On a Quest for Leadership
Poole’s Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership [1] endeavors to provide a resource to leaders in all stages of development. This is a lofty goal, as the topics reviewed were broad and would be difficult to completely cover in 232 pages. I found it helpful to review it as an index and appreciated it as an outline for where I should be headed as a reader.
Also, I was impressed to discover a writer who could quote Dorothy Sayers[2], reference the Hobbit, AND David Brooks[3], all in 2 pages.[4] This is additional evidence to the scope of Poole’s selected topic. A highlight of that diverse grouping of literary genius was:
“…addiction to ‘service’ makes us slaves to feedback, unable to discern the inherent quality of work for work’s sake. If we constantly have one eye on our audience, we do not have both eyes on our work. And, if we establish a psychological contract that expects approval or at least some appreciation for our pains, we set ourselves up for disappointment if the reward does not quite match up, which also devalues the work.”[5]
This was particularly resonant with me this week as I had one moment of public brilliance, and two others where I felt that I had effectively tripped all over myself in front of some people whose opinions matter to me.
For fun, I went through the book looking for topics that I could cross-reference back to the previous readings from this course. And they were all there. For brevity, I included just a few:
- Numbers: “The numbers are just a language for telling a story. So get someone to tell you the story first, then link it back to the numbers and you will be able to see why they are there”[6] Great connection to How to Read Numbers.[7]
- Faces of Creativity: “The Alchemist who creates gold for business by mixing together ideas from different places” [8] This further supports the benefits of non-linear thinking in How to Take Smart Notes.[9]
- Coaching: “Coaching is the best way to demonstrate an interest in others and to check your understanding of their situation…It also teaches them to self-coach over time.”[10] (I will always celebrate when I hear the celebration of good questions.) What a ready-made commercial for Mining for Gold[11]
These insights were gems that are worth more attention, but today I want to focus on an area in Poole’s writing that I see as even more important:
Difficult Conversations
I have learned that leaders do not usually like to share areas of weakness. But they often will give clues if you are on the lookout. Take these three examples:
- The top executive who confided in me that after 25 years in leadership she still doesn’t like having accountability conversations with others.
- Another leader who could count on one hand how many times he had received feedback on his job.
- A third who tearfully shared with me how the flowers in her office were from someone who wanted to tell her she was doing a good job, and how she never hears that.
All three are examples of people who have risen to the highest level of leadership. People who I personally like, and who I have seen navigate managing complex, tense, and sometimes crisis-laden scenarios. If they struggle with feedback, then maybe we all do.
Giving and receiving feedback is tough and is desperately needed. 
At my house we just re-watched (for like, the gazillionth time) Raiders of the Lost Ark. I feel that successfully navigating accountability is the equivalent of locating the precious relics in that movie. Leaders can feel a little like Indiana Jones must have when clinging to the front of a moving truck.
So, where do we go with this? Is the solution, like the ark, buried away deep in some warehouse, never to be found?
I don’t think so. In Leadersmithing, we are given some tips on how to say ‘no,’ which is important,[1] but only one type of difficult conversation. The type that I see as the most needed in my organization are “difficult conversations about performance.” A book that has helped me in my progression through this threshold concept is Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior[2]. As a leader, learning the concepts in that book made me feel like I was getting out from in front of the moving truck and into the driver’s seat. It is the professional book I most often find myself recommending to new leaders and it is the resource that I most often hear other leaders reference. The tools that I find myself using most from this resource are “Mastering your Story”[3] and then “Ending with a Question.”[4] While I have used Crucial Accountability for a number of years, I find that it will supplement Poole’s broader overview of leadership.
Poole has done a nice job cataloguing critical leadership competencies. Numbers, Faces of Creativity, Coaching and Difficult Conversations were relevant to me in my current part of the journey. I am curious to learn what resonated with my cohort colleagues. I wonder what will resonate with me in the next part of my story?
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[1] Poole,126.
[2] Kerry Patterson et al., Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior, Second Edition, 2nd edition (New York: McGraw Hill, 2013).
[3] Patterson et al. 47.
[4] Patterson et al., 97.
[1] Eve Poole, Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017).
[2] “Dorothy L Sayers,” accessed February 10, 2023, https://www.sayers.org.uk/.d
[3] “David Brooks – The New York Times,” accessed February 10, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/by/david-brooks.
[4] Poole, 48–49.
[5] Poole, 48.
[6] Poole, 129.
[7] Tom Chivers, “How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them)” (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021).
[8] Poole, 130.
[9] Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes : One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking–for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. North Charleston, South Carolina: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017. Print.
[10] Poole, 168.
[11] Tom Camacho, Mining for Gold: Developing Kingdom Leaders through Coaching (La Vergne: IVP, 2019).
About the Author
Jennifer Vernam
10 responses to “On a Quest for Leadership”
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Hi Jennifer,
I am always pleased to read your posts. In short, because they are so different from mine. Your posts expand my thinking.
At the end of your post you asked what resonated with us. At the time of reading your post, I was reading Chapter 3 – Character.
On page 56, Poole writes “Leaders, therefore, need to develop character in general, as well as muscle memory for more specific leadership tasks.”
She further states that when circumstances emerge that preclude a leadership template from being applied, then, it is the virtues, ethics and ones courage of conviction that take leaders through those murky times.
I agree. We have a saying in the Army that when the first bullet is fired that the plan goes out the window. It is a caution we teach young lieutenants as we teach them the 5 paragraph operations order.
This mission brief tells them who the enemy is, our commander’s intent, and the who, what, when, where, and why of the operation.
We drill into our “apprentices” the planning that goes into preparing for an operation, down to the ration cycle and times for departure. However, we also teach them that in the fog and friction of war that the plan will go to hell in a hand basket.
The plan we instruct, has pulled all the men, material and resources that they will need to “flex” to meet the combat crisis.
What about character? On page 52 she writes…”So my hunch is that the deliberate or accidental accumulation of experiences and behavioral templating is actually what we mean when we say character. Like pearls are luster and the beauty of our nature come from this defensive softening of irritants through layers of mean making overtime.
In the fog of combat, the leaders will loose contact with their higher command. They will encounter the tension of saving their men, or spending their men to accomplish the task. This is where character plays out.
Sigh…like I said my posts are so different from yours. Thanks for your comments…they expand my thinking…Shalom…Russ
I am thankful for those differences. How boring if we had to read 20 versions of same reflection on our readings week after week!
Thank you for highlighting the impact of character on leadership. This is the ‘secret sauce.’ I am always so pleased when I see glimpses into the integrity of my leaders when circumstances require them to operate off the plan.
I’m glad you mentioned feedback, and I had to re-read this sentence about 4 times: “If they struggle with feedback, then maybe we all do.” Not because it was very complex, but because I had to force myself to believe it. I’ve been on a bit of a feedback journey recently, but is it possible that I’m not alone? Is it possible that many leaders and teams struggle with giving and receiving feedback well?
It was while doing the LCP I had a moment of clarity. I realized that I’ve been receiving zero feedback and so making up stories in my head about what my team leaders think. But for a long time I felt like it was a bit “unspiritual” to desire feedback. After all, it’s only God’s opinion that counts, right?
Last week, I finally made myself express this to my team. They seemed open to putting some better habits in practice. Now I’m asking myself where I need to be better about GIVING feedback, not only thinking about receiving it.
Your comment about resisting feedback is a great observation. God’s opinion is certainly critical and needs to be considered first in our discernment. Given that, along with your realization that you were telling yourself stories about what your colleagues think, how will you now reconcile these two truths? What lens will you use to hear their feedback in a way to make sure that you are weighing it rightly?
Thanks for this book recommendation Jennifer. I disclose in my own blog that one of my known weaknesses as a leader is giving (negative) feedback. A recent coach who came and did staff training at our church challenged the notion of assigning ‘negative or positive’ value to feedback we give….but I clearly still haven’t sorted that out! While I find myself quite comfortable debating ideas and perspectives, my conflict-avoidant family-of-origin has created some significant discomfort with discussions that I know will be personally difficult for others. I’ll be adding your book recommendation to my summer reading list….currently my reading capacity is a bit maxed out!
I hear you on the stack of reading we have ahead of us!
I wonder as you are discovering how you want to grow in the area of feedback, how can you reshape the narrative? I hear your coach’s suggestion to not think of it as negative or positive, which is interesting. I would have leaned more toward the “What do I risk if I don’t share this feedback? What disservice am I doing?” line of thinking. That shifts everything associated with feedback to a positive, though and maybe that is too “Pollyanna” of me?
Jennifer, I smiled when you wrote about Poole managing to reference Sayers, Brooks, and the Hobbit in 2 pages. I geeked out when she mentioned Sayers (and I wrote about that in my blog post), since Sayers was super formative for me when it comes to addressing the intersection of faith and work.
I have not read Crucial Accountability, but that sounds like a fascinating book! Just the title alone demands a reading. Maybe in 2.4 years (or this summer).
What most resonated with me was the actual chapter on Leadersmithing. I really think the master-apprentice framework is gravely needed in both discipleship and in the way we train and equip people in vocational ministry.
I was going to comment on your post, but I will do it here: I didn’t know Sayers in any other context than her mystery writing, which I discovered last year. Fun to see her in a new light, and I will have to look into your reference to her more serious content!
I also enjoyed hearing about your organization’s apprenticeship program. We need more of that structure in my organization. I am going back to re-read your post, because I was curious about how success is measured in that program?
Hi, Jenny,
Thank you for drawing attention to the very difficult area of giving and receiving feedback. Poole agrees “packaging feedback is tricky”…it’s “a gift and a skill.” She goes on to mention that by wanting to be nice, we undermine our competence in this area”.[1] I can so relate to this!
Joe Hirsch gives an excellent Tedx Talk on feedback which has helped me in this area. He proposes that we look at it as “feed-forward” instead of “feedback.” Too often feedback is simply “coming to terms with myself on someone else’s terms [1] However, if the feedback is given in a way as to put a mirror in the person’s hand receiving the feedback, allowing them to view themselves but then also joining with them in gazing forward to the possibilities of their future self, it can bring greater joy and hope-filled self-awareness. This is basically a coach approach but is a skill very well worth developing!
[1] Poole, p. 171-172
[2] Joe Hirsch, “Joe Hirsch: The Joy of Getting Feedback | TED Talk,” accessed February 18, 2023, https://www.ted.com/talks/joe_hirsch_the_joy_of_getting_feedback.
Enjoyed your post Jennifer, you mentioned Poole saying “addiction to ‘service’ makes us slaves to feedback, unable to discern the inherent quality of work for work’s sake”. This is such a tension in life overall. We certainly need feedback for growth and improvement, but being dependent on it for our inherent worth is not healthy. Certain types of feedback can also diminish what makes us unique if we slowly conform to what everyone else thinks we should do or be.
It reminds me of Parker Palmers book, Let Your Life Speak, who says the first half of life we spend putting masks on, the second half we spend taking them off to find who we really are, what we actually love to do, and what makes us come alive. Finding and doing what you love for the sake of it is freeing. Love the posts!