Tod Treat

Into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul – John Muir

In 2019, I went silent. Or at least my blog did. Over the course of those many months, I have been seeking. Seeking a career path forward, seeking to better understand what happened in the rearview mirror, seeking to better understand myself. Over the course of many years since, I have transitioned from a sense of permanence to uncertainty to possibilities and back again. It feels odd, living and working in the in between, in some kind of liminal state, and I found it uncomfortable. So I sat still and waited. I listened and read. I took walks…

One day, while hiking along the sagebrush steppe of North Central Washington, it suddenly hit me that these timeouts are natural and often necessary. Indeed, biographies are full of such events. Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, Siddhartha’s years long quest, or, if you prefer something out of pop culture, Batman’s beginnings. A retreat or timeout prepares one for being tested. Setbacks create opportunity for learning, and learning sets the stage for something bigger. Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin writes about several of these instances in her book Leadership in Turbulent Times. Abraham Lincoln lost a contentious Illinois senator election only to reflect on it and learn. Teddy Roosevelt, after the death of his wife, traveled west and from it revisioned America. These are stories about greatness punctuated by personal crisis, and I do not mean to compare myself in any way to religious or political leaders. I am just seeing how important it is to go on a walkabout to gain perspective or to prepare for the next trial or tribulation.

Sandy Shugart, in Leadership in the Crucible of Work, states it really well (especially for this chemist)…

Trained as a chemist, I knew that a crucible was a hardened ceramic vessel in which to perform reactions that would shatter an ordinary Pyrex flask with too much heat, pressure, reactivity, corrosive by-products. Heat, pressure, reactivity, corrosive by-products: to me, this sounded like work, my work. Not every minute of every day, but often.

The threat of the crucible of work is always in the background, especially for leaders: those who have accepted heightened responsibility for others and for the performance of their organization; those who live with accountability for many variables that are out of their control; those who are tempted, in fact taught, to assert control using the tools of power and hierarchy at their disposal; those who face the possibility of very public failure; and those who…. Instead of being deformed in the heat of the crucible, might … be purified and formed, like bronze, into something more valuable?

To be genuinely healthy in our work and in our leading requires a kind of mindfulness, an integration or weaving back together of the various strands of our selves, even as the crucible of work tries to fractionate and strip them apart.

Time will tell, as it always does, but I am appreciative of the quiet shaping power of nature and time alone in turning one’s perspective.

Sandy Shugart, PhD. Leadership in the Crucible of Work: Discovering the Interior Life of an Authentic Leader . Pronoun. Kindle Edition.