Coaching in Analogies #18: Air Force One stuck in the mud
The client was the head of an academic institution, a role he’d held for just a few months but had done at two other schools in the past. He was pretty unflappable, but today he was visibly rattled. His pen sliced through the air as he gestured his way through his latest challenges.
He felt that his role as a change agent and his plans to set a sustainable course for the future were at risk, he explained, because of forces that seemed to be beyond his control. Bureaucracy, tradition, inertia, perhaps employees in the wrong jobs, were making almost everything take longer than he wanted it to take. From something as complicated as reorganizing a department to something as simple as ordering a new chair, it all left him stymied and feeling pretty helpless.
The danger, my client realized, was that he wouldn’t be able to fulfill everyone’s expectations of him as a leader. From his staff on up to his boss, everyone was counting on him to improve things his predecessors could not. He had a one-on-one scheduled with his chairperson the next day, and was grappling with how much of his struggle to reveal.
We talked through various possibilities. Say too little, and the expectations might continue unfulfilled. Say too much, and he risked laying all of his problems at someone else’s feet. He landed on asking his boss, who had worked with him at a previous employer as well, for some guidance on how to help move the obstacles or work through them.
After our call, I remembered something from my distant career past.
When I was a young television reporter in downstate Illinois, then-President Clinton had wrapped up a visit to our media market when his plane got stuck in the mud. One of the wheels had come just a little bit off the pavement at the small Urbana airport, and the jet could go no further. Of course, this made national news as some of my colleagues got to cover the story. The airport was closed for several hours as a backup plane arrived for the president and the press, and workers eventually freed the original.
Jokes about the trajectory of Clinton’s presidency aside, I think there’s a lesson here. Air Force One is the stuff of legend and the subject of a Harrison Ford movie. It has some of the most advanced communications equipment, a kitchen, sleeping quarters and a medical staff on board. And for all of this sophistication, it is sometimes no match for a simple, sticky substance that’s been around for millions of years.
Sometimes, in other words, we just get stuck in stuff.
Coaching prompts:
What unexpected obstacles have challenged you in your leadership?
How do you understand the distinction between your own limitations and external factors that can make you less effective?