The Fall, or more specifically September, is a big time of Reflection for me.  Lots of endings and beginnings.  First, it’s the change of seasons.  The change from summer to fall will always make me think of the start of a new school year; the ending of one phase and the entrance into another.  My birthday falls in early September, which quite literally means the end of one age and the beginning of another.  The Jewish High Holidays are in the fall, beginning with the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and ending ten days later with the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).  Traditionally, this is a serious time of introspection for Jews—a look back over the past year and a commitment to change in the coming year.  It is also the time of year that I lost my maternal grandmother (the only grandparent I really knew) and my father.  So, yes, this is a time of Deep Reflection for me.

What kind of Deep Thoughts?  Poor Trish has to suffer through me going deep on anything and everything.  The first draft of this essay was a total mess.  I was all over the place.  Every movie or TV show I watch, every newsletter, even when I am at the Y—everything makes me pensive.  One might say I think too much.  One would probably be right.  I like to think it’s really about my powers of observation in overdrive.  The reality is that I can’t turn my brain off.  So, my way of dealing with the issue this year is to get it all out in an essay!  Buckle up.

One thing I keep noodling on is how we tend to dehumanize people we don’t directly know.  (What?  Yeah, this is why you should pity Trish!)  Trish took me to see Oppenheimer for my birthday.  Interesting birthday present, I know, but what made it a present is that I REALLY wanted to see the movie and Trish REALLY did not.  Plus, I wanted popcorn.  Anyway, I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the US decision to drop the bomb since I went through the Peace Museum in Hiroshima.  I’m not going to debate whether we should or should not have used the bomb.  There is no clear answer.  What I can say is that all the Japanese who were killed (tens of thousands instantly; tens of thousands more to radiation-induced illnesses) were for the most part just regular people going about their lives.  They had the same hopes and dreams and fears as we do.  Humans are humans are humans.  It would do us well to remember that when we take sides on political issues or really any issue.  People are complicated and have contradictory traits AND I am convinced that 99.9% of people are generally good humans trying to get through their day.  The truly evil ones are few and far between.  Focus on the humanity, first.

Another thing I’ve been noodling on is the importance of critical thinking skills.  (Seriously, this is what Trish has to put up with this time of year.)  I hear it that parents are concerned about what their kids are taught in school.  They absolutely should know, be involved, have a say.  AND they should insist that the most important thing their kids are taught are critical thinking skills.  Then, as they grow, they can take in new information and know how to evolve their thinking.  I was taught the concept of Manifest Destiny as a grade schooler—that it was Gd’s will that European settlers inhabit the US from sea to shining sea and that any native Americans that stood in the way were savages that deserved to be killed or subdued.  It did not ruin me as a child to learn this; however, as an adult I have taken in new information and evolved my thinking.  I was also taught that an atom can be pictured as raisin pudding (the raisins being electrons and the pudding being the nucleus).  That was fine in 5^th grade.  By the time I learned Quantum Mechanics, I no longer pictured an atom that way.  Maybe it’s because I’m Jewish, but I question EVERYTHING.  Sometimes, my opinions are reinforced; sometimes they are changed.  But I am always questioning and evaluating.

Looking inward, a lot of what I have been noodling on lately surrounds my control issues.  I’ve referred to, and joked about, my extreme need to control everything in my life.  What I’ve been digging into is the “why?”  I will allow that part of it is my personality and I know I’m not alone in this characteristic.  I would say most people I know have control issues to some degree.  While Trish may chide me for being too much of a backseat driver (even when I’m sitting in the front seat), she has been known to make more than the occasional suggestion—and use her imaginary brake pedal—when I am driving.  I’ve become much more aware, lately, of people working to control the environment around them, ranging from “suggestions” to their partner or friends, to avoidance of situations when they can’t ensure it is to their liking.  Admittedly, that makes me feel a bit better.  It’s not just me.

Then again, “me” is all I can control so the focus has to be there.  I’ve described in previous essays times when I have been blindsided by people’s behaviors toward me or when I “didn’t know what I didn’t know”.  Those situations have caused long term pain, so part of my control issues surround pain avoidance.  This fear dovetails with my desire to be liked and/or admired and the extreme accommodations I have often made to help ensure that.  News alert:  it doesn’t work.  I have finally come to accept that I need to just be my authentic self and people will choose to like (or not like) me.  That doesn’t mean I am resistant to feedback.  I am continuing to grow and evolve, so I need to hear what others think.  What it does mean is that I sort that feedback through the filter of who I know myself to be.  It does not mean that I will try to change myself (or pretend to do so) to make others happy. 

As obvious as all of that sounds, getting there has been a long journey and it has meant accepting that some people are no longer a big part of my life.  I still struggle mightily with that.  Letting go is not my strong suit.  Allowing that I may never get closure or be able to state my truth is a bitter pill to swallow.  I am working to learn from past mistakes and do better going forward even if the chance to right previous wrongs never presents itself.  That, my friends, is super hard for me.  Learn.  Grow.  Accept.  Repeat.

As we move into this season, I keep asking myself the Big Questions:  How have I comported myself over this past year?  How am I looking to evolve?  As we have discussed, being authentic and vulnerable are two of the most difficult behaviors any of us can embody.  It can leave you open to hurt but it also opens you up to the most profound joy.  My control issues express themselves in a myriad of ways and my challenge is to confront the discomfort and disarm it.  I am beginning to believe this is the challenge of my remaining life!  There is a lot of meditation and self-talk going on these days and I know that 61 years of reinforced behavior will not change overnight.  I am committed to it, though.  I can’t control everything around me.  I don’t NEED to control everything around me.  I need to learn how to Surrender.

When I was much younger, I thought the world was run by competent mature adults and I was very intimidated.  As I grew older, I realized that the world was run by people just like me and I became very scared.  Why?  Because I never felt I was competent enough to be an Adult in a Responsible Position.  Then I became even more scared because I realized that I was no less capable than most other adults I knew.  Finally, I started to relax when I saw that most of what needed to get done got done anyway.  Maybe this Myth of Competence needs to be explored.

Let’s start at the beginning.  When we were little children, we thought our parents knew what they were doing.  They sure acted like they did!  Many of us even thought our parents were perfect.  Those of you reading this who are parents are probably laughing at that thought.  You most likely had continual crises of confidence, wondering if you were totally messing your kids up because you rarely felt like you knew what you were doing.  At a certain point, most of us swung that pendulum way to the other side and decided our parents knew nothing and were totally incompetent.  This usually started in the preteen years and went until you were about 30 or had your first child.  Then, suddenly, your parents became human.  They weren’t perfect but they did a pretty darn good job.

When I was in college, a new professor joined the Chemistry Department in my sophomore year.  She was right out of grad school.  We were all amazingly impressed by her!  Knew her stuff; great teacher.  We’d hit the jackpot.  As she and I got to know each other, she confessed this to me:  “You know, Sherri, I am staying just one lecture ahead of you guys.”  She had never taught Physical Chemistry before.  She was up late into the night developing her lectures and materials, staying one lecture ahead.  We assumed she was so knowledgeable that she could teach us in her sleep!

It’s generally comforting to think that the people around you are competent.  With competency comes confidence.  We see this in the medical field in particular.  We expect our doctors to be competent to the point of perfection.  We expect them to be able to diagnose any ailments on the first try, to know what to look for with virtually no clues from us, and to be able to fix whatever is wrong.  Amazingly, that actually happens a good percentage of the time.  Sure, there are totally incompetent quacks and we have a vibrant personal injury law industry that proves that point.  However, most doctors are fairly competent and we rely on that.  Unfortunately, we want to rely on that to the point of abdicating our responsibilities as the patient.  We forget that doctors are human and that competence does not mean perfection.  Or omniscience!

In the workplace, misplaced expectations of competence get us into trouble all the time.  It is natural to believe that the people around you in any decent organization know what they are doing and will get done what they are supposed to get done.  (I hear more laughter….)  The reality is that no one is as good as you think they are.  No one knows as much about a topic as you think they know.  No one is as organized as you think they are.  No one is as perfectly dependable as you think they are.  I am not saying this to diss on people who have let me down or vent some bitterness toward the workplace.  I’m just giving you a reality check to, first, not get down on yourself about your own imperfections (we’ll get to that in a bit) and, second, to remind you that those around you are human.  You need to not trust too implicitly and you need to give people a little grace and support when they mess up.  I remember a time when I was working with a person in our financial organization to develop data to support a business plan.  When he ran the financial projections based on our assumptions about the business, his work showed revenue growth that just seemed out of whack to me.  I immediately assumed that I was wrong about my understanding of certain financial terms.  He, after all, was the finance guy!  He knew this stuff better than I did, right?  Clearly my understanding of a compound annual growth rate was wrong.  When we went over the financials in a business meeting, no one raised a concern.  We went through with the investment, which was not small.  I made a mental note to do a little reading.  Long story short, I was right.  That guy lost his job (not just because of that plan).  And I lost confidence in the rest of the business team.  I never spoke up, though.  Who else was thinking, “That just doesn’t look right”?

I talk about this myth of competence in leadership coaching because it’s important to speak up and gently ask those questions.  As I became more experienced, I learned that most of the time others were thinking the same thing and appreciated someone asking a question that they were afraid to ask.  Afraid because they didn’t want to embarrass the person or didn’t want to look incompetent themselves.  There is an art to it, of course.  You need to be kind and authentic and maybe even self-deprecating.  But there is nothing wrong with asking someone to define or clarify a term.  There is nothing wrong with following up on the details of a task.  There is nothing wrong with offering to help.  Sometimes people get in over their head or don’t know what they don’t know.  Most people feel compelled to project this air of confidence and competence even when they don’t feel it.  If you can approach people as humans, you have a better chance of heading off a disaster or just ensuring that things get done that need to get done.

Another important aspect of the Myth of Competence is to remember that you, as well, are often not as good as you think you are.  I have written before that the most important characteristic of a good leader is humility and I need to emphasize that, here.  We can all get over confident.  We can all get full of ourselves, especially when we’ve had success.  Stop it.  Just stop it.  Remember that you are strongest when you know your limits and when you surround yourself with people who have strengths where you don’t.  And as important as this is in the workplace, it’s even more important in your personal relationships.  When you already think you know it all, you never learn anything.  And there is so much out there to learn!

While not blindly trusting in the competence of others is important, this “all people are human and deserve a little grace” applies especially to yourself.  It is natural to become overly critical of your own shortcomings when you see everyone around you as unfailingly competent. At three different leadership webinars that I’ve recently been involved in, this question of Impostor Syndrome has come up.  Impostor Syndrome is feeling that you are totally unqualified to do the job you are doing, professionally or personally, and that at any moment you will be found out as a fraud.  I have felt a bit (sometimes more than a bit) of Impostor Syndrome at every stage of my professional career and at a good many key moments in my personal life!  It’s natural.  It helps you stay humble.  It can motivate you to be better.  To paraphrase Brene Brown (again), we are here to GET it right, not to BE right.  I am constantly amazed at the number of very famous and accomplished people across all kinds of professions who readily admit to Impostor Syndrome.  I feel in good company.  The risk, though, is that feeling unqualified and like a fraud can become paralyzing.  How do you stop that?  Well, that’s where the concept of “threshold” or “good enough” comes in.  And we’ll talk about that next time.