A Vision of Leadership Must Not Be One-Dimensional

Point in a Curve

Source: PICRYL

In her late 20s, Lee was from a traditional family with deep roots in New York’s Chinatown. The enclave was still inward-looking, concerned with preserving inherited cultural institutions. The place feels remarkably insular but homey to those who belong there. Lee told me, “It’s comfortable. You know everybody, and you want to stay.” She understood that she’d marry a Chinese-American and then settle down in one of the close-packed apartment buildings to raise a family.

But life started getting complicated when, during college, a building she’d had her eye on became a topic of conversation around the dinner table. Her father owned the building. It was one of several that he owned in Chinatown, catering to the Chinese diaspora.

He had built his little empire with his brother, but then, suddenly, when Uncle Charlie had a stroke, her father felt overburdened. “Someone else needs to run the back office,” he told her, ‘‘or I’ll have to sell that building you like. It’s all too much for me.” Out of a sense of duty, Lee started working for her father evenings and weekends. When she graduated college, she became his office administrator. “I convinced my fiancée,” she told me, “that we should postpone having kids while I helped my family.”

Now, six years later and still postponing a family, Lee was unsure whether the path that she was on—towards inevitable leadership of a small but demanding family business— was where she ought to be. Her values were in conflict: She was raised to be a wife and mother but also with a strong commitment to family. She also knew that if some developer bought up the family’s real estate, the buildings would be gutted, becoming yet another mark in gentrifying ethnic communities all over the city. If she stayed on her trajectory, she would not just lead a business, she’d be a civic leader, with all the ensuing demands on her time.

As we began to talk, I sensed that Lee was struggling. “Don’t you think that having a family is compatible with running a business?” I asked. Her husband, who was now anxious to start a family, had asked the same question. Still, he recognized Lee’s commitment to her father and community and wanted her to resolve the issue in her own mind.

We talked for a while about coming to terms with who one wanted to be, not in some ideal, all-or-nothing sense but in terms of one’s actual life. “We all want to be some ideal, perfect embodiment of something,” I said, “but how many people do you know who actually are?” I thought that if she could see her way to becoming both a businesswoman/civic leader and a mother, she would have fewer grounds for regret than if she just chose one over the other. I asked her to think about who and what she wanted to be in terms that were less absolute. I asked whether she saw a way to embrace tradition amply, rather than in some narrow way, by redefining it relative to her own immediate, personal context.

“It has to feel right to you, but you won’t really know until you think things through based on all your resources, all your means of support.” So, we embarked on a process of thinking about how Lee could be comfortable in both worlds. Could she recognize herself as someone who breaks out of the mold but, still, not so completely that it lies in unrecognizable pieces all around her?

Lee spoke with her husband who, as an employee at a tech start-up, worked crazy hours but also had flexibility. He had never wanted her to be a clone of her mother and grandmother (so he said) and would pitch in when kids came along. Of course, I suspected that no matter his real feelings regarding diapers, he was so happy to head off a showdown over children that he readily agreed to taking up any domestic slack.

If Lee was ever going to want a leadership position, it had to seem natural, not like some superimposition that would interfere with her instincts and with her experience of herself in the culture she respected. The challenge was whether she could be a mother and still satisfy herself that she was adhering to her values of good, traditional mothering.

We spoke about how no one expected her to ignore her values, or even substantially to redefine them. What people would understand, and what she might bring herself to understand, was that when values collide—as they had in her case— there was room for honest compromise.

Nonetheless, I am not sure how Lee will work out her issues. But now she realizes that before we take up a leadership role, we must understand, and accept, how it fits into our vision for the rest of our life. This entails examining who we think we are, how far we are willing to change, and whether those around us can share our vision.

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We can stop being absolutist with ourselves when we stop attributing unrealistic, demanding absolutism to others (they have their own issues, too). In any event, we can go a long way before giving up on some core sense of who we are and should be. If Lee asks herself the right questions and finds real, practicable answers, she can be the leader that her family and community need even while she respects her values. These questions might include:

• What are my essential values, and how does a leadership role require that I compromise them—now and in the medium term?
• Can I find a workaround that allows for some compromise but still allows me to feel useful, honest, even dutiful to others who depend on me?
• Are other people willing to cut me some slack, and how much can I ask of them? Whose feelings do I really care about?

Everyday Leaders must often ask themselves questions that implicate their family and community. They have to decide how much time, energy, and consideration to give to the concerns of each. So be prepared for a balancing act that may require detailed explanations. You will need to live with those explanations for a while, so think them through thoroughly. While you can always reverse a decision to lead, you do not want ot hurt anyone before or after.