Hello, and this is the first video for Leaders Who Fiction!
I'm so glad that you're here, whether you are watching this soon after we publish it or if you're watching it further down the road. And I am just really excited that you're interested in this concept. Because I've personally felt that way through a lot of my professional life. I was a big reader growing up until English teachers kind of just killed the joy of reading, and put all this emphasis on analysis.
Through my professional career, it's been really, really hard to read. Some of its time, some of it is just at the end of the day - I work in Marketing - after staring at a computer all day, it's a lot sometimes to focus our eyeballs on to something else. But in the last few years, I have just become, I've really reengaged with with my interest in reading, and read a ton and that fatigue kind of goes away. And of course, now we've also got way more audiobooks available to us than we used to. Anyway, I just think the reading fiction has been such an awesome empowering thing for me.
Research has started showing all the amazing ways that reading fiction can contribute to our leadership skills. And I think that there's a lot to be said for agreeing to meet with this group once a month and having that commitment, having a reason to finish a book that you've started.
Anyway,I'm super excited that you're here and I want to talk about a book that I read this weekend. I think sometimes we don't even necessarily have to have personally read a book although that’s the best case to get leadership lessons from something. So anyway, what I want to talk about and really go read this book, if you can handle it. And I'll tell you why - the caveat if you can handle it - soon.
It's Parable of the Sower. I'm not sure I'm saying that correctly. It's Sower Sower, by Octavia Butler. This was the first book of hers that I read. I'm so glad that I did. If you're not familiar with her work, she was quite a prolific writer in science fiction and fantasy, which is not normally my genre. But amazing, amazing prose.
This particular book is more of a dystopian book. So think, well, the cover on the book, you might have just noticed that from John Green, John Green of the NewYork Times is “brilliant, endlessly rich pairs well with 1984 or TheHandmaid's Tale.” And it's true, I do think it would pair well with those. In fact, I actually found this book to be more depressing than the other ones than those two comps. I realize that right now, not everybody is up for reading a dystopian, depressing book.
What also really got me in this particular one is - I'm sitting here recording this in 2022. And the book, the narrative, does take place over a few different years. But the first year is 2024. And it goes to I think, 2028, if I'm remembering that correctly. So, it's a little bit creepy sometimes just from that perspective. But oh my gosh, it was I honestly couldn't put it down.
I've felt like I was like, had been struggling meeting recently and finding stuff that I was really clicking with. I kept thinking, there's just so much depressing stuff going on and I don't really want to read a depressing book. It turns out, what I really needed to do is get sucked into a book that was even more depressing than what I was reading. Anyway, enter Parable of the Sower, I'm going to go with that in terms of the pronunciation. And what I wanted todo today, again, is share kind of my really big leadership takeaways.
Obviously, you don't have to read a book through a leadership lens. But I think sometimes it's really helpful when we do want to say, “Okay, I want to make that part of my professional or personal development toolkit in ways that I'm going to work on myself.” I think it's really helpful to be very intentional about what you're reading. Otherwise, it's a great story. Enjoy it.
But, if you want the leadership side of here's what I took away.
Key Leadership Takeaways
1. Leadership can come from anyone regardless of age.
The main character, the protagonist, this is told first person so very much “I”. It's written through some main characters, musings. Her name is Lauren. And one of the and she really to me, was the character that embodied the most leadership skills. Her dad was a Baptist minister. He was absolutely a leader in this gated community that they lived in that was really kind of cut off. They live in a suburb of Los Angeles. They don't want outsiders in. You know, they're like, there's glass protecting them and stuff around these walls.
But she was a teenager. So the book starts and I think she's 14 or 15 and it ends, she's18. She's a teenager, and she's the character who showed the most leadership of anybody through all of this. Like I said, it's dystopian. Her community, the United States has essentially collapsing on itself has become similar to a third world country. That was what Butler's objective was in exploring what would happen if the United States became a third world country. She was writing this in the early 90s. Then basically, the community is attacked. People are killed, houses are set on fire, and three members of the community, including Lauren, escape. Their journey is, their goal, is to is to go north, and they don't know how far north they're really going to go, if it's Oregon, if it'sWashington, if it's Alaska, but they want to go somewhere where they can do a job to earn a wage, not work on company credit. There's modern day slavery that's in the book, and also where water is affordable. And, she's 18. In the book, it's kind of a little weird, where it's like, a lot of the teenagers are getting married and having kids.
To me, and it actually came up on a call I was doing this earlier today with a group -the concept of reverse mentoring, where you have more seasoned professionals who are actually getting mentored by what we would typically call, more junior people in the workforce. This woman, she was like, I mean, my guess is she was in her 40s. And she was getting mentored by someone who's 25. I just think that what a reminder to us to stop that ageist bias.
I remember being really young and early in my career, and as a college student, and you know, wanting to go out and meet people and network and find a mentor and people saying, “well, it's feels like a really one way street because I'm going out and asking for something, but this other person, what's in it for them?” And I think that concept of reverse mentoring is really, really powerful. And so I think to me, just when you take a step back and go, okay, so who displayed the most leadership in that book, it was a teenager wasn't the adults. It wasn't somebody who's, she was incredibly mature. Her sophistication of thought was amazing. Her relationships and dynamics with people are amazing. I think to me, again, it was just like, hey, wisdom, leadership, everything like that, that can come from a teenager that can come from a kid that can come from someone in their 20s, it can come from someone who's in their 80s. Age isn't the factor. I think that was a really good leadership lesson. That was number one: Reminder, let's not be ageist.
2. Leaders should be single-minded about their intention and be open to changing circumstances that dictate the tactics on how best to achieve the goal.
The next thing I want to talk about was just how single minded she was in her intention. They have a few different obstacles. They end up recruiting more people, they were literally walking up the 101 for a lot of this book. They ended up kind of recruiting in a few other… pilgrims isn't the right word… refugees… to walk with them and to join their group. And she's very clear: her goal is to survive. And she'll say over and over and my intention is to survive. My intention is to survive. And so sometimes that's meant that she has killed people. Which if you read the book, like you would want to, like most rational, sane people, like is very much in self-defense. But she was very single-minded about that intention. My intention is to survive. My intention is to survive. There were other people in the group that were kind of uncomfortable - you didn't meet you didn't need to stamp the guy that time or you did or, and it was, but I'm making this decision to survive. And so I think her why her purpose or sense it was all just so concrete.
She also picked up new information as she went along. So we got to this point, Are there jobs here where we can work for wages? What does the water cost? What Is this look like? How far do we need to go? And so I think she got, she was able to have a very nuanced approach. That made sense at each stage, and it was different on each stage, what was going to allow her to survive. Really, at our core, you know, I think a lot of us, it's like, I want to the most altruistic goals, you know, I want to make the world a better place, and I want to help people who are suffering. You know, we're talking like bottom of Maslow's hierarchy: my intention is to survive. But that was such a great guiding principle for her.
First of all we had wisdom can come from anybody, regardless of age. Number two, being single minded about your intention. The third one that I want to talk about was that she…
3. Leaders remain open to questions and discussion about their plans, actively listening to doubts and concerns. However, they don’t tolerate disrespect or mockery.
So al ittle bit of context, again… she's basically documenting a new religion. This is her contemplation, her meditation about who and what God is, what's important, how to live. Her worldview, as God is change. She's got thoughts about that. Her philosophy and the name that she gives this is called Earthseed. As she and her compatriots are walking up the freeway and walking north inCalifornia, she starts to talk more and more about Earthseed. She wants to found a community where they can live in accordance with Earthseed, the first Earthseed community. As she starts to introduce these concepts…
So first of all, she's still flushing it out. She doesn't have all of this figured out.She's wrapping her head around it, but she will also encourage debate. You know, as long as it was done respectfully, I think there were one or two times some of the characters almost seem to be a bit mocking to her, so that she shutdown, but the questions and the grilling and the doubt, she really seemed quite patient with it thoughtful about it respectful to other people's points of view. And oh, my gosh, I mean, how often do we make, or I at least will say, I make decisions. And it's like, it's hard when you have like, Hey, this is my plan, or this is what I want, here's what we're going to do. And then people start to challenge that. To have the level of patience that she must have had to sit through those conversations, to listen, to consider, to acknowledge, I just think it was just really beautiful.
4. Leaders find a balance between trust and suspicion to protect themselves and what they are responsible for. They learn to trust themselves.
One thing, the next leadership lesson that I thought was interesting was that she, as they start the walk... her community has collapsed. They're starting this walk, when they're starting, this is three people. She is very suspicious about anybody else, like there is zero trust, because they're going to get killed, they're going to get raped, they're going to get robbed there. I mean, this world is terrible. And she approaches every situation and every person very suspicious, not trusting, very cynical. As they progress, and they make this journey up California, again, she starts to recruit some people in. She gets a sense for who to trust, who not to trust, and some signals that she can rely on.
Early in my career, I was somebody who over trusted and needed to learn to be a bit more cynical. That's been a big area of growth for me. I think other people are approaching it from the reverse situation. But I think regardless of where you're coming from it whether that is the I'm an “overtruster”, or maybe I'm maybe too cynical, that she's, she's a great example of somebody who struck a balance. She's still I think, mindful, she's still skeptical, but I don't think she's cynical. She's learned to trust herself. She's learned to trust her intuition. She's got some confidence, she had way more confidence at the end than she did at the beginning.
This is something that, when I look at leaders who I really admire, I think it’s amazing - when they get to the point of, “I can trust myself.” And that doesn't mean we don't, (we’re not in a dystopian world), it doesn’t mean that we’re sat at a business or an NGO or at a school, and we're trying to make a decision where we look at data, we look at facts. But, I do think there's something to to consider about “what is my gut telling me? What's my emotions?” I mean, I'm not saying go spend $20 million on my gut alone. But there's a lot of anxiety that we can get over if we start to trust ourselves more. And I think that would be a great question to go away and ask yourself like, so. If that is something that holds you back, like, what would it take? How do you learn to trust yourself more? And I think, Oh, why don't you trust yourself? Maybe there's some good self-reflection that we can all do around that.
5. Leaders can see reality – the good, the bad, and the ugly – and talk about it. Even if it’s not a popular opinion.
My last mega leadership takeaway from The Parable of the Sower, which again, was an amazing, beautiful book, is that Lauren, at the start of the book and throughout, but even in the start, when she was a kid, her parents were alive. There were adults in this community that she had grown up in. She was willing to look at reality and see reality, and she wanted a game plan. She wanted to know: what are we going to do if we have to escape? What are we going to do in this situation?
And, the adults around her and her community, and it sounded like, from kind of hints to the book like the country, “things are gonna get better,” “things aren't going to stay this way.” Almost in this really the sense of denial about the reality of the situation that they were finding themselves in. They ended up dying, because they were delusional. And she saw the truth.
I don't think that she approached it from we're completely doomed. It's never going get better. I think she was very pragmatic. I think she was a realist and she was prepared.
I'm really big on mindset stuff and work on having a positive attitude. For me, it's a process I work on. But I think that there's also a group of people where we are inundated with the toxic positivity. Like, we can't say something isn't going well.
I worked with a client last year and we were kicking off some strategy stuff. I was interviewing different stakeholders and one of the questions that I asked (and they asked me the questions in advance) was, “fast forward a year from now, if this company hasn't worked out what's gone wrong?” And they wrote me back and they said, “we're not comfortable with that question. We think this should be framed in a more positive way. Let's fast forward a year and everything's gone right? What's gone right?” And, that's a great question to ask. But I, there's a reason especially I think, again, as leaders, if we're doing any type of strategy, if we're doing planning, a lot of those decisions, and the results lie on us. I think that it's important to look at what can go wrong.
We don't need to be defensive about it, it doesn't mean that we're terrible people. ButI think it's so important as leaders that, first of all, we can see reality that we can see the weaknesses and what we're doing, as well as the strengths.It's both. But we've got we're firmly rooted in reality.
And, if somebody else in our company or in our organization or in our world comes to us and is seeing something else, that that's welcomed, that people feel comfortable to show up. I think the way that we do that as leaders is we make it okay. We're human, so sometimes we’re going to get defensive, but I think assuming that people have good intentions, and I think really just creating an environment where you ask for the feedback, we open those conversations that you show your willingness to even start those conversations. I think it's just so incredibly powerful to see reality.
You hope for the best and plan for the worst but, but acknowledge what the reality is.
Recap
The title is The Parable of the Sower, if I'm saying that correctly.
The author is Octavia Butler.
It was written in the early 90s. And here are my five top leadership takeaways for you.
1. Leadership can come from anybody regardless of age, and I will expand on that. Age, gender, sexual orientation, anything.None of that matters. Leadership can come from anybody.
2. It's really important that we're single-minded about what our intention is, about what our why is, what is the most, ultimate, important thing that we are not going to deviate from. But while we're going to be single minded on our intention, we are as we learn, and we pick up new pieces of information and our situation changes, we can adapt how we're going to get to that goal.
3. When we have beliefs, philosophies, worldviews, approaches to things, we want to encourage conversation and debate around those and not just assume that we're right, be impatient and get defensive.
4. We want to have a healthy balance of trusting other people with being guarded and careful because not everybody is to be trusted, at least not all the time. One of the most important things that we need to do is learn and develop the confidence to trust ourselves.
5. It's really important that we as leaders are going to create environments where we can see reality, we can talk about reality - the good and the bad. And that that's okay. And that we are going to also acknowledge the good and the bad, we are not going to be blind to weaknesses because we want to believe in some fairy tale. We're rooted in reality, because that's just how things are going get better.
Anyway,I so hope that you enjoy these leadership lessons. If you do decide to pick up the book, please let me know. I'd love to know what you think about it becauseI could talk about books all day with everybody, which is why I started LeadersWho Fiction.
Until next time, take care.
