The hits just keep on coming, people. Paul Angone was a student and then colleague at my previous workplace, and he consistently impressed me with his wisdom and enthusiasm. I’m enjoying seeing many former students gather together in support of his new venture, All Groan Up. It’s the perfect blend of humor, irony and truth about life in your twenties– as is Paul himself.
I began down the path of self-leadership the moment I began writing a book.
I began writing my book to avoid a knife fight.
Literally. And slightly figuratively.
Let me explain.
There I was one fateful night. Right out of college, traveling alone for my job, staring at the sturdy metal bars lining the windows of my “diamond in the rough motel room, just minutes away from downtown.”
As a traveling salesman, the routine of motel life becomes painstakingly repetitive. And my routine? M & M’s and reruns of “Friends” — the chocolate euphoria and familiarity of the storyline making me feel strangely at home. While candy from a vending machine and watching hours of TV might not have been the healthiest of routines, it was one I stuck to religiously.
However, on said “fateful night”, a shouting match commenced outside my door. As the shouting turned to screaming, I sat uneasily on the corner of the bed looking at the serene painting of fruit hanging on the wall, then back to the three separate locks lining my motel door like soldiers getting ready for war. Each lock looked big enough to keep out a stampede of wild bison in case they escaped from the local zoo. So I couldn’t help but ask myself, why three? Was there a police report somewhere on Room #113: “In conclusion, two locks, just wasn’t enough.” A slightly unnerving thought.
So either I willfully opened the door to put my life at risk for a bar of chocolate. Or I did something different. And purely out of a desire not to become referee for the knife-fight that was surely about to commence, I chose option B. I started writing a book on a motel room floor — a simple act of escape that would end up saving my life in more ways than one. The end of my first page, the beginning of self-leadership.
The Deep Change of Authentic Leadership
As Max Dupree writes in Leadership is an Art, “the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” For the next months and years as I wrote my book on the floor of random motel rooms and coffee shops, I was searching for truth with each keystroke. The transition out of college into the life of cubicles, routine, and sales-trips affected me more than I wanted to admit. I was doubting myself, my future, my hope, and my God. Nothing was off limits. My calling felt like a jagged box of mismatched puzzle pieces with no picture on the front of the box to go by. So like most puzzles, my calling was shoved in the back of the closet behind the vacuum and the winter jackets. The big life I was surely promised becoming a fairy tale I had heard a long, long, time ago.
The act of writing quickly became the best, and worst, experience of my life. Writing became the “Best” because it forced me to put definition to something that was indefinable. “Worst” because it forced me to put definition to something that was indefinable. A hurricane was swirling around me and all I could do was take notes. Writing was as freeing as it was excruciating because it forced me to go to a deeper place than ever experienced before. Like repelling into the Grand Canyon – the views were incredible, while the feeling I might fall to my death all too real.
As Parker Palmer writes, the truest form of an authentic leader “leads the rest of us to a place of hidden wholeness because they have been there and know the way” (Palmer, 2000). A true leader has waded through the muck of pain, so that they might bring forth healing first for themselves and then for others. The authentic leader risks the comfort of what’s known to discover what’s imagined. By no means is this an enviable journey, but to truly lead, it is necessary. As Professor Quinn writes in his book Deep Change:
“The hero’s journey is a story of individual transformation, a change of identity. In embarking on the journey, we must leave the world of certainty…[W]e must surrender our present self…Change is hell. Yet not to change, to stay on the path of slow death is also hell. The difference is that the hell of deep change is the heroes journey” (Quinn, Deep Change, p. 45 and 78).
Your Story Leads to Their Story
As I continued writing my book and sharing my story of struggle, doubt, and dead-ends to others my age an amazing thing began to happen — my story created an open space for others to share theirs. Transparency begot transparency. I felt like I was embarking on anything but a “heroes journey,” yet, my willingness to speak openly about how the crap was getting kicked out of me everyday was touching on a collective narrative worth telling.
I learned that the successful leader exemplifies truth from the inside-out with consistent authenticity that knows who they are and who they are not. The clear communication of this self-definition has the power to connect at a deeper level with followers as they inspire and motivate them to personal and collective transformation. The authentic leader gives first of him or herself and you cannot give something that you do not first possess.
As I stand now at the end of the writing process, my book ready to be shared with the world, I realize now that you cannot give the gift of authentic self-leadership if you have not paid for it in full, and most times at a very high cost.
And that process, sometimes, starts on a motel room floor.
Paul Angone is an author, speaker and story-teller bent on discussing what’s really going on in the “Emerging Adult” years. Paul is the host of AllGroanUp.com – a website for those btween growing and grown. His debut book: “Are You My Life?; Searching for Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job!” has been described as “Donald Miller meets Office Space” and hits bookstores Spring 2012. Find Paul Twitterized at @PaulAngone