Put Down the Mallet

Image Credit: Digby Scott / Midjourney.com

"The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will." — William James

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The other day, Mike House and I gathered a group of senior leaders to talk about leadership identity. Within minutes, the conversation took on a life of its own.

One leader, clearly experienced, calmly leaned back and said, almost to himself: "Honestly? I feel like all I do is whack moles."

The room laughed. Then fell quiet. Because everyone knew exactly what he meant.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term‘Whack-a-Mole’, it’s an arcade game from the 1970’s where players use a mallet to bop moles that pop up randomly from holes in the ground. It’s frantic, and keeps players on their toes! 

You get the metaphor.

Back to the conversation. These people weren't ineffective leaders. They were smart, capable, deeply committed people. And yet, by their own account, they were spending most of their time reacting. To the crisis that arrived without warning, to the team conflict that landed in their inbox, to the urgent request that somehow always trumped the important one.

Mole after mole after mole.

Here’s the thing:

The choice to play Whack-a-Mole doesn’t come from the fact that there are plenty of moles to whack. There will always be those.

The choice to play Whack-a-Mole comes from the way you define what you’re there to do. Your leadership identity. 

We become what we think about.

If your leadership identity is centred around solving problems, then that’s what you’ll focus on. You’ll see moles everywhere, and you’ll measure a good day’s work by how many moles you whacked. The treadmill will keep moving, and you’ll keep running.

But what if your identity shifted? What if, instead of asking "what problem do I need to fix today?", you started asking "what do I need to build, so my people can handle this without me?"

That's a different question. It leads to different decisions, different conversations, different outcomes. The moles don't disappear. But you're no longer the one with the mallet.

And beyond that, what if your leadership identity was about building systems and people who can not only solve problems, but also create adaptive systems that evolve with the ever-changing context? People who make the whole thing more resilient, not just more managed?

Leadership is fundamentally an act of attention. What you pay attention shapes everything. Your decisions, your culture, the kind of leader you're becoming.

The place to start is with how you define what you’re here to do.

Here’s a short exercise worth trying. Fill in the blanks:

My purpose as a leader is to (verb) (who/what), so that (impact).

A couple of examples:

"My purpose as a leader is to challenge the assumptions we've stopped questioning, so that we don't mistake familiarity for strategy."

"My purpose as a leader is to ask better questions of the people around me, so that we solve the right problems instead of the obvious ones."

Notice how neither of those starts with "fix" or "solve."

I'll leave you with this: if someone followed you around for a week and watched where your attention went, what would they conclude your leadership identity actually is?

Is that the identity you'd choose?