Sandbox Leadership and The Mental Balance
My first job as a youth landed me at an office with my older sister who had the crazy notion that my teenage brother needed something to do. As a result, she got me a volunteer job at her place of employment. She worked on 41st Street and Park Ave in New York City, in a 21st-floor, high-rise building with glass offices. Inside, I would find Hank, who was a VP in charge of a team of people. He was a spiritual church going man who professed his faith often.
Hank’s supervisory role was intense. He oversaw about 15 people and was responsible for meeting these hard deadlines three times a week. This pressure led to a hostile working environment characterized by shouting, blaming, and toxicity. My first job on Park Ave was becoming disastrous, and Hank was the cause. As a result, 10 people quit, leaving the company due to Hank’s poor leadership style and emotional outbursts.
Hank could be described as a sandbox leader. Sandbox leaders are grown-ups in positions of responsibility whose lack of emotional maturity creates catastrophic consequences for their unsuspecting followers. [1] The term sandbox leader is introduced by Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder in their book Rare Leadership. Unpacking four habits of rare leaders, they use RARE as an acronym for their four points. [2]
R – Remain Relational
A – Act Like Yourself
R – Return to Joy
E – Endure Hardship
Warner and Wilder suggest building emotional competence by seeing our brain through a fast-track processing pathway using an elevator model. This analogy intrigued and alarmed me, when they talked about our mental desire to feed ourselves, calling it predatory. Unlike computers, the brain must self-assemble as it grows. It must seek what it needs and feed itself. 69 As predatory is a harsh term, what Warner and Wilder state is factual, but the alarm rings in how we have the propensity to feed our brains in negative ways and the potential consequences for these actions.
This rewiring of the brain and the fast and slow system takes me back to Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow. While they come from different perspectives—psychology and neuroscience for Kahneman and leadership with a relational and emotional intelligence focus for Warner and Wilder—they all share a common denominator: the brain. Kahneman highlights how biases, emotions, and cognitive shortcuts play a role in our decision-making, often leading to errors. This is done through System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 is a no-brainer. System 2 requires putting our brains to work. People who are cognitively busy are more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language and make superficial judgments. [3]
Warner and Wilder come from a similar but different perspective. They emphasize emotional maturity and relational circuits within leadership and suggest that leaders who operate from a calm, relational mindset make better decisions.
“A well-trained fast track operates in a protective, life-giving way to the attachments it forms. A poorly trained master-system will tend to be predatory, defensive, fear-bound, and selfish.” [4]
As I enjoyed this practical reading, what resonated with me was the spiritual interconnectedness to leadership. As I think about how Christian leaders operate in sacred and secular spaces, this is an effective tool for balancing one’s thoughts and emotions. Reflecting upon my first job experience, one of the things that might have benefitted Hank was group therapy. He was off the rails and needed guidance beyond accountability he required identity. There is a difference between an accountability group and an identity group. An accountability group asks people to get together and be honest about their behavior and whether they are living up to their commitments an identity group is focused on helping people remember who they are and how God created them to act.”[5]
Identity groups are a key practice in the road to transformation, and Warner and Wilder add two other suggested areas, imitation exercises and intimacy with God. Reflecting upon the life journey of many spiritual leaders, a common pitfall cited is the decreasing amount of time spent in intimacy with God. To this point, Warner and Wilder write, We intuitively understand that mature believers should be better practiced in the art of intimacy with God and recognizing his still small voice within than those who are just beginning their journey.[6] Should be, could be but are we? That is the real question? The major takeaway I receive out of this is balance. Healthy leaders must have balance. We must work to balance our minds and our time with God while remaining relational. If we do this, we become better and brighter in reflecting the image of God to the world that desperately needs to see it.
[1] Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder, Rare Leadership: 4 Uncommon Habits for Increasing Trust, Joy, and Engagement in the People You Lead, (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2016). 41-42
[2] Warner and Wilder, 25.
[3] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). 41.
[4] Warner and Wilder, 84.
[5] Warner and Wilder, 53.
[6] Warner and Wilder, 113.
About the Author
Daren Jaime
3 responses to “Sandbox Leadership and The Mental Balance”
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Daren, This book also took me back to Kahneman. As you think about your own life, what area do you want to work on to bring more balance to your RARE leadership?
Daren,
I too, was thinking of Kahneman. I see that the other cohort is reading him this week and maybe I will read a few of their posts to give myself a better reminder of his theories. You mentioned the identity groups. I had never really heard of these before. I had always heard of accountability groups. Do you have an identity group? If so, how has that helped you grow?
Hi Daren,
Reflecting back across the decades of your leadership, where do you see pivotal moments of personal transformation along the RARE model (even if you didn’t have that type of language at the time)?