“Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.”
~ Moses
Sometimes when we work with a senior leader with a struggling area of their business, they are forced to make a leadership change. They level all their efforts on getting a proper replacement. But rather than hastily making the new hire, we often ask them to embody the role of the exiting leader for a season as a first step.
Despite how knowledgeable a person is about every aspect of the business, walking a while in the shoes of the struggling leader can be powerfully illuminating. There are often other people's issues, challenges, or unknown vagaries of running that portion of the business that can only be fully understood from the inside. Leaders then grow in empathy and understanding and make much better hires.
It is a bit of what Moses is getting at in the quote we started with. Teaching moral principles is necessary (we are particularly good at that), but embodying them in every arena of your life (we are not particularly good at that) is necessary if they are going to be truly caught. So understanding comes from seeing things lived out rather than just shouting them out.
Children are particularly adept at learning through example rather than being taught, but employees aren't much different.
Don Draper, one of the advertising executives from the celebrated AMC show Mad Men, doesn't seem to adhere to traditional morality. His ability to creatively manipulate while not possessing any relational attachment makes him incredibly unlikable but also very successful in the advertising of his day. You had to be pretty detached to overcome every health risk and consequence and successfully market a client's cigarettes, for example.
In a flashback from his early life, Don remembers encountering a homeless man (a hobo, as they called him in the Depression-era United States). The man had agreed to do several days of hard labor in return for payment from his father. But once the work was completed, his father refused payment to the powerless man.
While staying on their property during the work, the man taught Don the "hobo code" of symbols used to help others find food and work or even warn them about danger. As the man left, hat in hand, without any payment, Don noticed the "dishonest man" symbol written on the front gate of his father's house. Despite the moral high ground his father spoke from, his actions told another story. Don came by his moral ambiguity, honestly.
The way we live speaks even louder than what we are saying.
Consider
Do you have an area of your business that is struggling?
Is it time to make a change?
Do you think it might first serve you to embody the role for a season in order to make a truly informed best replacement?