Unpacking Leadership Tropes: Investing in people v Using people 🧑‍🏫

I believe the Relateful Company, and the relateful ecosystem of practitioners is particularly good at investing in people.

The idea may be obvious, but I think it's hard to do well.

I’ve been in a few organizations and communities that used people. Maybe they didn't even realize it; but you can tell by the attitude from. Use-people leadership sees “underlings” who “should be grateful for the opportunity” to spend time with their “superiors”. When they challenge this view they’re seen as “entitled” and “ungrateful”. They should do what’s told. They should respect authority. Usually dressed up in much fancier language.

We’ve all done this. We're likely doing this even now in some way we’re loathe to admit to ourselves. Loathe because it doesn’t match our self-image, but also because it gives us something we think we want—or else we wouldn’t see the world this way. Looking at it, seeing the alternative, means risking losing that payoff.

The attitude from invest-in-people leadership is palpably different. People in our field are like plants in our gardens. They’re going to grow and produce amazing fruit, and our support will help them flourish, making everything better for everyone. We’re lucky for however much time we have with them, these future rockstars. We get to be a part of their story of unfolding (not they get to be a part of ours). In this we model gratitude, entitlement doesn't even enter awareness. Part of this is making sure we’re charging enough money to feel delight in the value we’re receiving, and trusting if the price isn’t right for someone it's not a match rather than devaluing ourselves. (Sidenote: Patagonia does this inspiringly well). Instead, we maintain a culture where it’s our pleasure to invest in these people with opportunities that are at just the right level of difficulty. It is our pleasure to pay them as well as we can afford. We love offering coaching if asked for, otherwise we love learning from them, or with them, holding them when they fail, celebrating their successes as our own, without taking any credit.

This doesn’t mean no accountability. (There’s trimming). It means clear agreements and honest feedback—how can someone grow to be great without knowing where they’re falling short? This doesn’t mean keeping someone around who’s exploiting the ecosystem (there’s weeding). Sometimes it hurts to stop saying yes to someone who you’ve invested in, whose beauty you recognize but is draining resources from the rest of the garden, but now you recognize that yes is a mistake. This doesn’t address the complex issues of power, exclusivity, time, triggers, mistakes—it transforms these into part of the investment (there's compost).

And if they leave and take all that training and support elsewhere, we’re delighted. It does come back, karmically, but NOT because there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but because the in-the-moment experience of investing in the people is one of joy, pleasure, friendship, love, generosity, gratitude, evolution, all the virtues.

I hope to the extent we model this at our events, in our trainings, in all the free 1-1 and coaching training sessions you can sign up for in our community, etc; that it inspires and influences you to invest in the people around you. Whether you’re running an organization or not.

When you live a life of virtue you live a life of purpose and you become a luminary bringing everyone around you up, and they bring you up, in a positive feedback cycle. This is how the long term reward becomes so much greater than when you use people, even if it seems like there’s a short term benefit to using.

With love, Jordan