The Nature of Leadership and Career

read time 7 minutes

The Nature of Leadership and Career, is a weekly newsletter where I provide 1 illustration and ~3 ideas to help you connect to your career, leadership, or work journey in a more natural way.

Today at a glance

• Illustration of the week

  - Cutting dead wood

• The Nature of Career and Leadership

  - Why trees get rid of their dead branches

  - Who got you here won’t get you there career and leadership examples

• The Nature of the Mind

  - 3 reasons stopping us from cutting dead wood

  - Powerful questions to help you prune

  - Be the tree!

Illustration of the Week

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The Nature of Leadership + Career

Some of us are green fingers, and some of us are unintentional plant murderers.

My recent Google search: “Why does my plant have dead branches” helped me to connect a missing piece of the puzzle about cutting dead wood relationships from our lives that impact our careers and leadership.

Here’s what I learned:

• As a tree grows, it will put more effort into nourishing the parts of the tree as it is exposed to more sunlight so they can photosynthesize and keep growing;

• Trees sacrifice the branches at the bottom of the tree to conserve energy and redirect resources. This results in dead branches;

• Dead branches are not helpful to the tree as they might prevent it from healing properly and, at the same time, allow pests and diseases to invade the tree;

• Once a branch drops off, a process of self-healing and redistribution of nutrients occurs.

This process reminded me of the saying common saying, and book title by Marshall Goldsmith:

“What got you here won’t get you there,” and the commonly used term in business “dead wood” when referring to people or processes.

The bottom branches got the tree at a certain height but keeping them would jeopardize resource efficient growth or even death of the tree through disease.

‘What got you here won’t get you there’ commonly refers to processes, technology, or behaviors we might need to change within our team, organization, or ourselves.

Something that is less commonly talked about is “Who got you here won’t get you there.”

Who got you here won’t get you there

At an individual level, this can look like:

• Loss of support or vindictive behaviors from colleagues when you are promoted or advance further than them.

• Lack of support from friends or family as you achieve more or take a chance on yourself during a career transition.

As a leader, this can look like:

• Having an employee who continually undermines you and the team, however letting them go feels hard due to their critical specialist skillset.

• Having hard conversations with employees who no longer feel motivated by their work or the company.

• Sensing that your team needs to change strategic direction which means “killing off” certain capabilities and letting people go who don’t have the transferrable skills for the next stage.

Who got you here won’t get you there.

😨 Stopping processes or behaviors is hard enough.

😱 Stopping your connection or relationships with people feels gut-wrenching.

Why does it feel so hard for us to let go and “chop the dead wood”?

The Nature of the Mind

3 reasons stopping you from cutting dead wood relationships

1. Aversion to loss

This is a cognitive bias where the fear and pain associated with losing are felt twice as much as the pleasure of gaining. Aversion to loss is widely used in behavioral economics, sales, and marketing e.g. the pain of losing 100 dollars is felt much more deeply than the gain of finding 100.

Similarly, the thought of letting go of a colleague, a friend, and especially a family member strikes pain a fear in the amygdala of our brain.

We stay in a place of “comfort” not cutting the relationship. This is ironic as staying in an unsupportive personal or work relationship also causes discomfort.

2. Hope that things might change

And they might! Contrary to the common saying “people don’t change, or a leopard never changes its spots” people can change…..

…But the change is unlikely to happen at the rate or pace you like without having a courageous conversation about the relationship dynamics you have observed.

3. Avoidance of hard conversations

Avoiding giving feedback and having crucial conversations is the most prevalent occurrence of the hedonic principle in our careers and leadership.

We avoid hard conversations because:

• We don’t want the person to not like us.

• We fear facing our part in the breakdown of the relationship.

• We’re scared that the conversation might turn into accusations or insults.

• We fear what the person will say about us to others based on the conversation.

• We fear that beginning a conversation might signal the end of the relationship.

So our feelings fester, words are left unsaid, and the dead wood in our interactions remains -  open to pests and disease.

If you want to hear / watch more – listen to this recent podcast where I talk about the role of feedback and conversations in teams.

Powerful questions to help you prune

How do you know if the branch is dead?

I can’t say it better than the advice from the gardening service in my Google search:

“Find the very end of the branch and snap a twig and observe the inner parts. A live tree branch will be hard to snap and probably stretchy or fibrous. Its insides will be succulent to semi-succulent and greenish. On the other hand, a dead branch will snap easily and have a dry brownish inner appearance.”

I don’t recommend going and snapping someone’s finger to see if they are still worth maintaining a relationship with.

Instead, you can test this by asking yourself these powerful questions:

If the branch is truly dead based on your introspection and courageous conversations, ask yourself:

In the end nature knows best.

My personal mantra is now “Be the Tree.”

Do the work to understand when you need to cut off certain branches to enable yourself to grow toward your light.

If you make the chop, know that self-healing and nutrient flow will follow.

Resources used for this issue:

Why does my tree have dead branches

Does Cutting Off Dead Branches Help A Tree?

Catch up on recent issues of The Nature of Leadership + Career

• Why redefining and “buffering” your self-identity are key to comfortable career transitions

• 3 career X-factors that most generalists ignore

• Why should anyone be led by you?

Reach out if you would like to explore who and what you need to get to the next stage of your career or leadership journey.

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