Latest / The Humanistic Leader Podcast- Dr. Craig Nathanson / I Didn’t Know It Mattered at the Time

Transcript

I Didn’t Know It Mattered at the Time · The Humanistic Leader Podcast- Dr. Craig Nathanson

• 0:12
  When I was a little boy, my grandfather never traveled without a large paper road map.
• 0:19
  Some of you listening may remember those maps. Long before GPS,
• 0:24
  long before a voice from our phone told us to turn right in 500 feet.
• 0:29
  Long before we could type in an address and instantly know not only where we
• 0:33
  were going, but exactly how long it would take us to get there.
• 0:37
  If my grandfather wasn't sure where we were going, he would just pull the car over.
• 0:42
  He would unfold this enormous map across the dashboard And because his eyesight
• 0:48
  wasn't very good He would take out a magnifying glass and slowly study the roads,
• 0:53
  I could still picture him doing it,
• 0:56
  You know, the map The magnifying glass My grandfather leaning over the dashboard,
• 1:02
  And me watching him At the time, of course, I didn't think there was anything
• 1:06
  You know, particularly meaningful about it It was just something my grandfather did,
• 1:12
  We were lost. He stopped the car. He looked at the map.
• 1:15
  And eventually, we figured out where we were going.
• 1:19
  But many years later, I began to understand that perhaps my grandfather was
• 1:23
  teaching me something without either one of us knowing it.
• 1:28
  Sometimes when we don't know where we're going, the answer isn't to move faster.
• 1:32
  Sometimes we just need to stop, look carefully, and figure out where we are.
• 1:38
  I've been thinking lately about the moments in our lives that didn't seem particularly
• 1:41
  important when they happened, and yet somehow they stayed with us, sometimes for decades.
• 1:48
  The thing memory keeps. You know, memory is strange. There are periods in my
• 1:53
  life, entire periods in my life, that have become quite blurry.
• 1:56
  You know, I've taught thousands of students over the years. I've worked in many
• 2:00
  different organizations.
• 2:01
  I've traveled all over the world. I've sat through more meetings than I would ever want to count.
• 2:07
  I've given presentations, written books, changed jobs Made decisions that seemed
• 2:13
  enormously important at the time And yet when I look backward Those aren't necessarily
• 2:18
  the things I remember most clearly,
• 2:21
  Instead I remember fragments A room, conversation.
• 2:27
  Something somebody said to me, the expression on someone's face,
• 2:31
  maybe a walk, a drive, a meal, a song playing somewhere.
• 2:36
  And sometimes I wonder, why did my mind decide to keep that?
• 2:41
  Why that moment? Why that conversation?
• 2:43
  Why that person?
• 2:45
  Out of the thousands and thousands of experiences that make up a life,
• 2:50
  why do certain little moments refuse to disappear?
• 2:54
  Maybe sometimes we don't understand the meaning of an experience while we're
• 2:58
  living it. Maybe meaning arrives later.
• 3:01
  My grandfather and that map are like that for me. But there's another powerful
• 3:06
  memory of him that has stayed with me even more powerfully.
• 3:10
  The 10-mile run. You know, I
• 3:12
  was 16 years old when my grandfather became very sick. He was in hospice.
• 3:17
  The day before he died, I went to see him.
• 3:19
  There was a baseball game playing on a little radio beside his bed I don't remember
• 3:24
  what teams were playing I don't remember the score,
• 3:29
  I don't even remember exactly what we talked about But I remember being there,
• 3:34
  The next morning he was gone I later learned that I was the last person in our family to see him alive.
• 3:41
  And then I did something that, looking back now, tells me something about the
• 3:44
  person I was becoming, even though I certainly didn't understand it at 16.
• 3:51
  I went to a park where I trained, and I ran 10 miles. I thought about my grandfather with every step.
• 3:57
  I didn't have language for grief back then. I didn't have some sophisticated understanding of loss.
• 4:05
  I didn't know how to explain what I was feeling. I just knew I needed to run. So I ran 10 miles.
• 4:12
  And I carried my grandfather with me.
• 4:15
  I couldn't possibly have known that I would remember that run all these years, but I do.
• 4:21
  It wasn't planned as some symbolic act. I wasn't trying to create a memory.
• 4:26
  There wasn't anyone watching. There wasn't anything to post.
• 4:28
  There wasn't even really a story yet.
• 4:31
  There was just a 16-year-old kid running around a park because someone he loved had died.
• 4:37
  I didn't know it mattered at the time, but it did.
• 4:41
  We live forward and understand backward. I think that's true,
• 4:44
  you know, of so much of our life.
• 4:46
  We live our lives going forward, but often we understand them looking backward.
• 4:51
  Something happens on a Tuesday afternoon, and it seems completely ordinary.
• 4:56
  And then the years later, we realize that changed me.
• 5:00
  Or, that's when something began. Or, I didn't realize how happy I was then.
• 5:07
  Or perhaps, I wish I had understood how precious that moment was while I was living it.
• 5:13
  That's one of the strange things about being human. We are always standing inside
• 5:17
  the present moment unable to see exactly where it, you know,
• 5:20
  fits in the larger story of our lives.
• 5:23
  We don't know which conversation will change a relationship.
• 5:26
  We don't know which teacher will influence what we eventually become.
• 5:30
  We don't know which ordinary dinner will sometime, someday in the future,
• 5:34
  become a memory that we would give almost anything to experience just one more time.
• 5:41
  And we certainly don't know which little habits our children or grandchildren are quietly watching.
• 5:46
  My grandfather probably had no idea that I was studying him while he studied that map.
• 5:50
  He was just trying to find the road. And yet I remember.
• 5:55
  We're trained to notice the big things. Maybe part of the problem is that we're
• 5:59
  trained to notice the obvious milestones Graduations, promotions,
• 6:04
  weddings, birthdays, new jobs, retirement,
• 6:08
  awards, the first day, you know, the last day We take pictures of these moments,
• 6:13
  we put them on calendars, we celebrate anniversaries of them And of course those moments matter,
• 6:20
  But a life isn't only made from milestones Most of life happens between them,
• 6:25
  Most of our relationships happen on completely ordinary days,
• 6:30
  Most parenting happens when nobody is taking a photograph,
• 6:34
  Most friendships are built through conversations that will never appear on a
• 6:36
  calendar Most leadership happens when there isn't a meeting called leadership,
• 6:42
  And perhaps most of the ways we influence other human beings happen when we
• 6:46
  don't even realize we're doing it That's worth thinking about Especially at work.
• 6:52
  The moments at work that people remember. I've spent much of my professional
• 6:56
  life thinking about leadership and work.
• 6:59
  And one thing I've come to believe is that people often remember different things
• 7:02
  than leaders think they will.
• 7:04
  A leader may remember the strategy, the quarterly numbers, the presentation,
• 7:09
  you know, the big initiative, the reorganization.
• 7:12
  But the employee, the person, may remember something completely different.
• 7:16
  They may remember the morning their manager noticed they weren't themselves and asked, are you okay?
• 7:21
  They may remember being given an opportunity when they weren't completely sure they were ready.
• 7:26
  They may remember someone defending them in a meeting, or listening to an idea,
• 7:31
  or giving them permission to make a mistake.
• 7:34
  They may also remember the opposite. The day someone embarrassed them,
• 7:38
  dismissed them, didn't listen, made them feel small.
• 7:44
  Those moments may take, you know, five minutes, but sometimes people that carry them for years.
• 7:49
  I remember I had a person who worked for me years ago Let's call him Ralph And
• 7:54
  he had this sort of habit Annoying to his peers That every day at lunch he would
• 8:00
  sit in his cubicle And eat an entire whole onion.
• 8:05
  It made his Cubemates very upset. They all left. And he had a hard time having
• 8:10
  good relationships with them. It smelled up the entire room.
• 8:14
  I went in to see him one day, and I went in as his manager to do,
• 8:17
  you know, manager things.
• 8:19
  To, you know, tell him that what he was doing was, you know, not acceptable, etc.
• 8:25
  But when I sat down and I looked at him with his big eyes and he started to
• 8:30
  explain why he was eating the onion, and my whole demeanor, my whole mindset changed.
• 8:35
  She said, you know, Craig, I'm very overweight, and I learned that if I eat
• 8:39
  an onion every day, I could lose weight.
• 8:42
  And it's very hard for me to lose weight. And at that moment,
• 8:45
  I had such empathy for Ralph, and I realized that he was a person just like
• 8:50
  me trying to deal with a struggle that we all have, although all the struggles
• 8:55
  are different for each of us.
• 8:58
  I told him something like, I understand. Perhaps you could eat the onion outside.
• 9:02
  And he said, you know what? I will.
• 9:05
  And, you know, I remember that story because that's one of the things I find
• 9:10
  so important about humanistic leadership.
• 9:13
  Leadership isn't only what happens in the big decisions.
• 9:18
  It's also what happens in the small human encounters that fill an ordinary workday.
• 9:23
  And the fascinating part is that often we don't even know which encounter that,
• 9:27
  you know, someone will remember The people who never knew Think about your own
• 9:31
  life for a moment Is there a teacher who said something to you that you still remember?
• 9:36
  A coach? A manager?
• 9:39
  Neighbor? Maybe a friend?
• 9:42
  Maybe even a stranger? I've had people tell me things years later that they
• 9:46
  remembered me saying to them And sometimes I barely remember the conversation That's humbling,
• 9:53
  Because it reminds us that we're constantly entering one another's stories Usually
• 9:57
  without knowing what role we're playing You may have encouraged someone years
• 10:01
  ago and completely forgotten about it,
• 10:04
  They may not have You may have shown someone kindness on a terrible day without
• 10:08
  knowing it was a terrible day You may have made someone laugh when they desperately needed to laugh,
• 10:14
  You may have believed in someone before they believed in themselves And you may never know.
• 10:21
  There's something beautiful about that. It also gives us a little responsibility
• 10:25
  because if the smallest interactions can stay with people, then how we treat
• 10:29
  one another in ordinary moments matter.
• 10:32
  Not because we should walk around trying to make every conversation profound. Please don't.
• 10:37
  That would make all of us exhausting to be around. But perhaps we can be a little
• 10:41
  more present, a little more generous, a little more aware.
• 10:45
  We've become very good at not being where we are. And maybe this is becoming
• 10:49
  harder. We live in a world now designed to pull our attention somewhere else.
• 10:53
  We're having dinner while looking at a phone.
• 10:55
  We're walking while thinking about the next meeting. We're in a meeting while answering an email.
• 10:59
  We're talking to someone while part of our mind is already preparing what we're going to say next.
• 11:05
  We're constantly being invited away from whatever we actually are.
• 11:09
  You know, technology gives us extraordinary access to the world.
• 11:13
  It's amazing. But sometimes I wonder, I just wonder whether all that access
• 11:17
  makes it harder to notice the few feet of our world that's immediately around us.
• 11:24
  You know, the person sitting across from us, the person walking beside us,
• 11:29
  the view outside the window, how we're actually feeling, the life we're actually living.
• 11:35
  And I don't think the answer is to reject technology. That's not realistic,
• 11:39
  and I don't think it's desirable.
• 11:41
  The challenge is different. The challenge is learning how to remain human While
• 11:45
  surrounded by the things competing for our attention Maybe that's one of the
• 11:49
  reasons these old memories matter They remind us that attention is part of love,
• 11:55
  When we really notice someone, we're telling them You matter enough for me to be here.
• 12:00
  Maybe ordinary life isn't so ordinary. So I've been wondering,
• 12:05
  how many moments we're living right now that someday will become important memories?
• 12:10
  Maybe something happened to you this week that seemed insignificant.
• 12:14
  Maybe you had coffee with someone.
• 12:15
  Maybe your child called you. Maybe you walked through your neighborhood.
• 12:19
  Maybe somebody at work said something kind to you.
• 12:23
  Maybe you helped someone and
• 12:24
  thought nothing of it. Maybe you sat quietly with someone who needed you.
• 12:29
  Maybe you laughed really hard about something completely ridiculous.
• 12:33
  And, you know, maybe nothing happened at all.
• 12:35
  Maybe you simply had an ordinary morning. We tend to think meaning arrives with fireworks.
• 12:41
  But much of the meaning in our lives arrives quietly.
• 12:44
  And sometimes we don't recognize it until years later.
• 12:48
  That's one reason I become increasingly interested in paying attention.
• 12:52
  Not because every moment has to be so profound.
• 12:55
  That sounds exhausting too. but some moments are just moments.
• 12:59
  Some Tuesdays are just Tuesdays. But perhaps we can be a little more awake to our own lives.
• 13:05
  What are you living right now? So here's something to think about from the park bench this week.
• 13:11
  Instead of asking yourself only, what do I need to accomplish today? Try another question.
• 13:18
  What is happening in my life right now that I might someday wish I had noticed more carefully?
• 13:23
  Don't force an answer. Just sit with the question. Maybe it's someone you love.
• 13:29
  Maybe it's a friendship. Maybe it's your work.
• 13:33
  Maybe it's a colleague. You'll someday miss seeing every day Maybe it's your
• 13:38
  children at the particular age That they're at right now Maybe it's sitting
• 13:43
  at the dinner table With people who won't always be sitting around that table,
• 13:47
  Maybe it's the place you live The work you're doing The person you're becoming,
• 13:52
  Maybe it's simply this particular version of your life Because our lives keep
• 13:57
  changing People change, places change, we change And sometimes we don't recognize
• 14:02
  an error of our life until that era has already ended.
• 14:06
  The map. I keep coming back to that image of my grandfather.
• 14:11
  The car pulled over, the enormous map stretched across the dashboard,
• 14:16
  magnifying glass in his hand, a little boy watching him.
• 14:21
  Neither of us knowing that I would carry that image with me for so many years.
• 14:25
  And now, looking back, I understand it differently.
• 14:29
  Maybe we don't always know what moments matter. So perhaps we should treat a
• 14:34
  few more of them as though they might.
• 14:37
  Slow down occasionally, look around.
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  Notice who's sitting beside you. Listen a little more carefully.
• 14:45
  Notice what you're feeling. Notice where you are.
• 14:49
  And every once in a while, when you're not quite sure where you're going, pull over.
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  Open the map. Take a closer look. because someday, many years from now,
• 15:02
  you may look back at this particular time in your life and realize,
• 15:06
  I didn't know it mattered at the time, but it did.
• 15:10
  I'll see you next time from the park bench.