Illuminating the path

On helping others see the beyond the horizon.

In Northeast Vermont, where I now live most of the year, the interlude between fall and the first snow is called "stick season." I discovered neighbors I never knew existed on my morning walks: houses and rusted farm equipment tucked away along the trails I've been walking for months, unveiled in the absence of leaves.

While I've discovered once obscured homes, I've also noticed that familiar paths are often hidden by a blanket of decomposing leaves. If I only look 5-6 feet in front of me, I often can't see where to walk; but if I scan up ahead the contours become clear in the context of the larger picture.

The other week I was talking with a client about the challenge of being caught in the scrum of the day-to-day. In the frantic season of fall, like many, they've been mostly head down in the work when it's easiest to forget to look ahead to scan the horizon.

Those leadership questions— What's ahead? Where are we going? —fall by the wayside.

The leadership scan can feel like a huge project: a strategy summit, a 12 week plan. That we need to swing between a big process around planning what we're going to be doing or actually doing it.

What I suggest instead is to practice illuminating the path ahead.

Illumination practice is about noticing and naming what you see, without necessarily solving any problems in the moment or having complete answers.

Leaders have a perspective and sight-line on the far horizon that remains obscured to our teammates until we name it. We can find the path again while our teammates are looking down at the dead leaves at their feet.

We often feel like we have to have the answers to name a problem or name what we're seeing, but we truly do not! "We will need to sign 3 more clients in Q1 2023" is a useful observation now even if how that will happen is a later problem.

So if you've forgotten to look up this past month, sit down with a pad of paper and scan that horizon. ( Btw, Even if you don't have a team, you can do this for yourself. )

• What will the business look like in 3 months if nothing changes?

• What bumps are in the road? What is around the curve that only you can see?

• What can you see now, in this season, that was obscured during the last?

• What is clearer? What is less clear?

And then, once you've made your observations, decide what's worth sharing with your teammates. What would be worth putting them at ease about or tucking in the back of their brains?

PS. We got a good dumping of snow during November. A very short stick season!

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