Crash Test Dummy Leaders

Hi, welcome to Leadership Insider. I want to speak to you today about this idea that leaders are crash test dummies. This is a phrase I coined many years ago when I was speaking at a leaders event and I'd just been through a lot of difficult things as a leader and I kind of felt that what I'd gone through really should benefit someone else. I kind of felt that what I'd gone through and the hard knocks I had taken, many of which I didn't see coming and many of which hurt emotionally because it was the pain of betrayal from staff members that I felt were capable of that and it was that kind of emotional pain and mental pain that I'd gone through for a season that had really knocked the stuffing out of me and I thought, I can do several things with this. I just sort of suck it up and try and bounce back and move on and become a little bit more guarded and more cynical, more suspicious around people, lose a bit of me in the process I suppose, become a worse version of me because of what it all did to me. That's a choice. I suppose we can judge people for choosing that, I get it. But I felt as part of what comes with the turf of leadership is the realisation that we are leading for the benefit of others, that we're in this privileged position of the benefit of others, which means that when we go through difficult, painful times, it's our job responsibility to find something in it, to find something in the pain, in the difficulty, in the suffering, in the setback, the disappointment, the hardship, to find something that we can pass on to others, that we become metaphorically crash test dummies to help people survive the collisions that may be coming for them in their life. As we know, crash test dummies are that. They are dummies that are strapped into a vehicle and smashed into a wall. And then what happens to the dummy is supposed to help us understand what may happen to you and me in the same scenario. Often as leaders, we are the crash test dummies strapped into that seat in our leadership roles. We are experiencing all kinds of collisions and setbacks and disappointments and beatings and woundings that we ultimately need to see as this is my opportunity to learn, to see something here that others wouldn't bother to look for because they're not leaders. Leaders lead when there's nothing to lead, there's no one to lead. Leaders are leaders because they have a title and a position that calls them that. Leaders are leaders because they're wired in a certain way different to non-leaders. Leaders are people who see everything they go through as ultimately something that can grow them and through them grow others including collisions, including danger and difficulty and pain and setback and suffering. And I realized in that season of my life decades ago that I was going through some terrible things but others were too. I thought how many more thousands, millions of people are experiencing what I'm experiencing and don't know what to do about it or are watching someone who has stepped away from that collision, who is not handling it well, who has decided to quit and give up and retreat back into their shell and quit on life, who's watching that and realizing and thinking well I will never attempt that in my life. If we watch someone attempt something that we know we need to attempt in our life and a difficult conversation we need to have. Something we need to attempt and push the margins with our business, with our products, with our ideas, with our culture, with our workforce. Something we need to experiment with, push the boundaries and we saw someone else do it and they didn't do it well and they didn't survive it and got damaged and hit and used that to say to all of us don't do this whatever you do and we get scared by association and it makes us more nervous and more risk averse. Then I don't think we did our job as crash test dummies to say to people hey here's what we attempted, here's what I attempted, here's what I learned, here's what I would do different next time, here's what I would do if I were you attempting the same thing. So we're encouraging people perhaps to step up and attempt what we attempted but here's what I learned that would make your attempt better than mine, more successful than mine. I'm using my injuries in my crash test dummy collision experience to help someone else. What are you going through today as a leader that you need to journal about, pay attention to, immerse yourself in that can help me help someone else? What did you find out about you? About people? About business? About what matters most to you? What did you find out that no one talks about? What did you find out that no one would ever find out unless they took the hit? There are things you'll never know unless you head for that wall at full speed as it were. What did you find out? What do you know that's priceless that no one's telling you is priceless? What do you know that you've hidden and buried because it was so painful that you don't realize that's the treasure? That was the treasure. Go back and retrieve it. Don't get so consumed with the pain that you forget to take the lesson from it. There is a pearl in every pain. There is a treasure in every tragedy. I wonder what you walked away from and left behind that you didn't collect. Go back and pick up what you learned about you and about people and about life and teach it and tell that to us. Some of the greatest songs in the world are from that. Some of the greatest books and movies in the world are from that. Some of the greatest humans in the world are from that. Please don't waste your trauma. Don't waste your hurt and your pain and your disappointment, your betrayal. Don't waste it. You are our crash test dummies. What did you learn in your pain? And often in life we get so overwhelmed. It's like a woman giving birth who decides it's too painful in labor. She decides this is just too painful and tries to get off the table and walk away because the pain has become all-consuming. I think it's a metaphor for life. I think sometimes what we're going through is so painful that we follow a relationship with the pain, forgetting that the pain is going to result in the joy of your life, in the breakthrough of your life, in the discovery of your life. And therefore through that to someone else's discovery and breakthrough and understanding that the pain is all about the child, the baby, the end result, the reward, what it's all about. So is that you today? Are you experiencing a collision at the moment in your life, in your work life as a leader? I want you to reframe it as you are in this space as our champion. Our crash test dummy. You are going to discover things, understand things, have insight you've never had about things that's priceless for you and then through you to us. What wall are you hitting today? What pain are you experiencing? Use it. Use the difficulty. I remember watching a documentary when the actor Michael Caine, the British actor Michael Caine was speaking about his early acting days. He was doing a scene, an action had been set and he started the action. He started acting. He comes through a door into a kitchen. There's a piece of furniture behind the door that hadn't been moved by the props team, by the set people. And so he stopped and went out to start again. And the director said, what are you doing? He said, there's a chair behind the door that shouldn't be there. So the door hit it when I came in. And the director said, well, why did you stop acting? Use the difficulty. The director said, Michael, use the difficulty. Learn to be the kind of actor that if something happens on set like that, use it to enhance the scene. Use the difficulty. It never left me. How are you using the difficulty? Or is it using you? Did you stop acting? Did you stop leading? Did you stop speaking? Did you stop being you? Because the difficulty made you realize or think or decide, well, that's ruining the scene. That wasn't supposed to happen. That wasn't planned. Use the difficulty. That's what crash test dummies do. We use the difficulty. And most of us are not doing that. Most of your staff and team don't do that. That's why you're a leader. That's why leaders are few and followers are many. So we need you as our leaders to come back from the collision. And it may be nothing to do with your work life. It may be something in your personal life. But of course, once you realize how that's helped you become a better human, a better version of you, bring that to work. I'm not talking here about things that happen at work and things that happen in your life. What collisions are you going through in your personal life, in your health, in your relationships, in your home, in your intimate romantic relationships? What things are you learning that are helping you become a better human? You can pass on to us. I don't mean with all the details of where you learned it from, but I mean what you learned in that scenario that's making you show up better as a leader, as a human, as a boss. Where are you getting that stuff from? Where are you learning that stuff from? We can see that you are growing. We can see that you're responding differently. We can see that you have lifted your game, those of us that see you day in day out. But we don't know where you got it from. We want to know behind the scenes. That's why this is leadership insider. Give us the inside story of where you learned that from so that we might realize that happened to us last week, last month, last year. But we didn't take anything from it because we just despised the pain. And we didn't take the child away with it from us. We didn't take the seed that was inside the sorrow. We just parked up on the sorrow. But what you did was you took the seed from your sorrow and shared it with us. That's what leadership insider does. It gives us the inside, behind the scenes scoop on how you tick, on how you think, on how you reframe, on how you do things different to the rest of us. And it's gold. It's priceless for those of us that do life with you. I know it's not a great thing to admit to or to have said to us that you are, I am a crash test dummy who wants to go to work or wake up every morning and believe that that's what my day is going to be. But it is on what you discover, what you awaken to, what you understand, what you see in your tragedy, in your difficulty, in your suffering is ultimately what makes you the kind of leader that we want to follow and serve in longevity. Be proud to be a crash test dummy. Nobody's volunteering for that. And every day as a leader, that's what you do. You volunteer to go through difficult things no one else would go through. You choose to head for that wall and fork out. You choose to take risks. You choose those difficulties. And you decide, okay, I'm going to use this to grow me and through me to grow others. You are, and maybe your entire business is in some way, a crash test dummy for other businesses. What you are doing is pioneering something new in your sector of business, wherever it may be. You get to set the bar high on what you do because you have decided to not shy from risks and collisions and difficult conversations and tough days. You decided not to avoid those, but to plow straight into them and realize I learned something nobody could have ever taught me. I learned something I could never have known unless I decided to wear the hat of being a crash test dummy. I want to thank all of you here that are listening to this, watching this. I want to thank you leaders. Every day you live your life like this. Every day you live like a crash test dummy and no one says thank you to you. From one crash test dummy to another, thank you. You are the people that make the world go round. You are the people that make life and business better. Thank you for getting up this morning and carrying on despite the hit you took yesterday. Here you are doing your job, leading us, loving us, serving us, and no one knows yet what you went through yesterday. No one knows how painful that betrayal was, how painful that setback was, what it cost you. No one knows because you're processing it, you're managing it, you're growing through it, and a few weeks from now you're going to tell us about it. I'm going to be so appreciative that you didn't quit. You kept going to teach us what it taught you because that's going to teach us something that's going to make us step up and take risks. Or it's going to make us attempt what you attempted, but do it way better because of what you learned. It is an act of service and kindness and love to us. You are our heroes. You are our crush test dummies. You make our life better. Thank you for what you do. All right. Thanks for being here. I hope this was helpful to you. Let me know in the comments if this helped you. Please subscribe and follow. It helps the ratings of the podcast. I will see you next time. All the best. Cheers.