Unreasonableness or Conscious Boldness?
How unreasonable are you?
Andrew Roberts, the author of Leadership in War: Essential Lessons from Those Who Made History, speaks about the talent for unreasonableness as an attribute of a great leader.
This past year has been challenging. It was difficult to make an important decision without questioning – at least to some extent – whether it is unreasonable in the given context.
If I look back at the last decade, 2020 was the year of many confronting issues in all major areas of my life and work. The decisions I took on where to invest my time, money and heart, could easily be labelled as – unreasonable. Unless of course we change the perspective to say that the harder life circumstances were, the bolder my response to them was. In the bold leader’s language: the bigger the discomfort, the bolder the vision.
Let me tell you a personal story that changed my relationship with unreasonableness.
“Here’s the thing. You know what I want to see more of you?”, he shouted straightforwardly with the answer waiting to burst out of him. I heard his loudness pushing against the walls of the training room and for a moment I was unsure if that was the echo of his voice or my own heart pulsating at the discomfort of what I may hear next.
He was my front of the room leader in the leadership development retreat where vulnerability was served three times a day, at minimum.
“Un-rea-son-able-ness”, I guess he said it in such a way to have those syllables imprinted on my mind and my heart before he continued: “You are so reasonable. Everything that you do is so reasonable. Like a super good work of art that never allowed itself to be a master-piece.”
He then paused. “Go do unreasonable stuff that your soul is craving for! Your world needs what you’re craving for!”
At that point I switched to listening to the voice inside of me: “Whatever you do, just be clever. Be clever.”
Life-long mantra instilled into me from my very early childhood. Be clever. Whatever you do. Oh, in a split of that second it made sense. I connected the dots.
And as I did, my inner conversation went on: “But what does it mean to be clever? Not to rock the boat? Not to go against? Never to confront? But I’ve been born to question and confront. We all have. So, now, what do we do with that part of me? Do we switch it off as if it didn’t exist? Do we just shut down that desire in me that’s the source of all meaning and aliveness? Do we make sure I don’t lose my best life yet by never daring to create it and serve the world with it? Ok, I’ve got it: we’re calling it being reasonable.”
They say we’ve got two lives. The other one begins once we realise it’s only ONE life that we really have. From that moment on in my life, I confront myself with this question every time I’m making an important choice: Am I being unreasonable or am I being consciously bold?
I trust I have many more years to face that dilemma and live to see the outcome in many different contexts. So far, this compass has not let me down.
George Bernard Shaw says that the reasonable man adapts himself to the world, while the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, as he says, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
What progress in your system – be it your organisation, your team, any of your communities – depends on your unreasonableness?
Bold leaders have a different relationship with unreasonableness. In their mindset, unreasonableness stands for a hint, an alarm signal to question and to ask: What’s trying to happen here that I myself or my environment are showing resistance to? In what way is it inviting me to act on it? Will I eventually approach it with safe reasonableness or conscious boldness?
Whatever it is, perhaps..
it's inviting you to move from safe conformity to an uncomfortable but very much needed confrontation.
it's urging you to change the perspective and see confrontation as a path to creativity and meaningful work through radically open conversations, which is exactly what we need more of in our every community.
it’s calling you to confront yourself first to be able to confront your environment, which is how every true change actually starts.
it’s showing up as an opportunity for you to close the gap between what feels safe and what really matters, which is what leaders do.
What our conversation here is really about is – risk. The decision to be a risk-taker in the world that has its conservative approach to what is reasonable. That same world that has been most significantly changed by bold risk-takers. Because they find their reason in their concern about the collective world. And they are committed to act in service of its best version yet.
In acting out of this service, bold leaders pave the road from reasonable conformity to potentially risky integrity with a purpose. Their purpose is brought to life by a great step away from their safety-craving ego as their self-interest and towards the radical humanity and risky openness for the collective benefit.
It’s not unreasonable to think that it’s possible to live and work this way. It is consciously bold.