The Crucibles of Leadership

Learning to reflect on the past year.

Vincent Marois

I was recently discussing with a friend about this year, which is about to close, and what is, and will be, its impact on us. Both of us experienced some similar events, such as moving countries and dealing with work-induced stress, which served as a common ground for a reflection on this year. As I was telling my latest adventures and misfortunes, she pointed out an article, The Crucibles of Leadership from the September 2002 issue of the Harvard Business Review. While I recommend you take the time to read it, this piece highlights the importance of learning from our most difficult moments. To me, it came across as the clearest expression of thoughts I had been having for some time but could not fully formulate, hopefully until now.

Don’t waste a good crisis — Winston Churchill

The Crucibles of Leadership illustrates how people who can “extract strength and wisdom from their most trying moments” are the ones more likely to take on leadership positions later on in their careers. I find this idea very appealing, with the small caveat that I am uncertain my trying times are on the level of “leader-defining moments” just yet. As an example, one such moment cited in the article is being wrongly imprisoned for 16 years, in solitary confinement.

However, I believe that we should take away lessons and insights from any difficult moment we have faced. This ties nicely with another idea I believe in, which is that life is lived in chapters. To finish the current chapter, and move on to the next one, one should benefit from this transition period to reflect on what happened and whether any of it is worthy enough to encode as a Principle (I refer here the curious reader to the book Principles by Ray Dalio). We may find that some chapters offer nothing worthy of being new principles, but we should ask ourselves this question every time we go through one of these transition periods.

To build the habit of questioning ourselves whether anything is interesting to keep from recent events, I have found that journaling helps. I picked up this habit 2 years ago, and this has been an interesting exercise so far. Journaling offers the opportunity to take time (I have found that every 2 weeks works well for me) to write some thoughts. At first, these thoughts can simply tell what happened since we last journaled. Recalling what happened in this lapse of time and summarizing it enough to make it fit in a journal entry will naturally help us sort these events and highlight the ones we cared about most. Once we are comfortable enough with this first exercise, we can focus on the thoughts we would like to keep. Journaling with a pen & paper here has the benefit of being a slow exercise: I type on a keyboard much faster than I write and sitting still with a pen & paper for a long period remains challenging. These 2 aspects favor shorter thoughts rather than longer ones, as these are easier to write. A shorter thought isn’t intrinsically better than a long one, but it fits better as a journal entry, and perhaps makes it easier to explain and share with others. Finally, if using an actual journal for this exercise, we can then revisit older journal entries, essentially traveling through time and reading through our past chapters (literally).

I have found that this works well for journal entries covering ~ two weeks each, but less so for longer time periods, for which we cannot immediately identify the principles we want to extract. Longer periods, e.g. covering a few months, seem to warrant a delay before reflecting on them. This isn’t surprising: the longer a period, the more events it contains, and so the longer it will take for us to “digest” it fully before being able to summarize it in a few principles. We may want to touch on several topics when capturing these principles, and the format of a journal entry may be too constraining, whether for space (a longer time period could end up being a longer journal entry), or shareability: A journal may not be the right medium to record these longer-form takeaways, particularly if we would like to share them with other people. Sharing with other people has the potential for interesting conversations, which we should thrive for.

What’s your crisis?

2020 is, ironically, a great year to try this out. This year has been exhausting for many people and continues to be so for many others. Everyone is going through their unique series of events, positive or negative ones, engulfed by the uncertainty of the pandemic which everyone shares.

Yet, hard times are probably ideal for extracting lessons as, simply put, “we can identify what went wrong”. There is a lot of literature on that topic, and I can recommend chapter 2 of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson as a good starting point.

I personally point to the period between March & July as being the most stressful one. Searching for a job in the middle of an economic crisis, and unsure about where I would go once my current contract would end, has caused its fair share of anxiety. While I won’t linger on the details, I am grateful to be currently in a stable situation, having started a new job and moved to a new country. This change represents a new chapter, and I am only now looking back at this change, almost 3 months after it happened. I have tried several times to journal about this experience, postponing it each time as I couldn’t wrap my head around it, only to understand that it wasn’t working just yet, as explained above.

My principles

It is thus recently that I felt I could complete my train of thoughts on this past chapter and understand that regular journaling wasn’t working for recording my takeaways from 2020. Why the blog post then? I find this format appealing for these reasons:

  • I want to make sure I do not miss out on any lessons I can learn from 2020. The format of a blog post feels more “formal” than journaling and thus forces me to fully flesh out these thoughts. Journaling, by its more private nature, allows for incomplete thoughts and is thus less challenging as a writing exercise. It may also leave the feeling that I never fully closed the previous chapter.
  • I can share it with others. Sharing a thought with someone else allows you to stress-test it and check that it is sound. This feels like something I would want to do for takeaways from 2020.
  • Coming back to the “formal” feel of a blog post and the idea of revisiting previous chapters by reading our writing from then, this may be better fitted for yearly reflections, leaving “regular” journaling for in-between reflections. There would thus be biweekly (or so) journaling to take the time to reflect on very recent events, and yearly reflections to record the lessons we learned over the past year or chapter. Two different levels of writing for two different timelines.

 

Here are the principles I take away from 2020:

Hone your most basic habits

2020 has reminded us we cannot take anything for granted. Things are constantly shifting, and we face difficulties knowing where to direct our limited attention span. As things change, we have to continuously adapt and readjust to the situation we find ourselves in. Facing a lockdown is a fitting example: suddenly, we stay at home (for those who can), having to set up our bedroom, kitchen, or living room for remote work, and unsure how this new reality will affect our mental and physical health.

These sudden changes can consume an important part of our attention, diminishing it for the things which are important to us: spending time with family, working out, eating healthy, making music, etc. The list of important things is unique to each of us, with the common denominator being that if something is important to us, we allocate a larger part of our attention to it. Yet, sudden changes can disrupt our attention and shift it away from these important things: A deadline at work may affect our sleep or exercise schedule, etc.

There is thus an incentive here to protect things important to us from the randomness life continuously throws at us and minimize the attention we dedicate to them. That’s where habits come in.

Making a habit of something is the brain’s way of automating it. Whenever we trigger one of our habits, our brain unconsciously switches to autopilot and follows the routine it knows until it gets the reward it expects. This enables it to minimize the attention dedicated to that specific routine and thus allows to allocate more of it to things that need to be dealt with. Habits are an extremely powerful tool that we can learn to identify and manipulate to our benefit. I highly recommend the book The Power of Habits by Charles Duhigg if you are interested in that topic.

I would thus recommend building habits around the few things which are truly important to you, to ensure that you’ll stick to them, regardless of how your day is unfolding. Put another way, if you can make something feel as natural as, say, breathing, it is likely that you will keep doing it, without dedicating most of your attention to it and regardless of external events. You will then be able to redirect this unused attention to the things which cannot be as easily automated, such as the unexpectedness of life.

Consider these habits as the foundations on which you keep building as you navigate through life. If these foundations are rock-solid, an unexpected earthquake may shake the top floor of your house, but foundations will remain. That will allow you to rebuild faster than if the foundations had been razed.

Coming to personal examples, sleep, nutrition/hydration, and working out are essential to me, and represent the supporting pillars of everything else I do. I will have a bad day if one of these things changes and I have thus built habits to ensure I will stick to them daily. In particular, I have specific morning and evening routines, which delimitate my day. A morning routine will help you get ready for the day ahead, notably if you haven’t slept well. Similarly, an evening routine will get your body ready for recovery, even if your day was hectic. These routines don’t have to be detailed to the minute, or even immutable. You’ll find that some things will work well and others won’t: the game here is to find which sequence works best for you.

Here are my morning and evening routines if some inspiration would be useful:

Morning routine:

  • Wake up, usually around 6 am on weekdays. I enjoy waking up early to benefit from the ambient calm of the morning hours.
  • Drink some water: this will help you wake up and recover from the loss of water, which naturally happens during sleep. A simple tip here is to keep a bottle on your bedside table (this works well throughout the day as well: if you have a bottle of water within reach, you’ll build the habit of using it).
  • Eat breakfast. I have the same breakfast almost every day. I have found one which I consider healthy and which brings me enough energy to start the day.
  • Freshen up in the bathroom, make my bed then sit at my desk with a tea and focus on the things I care about. It’s usually reading the news and then focusing on one task for about an hour. Currently, it’s writing this article. My phone is on silent mode and put away.
  • Have a coffee ~1 hour after and refill my water bottle with some electrolytes. Electrolytes are helpful to keep up with hydration. You can consider this coffee break as a small reward for having started your day as you intended to and having already done some work.
  • Around 8-8.30am, I’ll switch to start my workday.

That routine ensures I start the day at the pace I enjoy (note the coffee break) and get some work done while enjoying the morning calm. I prioritize tasks that demand focus during the morning hours.

Evening routine:

  • Most days, I’ll get a workout in. I have a specific weekly training schedule and will explain that in more depth in the next lesson (Focus on the things you can control). I prefer to work out in the late afternoon/evening as this is my way of relaxing after a long day.
  • I’ll have dinner, usually not long after working out, and get a hot drink (e.g. as simple as an orange peel in hot water) to help with digestion and hydration.
  • I’ll continue with an hour of work: this mimics the hour of work I get in the morning and be used to catch up on things I missed during the day: emails, etc.
  • Around 9 pm, I’ll do some stretching for about 10-15 minutes.
  • I’ll then meditate for 10 minutes. Meditation may sound corny, but consider it a breathing exercise to help you relax and prepare for sleep. The Headspace app is very helpful. Some people prefer to meditate in the morning.
  • Finally, I’ll read until ~10.15 pm if I don’t fall asleep earlier.

The major difficulty with these types of routines is to make them stick. This requires consistency and some discipline, notably if we intend to consider them as foundations of our daily life. I have added these routines to my calendar, to ensure that I build my day (e.g. scheduling meetings) around them and not consider them as an afterthought.

Understand that you cannot control everything, so focus on the things you can

There are two parts to this principle, the first one being more theoretical and the second one more pragmatic. I think of them as just one principle and thus link both together.

The first part dictates “Understand that you cannot control everything”, which may come across as negative, or unhopeful. It isn’t. It’s perhaps the harder one, though.

In an ideal world, things would always go the way we want them to be and we could shape them to our benefit. After all, if we put enough effort into something, it will work out the way we want it to, right? You’ve probably noticed that this doesn’t always happen. As a friend simply put it, “life doesn’t always go the way we want it to”, the reason being that it’s a complex web of relationships between people, events and we are in the middle of it. There are people and events which may hurt us: we thought we could trust that person, or we thought we had done well in that job interview but didn’t get it, etc. Each of us probably has a long list of examples. Add to this us not knowing how tomorrow will unfold, and this can be truly paralyzing. We’re not sure where to put effort, because we’re uncertain what will pay off, so we try to control everything. And we may end up burned out.

We cannot control how things will go, so do not agonize over the ones which do not go the way you wanted them to go. However, this isn’t about giving up. This is about controlling our actions and how we react to external events, rather than trying to control the external events themselves. It’s about preparedness and self-control: “Prepare for the worst and hope for the best”. If we are deliberate about it, controlling how we react to external stimuli can more consistently pay off in our favor. This is of course much easier said than done.

What can you do about it then? “Focus on the things you can control” is the brief answer. Here again, this isn’t about giving up. It’s about shifting your focus on things for which you have a better handle on how they will play out. From an “observer” point of view, the fewer external dependencies an activity has, the more it is likely to be under your control. A simple example is that I usually decide when I want to wake up. If I want to sleep in, I can, as it only depends on me. I’ll assume the consequences this may have, but it usually isn’t dependent on external factors.

This may represent a rule of thumb to decide which things you would like to focus on. Developing a little further, we can ask ourselves these questions:

  • If I wanted this to succeed, would it take a major effort from me, or a small one?
  • If this succeeds, what impact will it have on achieving my goals? Will it be significant or not?

If we can quantify, even approximately, the impact of an undertaking to the effort it would take for this to succeed, this may give us a better idea of which should be worth pursuing. Another example here is choosing to write this post about my takeaways of 2020. I feel it will have a non-negligible impact on me, for the reasons I have laid out in the introduction. The effort is here somewhat significant as well, in that I cannot complete this piece in one sitting. And it has few external dependencies, which puts it squarely in the list of things I have control over. This supports why I have been focusing on it over the last few weeks.

One last example, which is taking this idea of control a little further, is about working out. Whether it is going out for a run or hitting the gym, I have control over my workout regime, and I dedicate sufficient attention to it to ensure I keep full control over it.
If I want to go out for a run, I put on my shoes and get out the door. The simplicity of this makes it very appealing to consider running (and working out) my mental escape. It represents an activity that has a significant immediate impact on me (mostly by fighting off anxiety and relieving stress), and I decide how much effort I put in it. If I want to for a longer run or gym session, I can do so. If I feel it is best to take a day of rest, I can do so as well. Structuring the effort I provide, by having a specific weekly training schedule, makes it easier to manage, and facilitates its integration into my habits (cf Hone your most basic habits above). It also ensures that I can maintain this effort over a long period (e.g. through winter), and work towards a longer-term goal (e.g. running a half-marathon under 1h40min), in parallel with the immediate impact it has on me.

It is rewarding to see the consequences of the effort we provide in one given activity. If we can find an activity with few external dependencies, and for which there is a short feedback loop between the effort we provide and the positive impact it creates on us, we should make it our mental escape.

I believe this can work with other activities, such as reading, writing, or making arts. I have found running to work well for me: I can control how much time I put towards it, and how I distribute my effort during my training. This helps to fuel focus and motivation when I see results (e.g. achieving a targeted sustained pace) after having put the work in. And as it represents a time for myself as well, I made it my mental escape.

Life is just an endless series of problems and won’t give you a break: make sure you know how to rest

2 parts again in this takeaway - one which requires some observation and one some action. However, the second part (the one requiring some action) depends on the first one.

Let’s break down what “an endless series of problems” is. First, it may sound very negative. It can be but isn’t necessarily. It mostly depends on us, as we are the key players here.
Consider here a problem, not as something negative, but something which requires us to act. This could be a career choice to make, a project to finish, a bad habit to get rid of, etc. Ideally, we would choose which problems we intend to solve — that way, we would pick ones we are interested in. But building on takeaway #2 (Understand that you cannot control everything), life will face us with problems we did not expect and are less motivated to solve, yet we will have to act on these, regardless. Thus, a problem is not always good or always bad. The important bit here is that it requires us to act and that we will get some insights once we have acted (these insights can be positive or negative, major or minor).
Considering the above definition of a problem, a sequence of problems simply means one set of problems following another set of problems. Each new chapter in life will bring its new set of problems (e.g. starting a new job, moving to a new country, etc.).

We may think that there is an end to this series of problems. There isn’t. The game here is to keep solving increasingly interesting & challenging problems and not rush to solve the current ones. Essentially, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and each of us goes at their own pace.

A simple way to illustrate this further is to think of it as an RPG (Role-Playing Game). You start at Level 1, with little tools and knowledge. The first few opponents (problems in our setting) come your way. You pick up your simple tools and start addressing these problems. Some tools won’t be very effective. You’ll notice that a tool works better if you use it in a certain way. You solve the first few problems and start enjoying it. Without realizing it, you jumped to Level 2, where slightly harder problems come your way. This level seems harder. Some problems are evolutions from Level 1 and some are completely new. Sometimes, there is just one problem, and sometimes there are so many, you become paralyzed and unable to choose which one to tackle first. But you’ve collected some experience points from the previously solved problems. And the game repeats. The one twist is that there is no ultimate level or boss. Problems just keep coming your way and you continue to solve them. But hopefully, each additional problem provides you with a bit more gratification when you solve it.

Let’s give a realistic example: you need to find a job. Level 1 is updating your resume, searching for openings, contacting the companies you’re interested in, and sending them your resume. This already takes a lot of time. Level 2 naturally builds from Level 1: some companies will interview you. Yeah! Now, you need to do some research on each company, establish your story, and actually do well in the interview. What happens next? If you did well, you’ll get an offer and are happy accepting it. Level 3 is then starting this new job: we might think it’s over, but it isn’t. There are a lot of things to learn & understand about the new company, and this brings its own set of challenges.

So what’s the catch here?

In my opinion, the risk here is “just going with the flow” and not actively working on solving our current problems. Let’s take navigating on a river as an analogy. Things happen (just look at 2020) and this translates to strong currents, which push us in one direction. It thus may feel like we are constantly moving (i.e. changing levels in the RPG example), when we truly are just drifting wherever the currents push us, not having control of our boat. And we may not see the turbulence ahead. It is thus important to have active control of the direction of our boat, choosing which currents we navigate.
This requires a lot of effort, and we may tire of sailing, or feel that we are currently not good at it. This is the signal that we need some rest. We then sail towards the nearest pier, anchor our boat, and rest before continuing on our journey again.

Life will not actively encourage us to take a break every once in a while. If we don’t rest, we will burn out and become less efficient at solving our current set of problems. It is thus important to consciously take time to rest when we feel we need to. Just like it’s recommended to give your body some time to recover when training, we should allow our mind to rest as well.

This is the part of the takeaway which requires some action. Find the things you enjoy doing and which provide you with time for yourself. There is no single answer here, each person will gravitate towards something which helps them relax. Ideally, it may be a combination of different things: some stretching & reading after a long day, a tough workout to limit anxiety, a good night’s sleep, a vacation away, a discussion with friends.
Following, incorporate these activities in your schedule, whenever you feel you lost focus and need some time to breathe. There may be periods where you find that you don’t really need them, or that you need them more than usual. That’s fine - everyone is going at their own pace. Just don’t let yourself burn out.

Thrive for good conversations

This final takeaway is perhaps less actionable than the previous 3, but this doesn’t remove from its importance.

I have listened more and more to podcasts over the past couple of years. Whether I go grocery shopping, do some laundry, or cook, I enjoy listening to something other than music (which I listen to more during my workouts). There is a wide variety of available podcasts now, whether for news, fiction, or long-form discussions. Over a week, I’ll listen to a daily news podcast (The Daily by the NYT), several bi-weekly tech-focused shows (The Vergecast, Decoder, Sway) and over the weekend, I’ll switch to long-form discussions, such as Joe Rogan or Lex Fridman. These discussions are between 3 and 5 hrs long, so I’ll pause and come back to them every time I can do so. Because of their duration, the attention they require can be higher than for other types of podcasts, and I cannot listen to as many of these as other daily shows (which run between 30 minutes & 1 hour). Hence, I’ll tend to cherry-pick the episodes I’ll listen to, usually based on the interviewed guest.

These episodes are the ones I enjoy the most, for a simple reason: I realized I do not have enough opportunities for such long-form conversations.

Having good conversations - ones we walk away from feeling engaged & inspired, ones that provide “food for thoughts” - requires certain conditions. Primarily, it requires at least 2 people, who have some common ground for a discussion, and find a civil balance between talking and listening. It also requires time. A lot. A longer conversation allows us to go at our own pace and digest what we get from it. It offers the opportunity to listen to the other person, understand their motives, and argue with them.

2020, with its diverse set of events, has made meeting these conditions more difficult. Another hindrance to long conversations is not being able to meet in person. While there has been tremendous progress in remote technologies, which have eased working with colleagues in different time zones, a video call does not replace meeting in the same room for conversing. We, as humans, excel at reading emotions and we rely on facial cues for navigating everyday life. Video calling introduces an intermediary (namely your screen) between you and the other person and limits our ability to read facial expressions.

Conversations remain critical. They provide us the opportunity to stress-test our ideas & values, discover new points of view, and overall grow as individuals. There is no recipe or structure for such conversations: they can happen anywhere and with anyone. It’s not necessarily conversations where you have a counter-argument for each argument made. These also entail being humble and listening.

Thrive for good conversations. If you feel you can learn something from a discussion, give it your entire attention. If you don’t, cut it short: be selfish about your time - it’s your time.

Look out for people with whom you can have long, tough conversations. This how you grow. People who constantly agree or disagree with you without providing substance - or worse, do not reply to your arguments and questions - are not worth your time. There will be more opportunities for conversations. Finally, don’t waste your energy on the background noise.

One thing I would like to clarify is to not just look for people who play to your preconceptions. If you and your interlocutor always agree on everything, what you can learn is limited. Disagreement (the civil type) is healthy.

We can learn how to have better conversations. This TED Talk, by Celeste Headlee, is an excellent starting point (she also wrote a book, We Need To Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter based on this talk). As Celeste judiciously points out, start by picking one of these rules and master it. I try to apply rule #3: Using open-ended questions.

Listening to long-form podcasts may also help to learn how to better converse. They can fill your need for “food for thoughts”, but do not exclude live conversations.

Writing these takeaways has been a very interesting exercise. However, now comes the times of stress-testing them with other people. Thanks for reading along and reach out if you want to!

Avatar
Vincent Marois
ML Engineer

My interests lie at the intersection of AI Research and Software Engineering.