Down with Motivational Posters & Platitudes: Advice for Real Life
By: Leah Hunt
Tags: Leadership, Personal Development, Storytelling, Advice, Authenticity

Photo by Derek Thomson on Unsplash

A while ago, I invited a group of amazing, powerful and successful women into my home.

Beyond being an excuse to get together, it was a social experiment.

I wanted to know what would happen if we all — in the safety of a circle — shared our secret strength and biggest fear.

My hypothesis was that, from that circle, we could all find a person we needed and another who needed us.

My bet was on us. On us lifting each other up. I was confident that competition and scarcity mindset — the bane of my existence — can and would be set aside for mutual glory. In this case, development and growth.

I was right. And wrong.

My plan was for this to be the first of a series of sessions. This was the beta group that would set the tone, establish the relationships of trust and put the infrastructure in place for following sessions focused on growth, development and progression. Then I could do it again and again and again with other groups of women and make a fucking army.

But the second session never happened. Why?

I am an executor by nature.

Inspiration, leadership & execution — that’s my fucking job. Like, my real job that I get paid to do.

I get paid to get things done. To drive the momentum forward. To deliver an outcome and a result. To inspire people and organizations and to get folks to do the hard things.

And I am very good at my job. Very.

As if that wasn’t enough, this was my fucking idea! I wasn’t asked to do it — I wanted to do it! And when I sent the call out for possible participants, the response was overwhelming. I had to turn people away — my house can only hold so much power at once without creating a sink hole or portal to another dimension.

So what happened? What went so wrong?

Everyone was on time. A very good sign. The enthusiasm in the room was relentless. The sharing was authentic and vulnerable. The participation was whole-hearted and genuine.

And then it all changed.

One person said one thing and everything changed.

The dynamic of the group shifted so quietly it was almost imperceptible. A passerby or observer might not have noticed. But I did.

The pace of conversation slowed.

Emotions and reactions were measured and restrained. Body language changed from open to guarded.

People started choosing their words when, before, the thoughts came quickly and unfiltered.

Something about the safety left and everyone turned their awareness and protective instinct from off to on.

What was actually said — the specific words — is less important than the impact it had. But it begs the question: What could it have been?

It was a statement of a fact. This person had left one company for another. That’s it.

It wasn’t a claim of superiority. It wasn’t a judgement. It wasn’t an assessment of our willingness to take risks.

But I felt some of those things. I felt all of those things.

This person had done something the majority of us, in the room, had never done.

And in her statement, she shared advice she had been given by a coach, a mentor, that inspired her to ‘do the thing’:

If you wait until you are ready, you will never do anything.

And, with those words, I felt the weight of everything I had failed to accomplish. I recalled and relived each time I had played it safe. All the times I had backed away from an opportunity that involved more risk than I could bear.

With those words, the heavy load of personal responsibility for the distance between where I was and where I could be rained down on me in a hell-storm.

I was completely and utterly alone to reckon with my failings.

And as I sat there, fully and totally responsible for my failings, I also felt myself reacting. With emotion. And Anger.

I felt judged. I felt blamed. I felt condescended. And underlying all of that was what is always there.

I felt shame.

For not being brave enough. For not having the courage to “feel the fear and do it anyway!” For ‘waiting’ to be ready.

The words that inspired ambition and action, the words that drove her to ‘take the leap’ were making me feel the exact opposite of that —

What the fuck?

Here’s the thing. “Leap of faith” success stories are usually that — success stories. It doesn’t make them any less compelling or inspiring but it must be taken into account that often — if not always — these stories are curated.

Too often the “Leap of faith” stories are selected and told and re-told based on the outcome and not the act.

And that is the problem.

This woman had indeed broken away and done something big and bold. She had succeeded in making a jump FROM something. But she did not make this leap blindly. She landed firmly and safely in a selected TO zone. On her feet. In tact. Well compensated.

The real magic of this story — of her story — was not in that one action, that so-called “ leap of faith”.

Centring the story around that one act, the final step, puts the focus on the outcome. The real work and the process leading up to that point gets lost.

When I really break it down, this talented, risk-minded, mother of two and professional with a tonne to offer did a lot more than just do something before she felt ready to do it.

She made a decision. A decision to leave. A decision to deal with the fact that she was not ready.

Her decision gave birth to plans.

Those plans became actions and she became the designer and developer of a new fate.

She carved a path forward for herself and her family that I know felt scary and uncertain at times — and maybe still does today — but she persevered.

She had made a sound decision and she didn’t waver. Even when it felt scary. When the safer thing, the easier thing was to stay. To do nothing.

She did the work to get from feeling not ready to ready-enough.

This might sound less sexy. It may not fit on a motivational poster. This may not be the kind of easily digestible soundbite that (some) coaches and mentors love to lean on.

It may not sound like it requires the same kind of bravery as a leap of faith. That’s true. It actually requires more. A lot more.

When we hear these stories of success they are far too often boiled down to platitudes:

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Feel the fear and do it anyway. When opportunity knocks, say yes and figure out how later.

And it’s all bullshit. And worse.

The ambition of these sayings is to inspire. But in the process of trying to boil wisdom down to a catchy tag line — we lose so much. Too much.

The real wisdom is found in the process. Inspiration comes in the telling of the story — the whole story.

The gore and graft of the process is where the insights lay hidden.

The angst and the anxiety of decisions made and delayed.

The honest articulation of how it felt — the self-doubt and fear — during the process, not yet knowing the outcome.

Without the process, the wisdom, inspiration is replaced by inaccessibility. A sense that it is “too” something. Too risky, too demanding, too scary. Instead of inspiring action, it feels paralyzing.

And instead of inspiring us, these leadership clichés, instead make us — the reader, the mentee, the coached or the learner — feel very, very alone.

If I had it to do all over again, I wish I had said something.

Anything.

I wish I had trusted her enough to say: “That sounds scary to me…how did you do it?”

I wish I had asked clever questions like “That couldn’t have been an easy or simple decision to make — how did you weigh your options and who did you talk to about this decision?”

I wish I had asked “What was the scariest thing about making this jump before you made it?”

I wish I had been curious enough to ask “What would you do the same or differently next time you prepare to take and make a big move?”

I wish I had asked her the questions I could have to help her tell her whole story. The real story. Even the scary bits. Especially the scary bits. The story that is powerful and inspiring regardless of the outcome and the result.

A leap of faith makes for a great story when it works out — but, let’s face it, those stories are also kind of short and boring AF.

I want to listen and learn the lessons that cannot be captured in ten words or less. That don’t fit on poster. That cannot be captured in a tweet.

I want to tell those stories.

My growth is and has always been found in the storytelling process and the stories I love, the stories I learn from, the stories I tell are long and complicated and don’t always have a happy ending.

So if you have a story, tell it. The whole thing. All of it. And don’t leave anything out.

Those are my kind of stories.