We’ve all heard stories about leaders who guided people through a storm, the proverbial lighthouses on the edge of cliffs to guide those lost at sea safely home. Steve Pemberton, Chief Human Experience Officer at Workhuman, has had many such people in his life, inspiring him to capture his stories and others in a book called The Lighthouse Effect.
In this episode, Steve shares his deeply personal story and talks about the ‘lighthouses’ in his life, from the high school teacher who took him in when he had nowhere else to go, to a volunteer firefighter who died rescuing others on 9/11.
You’ll learn how you can channel the lighthouse effect as a leader and have an extraordinary impact on the world. Along the way, you’ll gain insight into the importance of collective collaboration and how to shift your vision as your circumstances change.
Truth You Can Act On
1. Start with a Humble Foundation
The very nature of the lighthouse is to be humble because it stands there in a position of leadership. You never know who’s watching you as a leader and the lighthouse never knows who sees it. As leaders, you never know who’s taking example from your very presence, from how you communicate, how you inspire, how you solve problems. And the lighthouse, first and foremost, is a problem solver. That’s what it’s there for. It’s not there for aesthetic beauty. It’s also there in challenging times, times of uncertainty.
2. You Have to Shift When the Land Does
You have to be open to your vision being altered and changed by the facts and circumstances on the ground. I often liken it to having a powerful, strong house. And boy, you’re just ascending and you’re taking off and you’ve got great leaders and you’re building more levels because you keep getting bigger and bigger. Like Workhuman has gone from a 500-person company to a thousand-person company in less than five years, the house is growing. So what happens to some entities that keep growing, why do they collapse? Because they don’t anticipate the land on which the house is sitting shifts. That’s how you wind up with bookstores, as an example, failing to see this intermediating disruptive technology that is Kindle, where people can put 10 books on a device and buy them all in less than 10 minutes. Part of your vision has to be, ‘Where can this go? Where can challenges emerge?’
3. Lead Towards Possibilities
We find ourselves immersed in circumstances of daily challenges. How we respond to a social issue that our people are experiencing, that’s the circumstance. But it is so important to pivot and focus on the possibilities. And the question is, ‘How quickly do you make that move from the circumstance to the possibility?’ All of us have been in rooms where we hear people pound the circumstantial or pound the problem into submission and they keep articulating the problem over and over again. I think leaders have a responsibility to one, pivot from the circumstance to the possibility, and two, to invite others to participate in defining what the possibilities are no matter where they are in the organization.
4. Collective Collaboration is Key
I won’t leave meetings until I feel I have heard all points of view. I say repeatedly, ‘This is not a forum for you to simply agree with me.’ So I use words like ‘pressure test.’ I want you to pressure test the perspective in the room, and raise objections and concerns. It’s born of self-interest because I would much rather my team tell me that I’m wearing stripes and plaid before I walk out the front door and have the marketplace tell me. You see so many faux pas, and I know I’m not the only one who thinks, ‘Boy, didn’t somebody tell them?’ You have to be aware of herd thinking. When we hear ‘great minds think alike,’ that’s true, but that also means that somebody’s redundant. A culture where all the great minds think alike is really problematic.
Book Recommendation:
- Watership Down by Richard Adams
- The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Listen to the full episode: Episode 163: The Lighthouse Effect with Steve Pemberton
