share.  In fact, if we never see them, those people are probably us.

The good news: this particular shortcoming generally succumbs to awareness.  Once I realize that I’m being intransigent, I can generally relax and open up to others.  On a good day, I can laugh at myself.  And, I have found no greater tool for awareness than good friends, whom I trust to check my blind spots.  In that way, I am fortunate that this trait is often self-correcting, costing little more than wasted time or slight embarrassment.  This is yet another benefit of having people who have our backs.

Conversation Starters

It is easy to fall in love with our own ideas, and hard to accept criticism, however constructive and helpful it may be.

• When it comes to your own ideas, do you fall in love too easily?
• Can you think of a situation in which falling in love with your own ideas may have been to your detriment?
• In what kinds of situations have you found that resolve/stubbornness were necessary and effective?
• What are some of the ways you have found to make collaboration work?

At Ethical Leaders in Action we believe that most, if not all people, can develop themselves to play leadership roles in many different spheres both large and small. The foundation of this development process is a short but powerful list of virtues which can be developed and improved through conscious effort. For more information feel free to take the Virtues of Ethical Leadership Self Inventory (VELSI) which breaks these virtues down into features that can be individually developed. The results of the VELSI come with a quick reference guide to help you understand how the virtues and their individual features fit together. https://ethinact.com/velsi/

See a list of other posts in this series at Blog Post Series

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