What Road Are You On?
How to Pick Your Road and Yet Keep Exploring
by Lydia Martin
“The Road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can, pursuing it with eager feet, until it joins some larger way. Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Roads are very useful. History can tell us that (think Roman Empire) and our experiences of getting from A to B can testify to it. Roads enable us to move, to connect, to go on an adventure. They make a brilliant metaphor for life, as roads twist and turn, go up and down, fork off in different directions and stretch out into the unknown; we can mirror it so poetically to our experience of ‘doing life’ with all the decisions and disruptions involved. And it is the doing part of life, how we actually put one foot in front of the other that determines where we go, how we show up and ultimately how we lead.
If our goal is to be effective leaders, ones who lead from and with purpose, we can’t arrive there accidentally. We must first take initiative, locate ourselves and pick a road to tread.
Greg McKeown in his 2014 New York Times bestseller Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less puts people into two categories: non-essentialists and essentialists (see figure below). In both images, the same amount of effort is exerted. In the image on the left, the energy is divided into many different activities. Mckeown claims the result to be an ‘unfulfilling experience of making a millimeter of progress in a million directions’. In the image on the right the energy is given to only a few things that matter most. The result is that we make significant progress in these chosen tasks. The same argument can be used in reference to our leadership journeys. In order to be effective leaders we must be essentialists, choosing the road we are on and channeling our energy into living out our purpose. And yet at the same time, we must be explorers.
As aforementioned, roads are rarely just straight up and down (like the figure above); they have bends and fork off into different directions, forcing decisions. And just like the bends in the road, human beings can’t be programmed to just one straight-line route. Our lives are often unpredictable, and we are wired to explore and experiment in order to learn.
This makes it all the more imperative that we intentionally pick a road. After all, we don't want to fall into the nonessentialist’s fate of ‘making a millimeter of progress in a million directions’. And yet, we mustn’t believe that we will or should always stay on the straight and narrow track. It is often in moments of disruption that we grow and know more of our purpose.
Before we can effectively navigate disruption however, we must set out with a destination in mind and a road picked. Knowing our purpose first forms the foundation from which we can safely veer off route and still be traveling towards our goals.
Pick your Road
Karl Martin in his forthcoming book, The Cave, The Road, The Table and The Fire encourages us to lead from a deeper place, not accidentally but from a place of intent and defined purpose. He writes about the Road being the place where we find our reason for being and where we work out how to live it. He offers us three questions to help locate ourselves and ultimately pick our road.
Ask yourself:
1. What Moves you?
What is your biggest dream? What gets you up in the morning? Or keeps you awake at night? What would you love to contribute, change, fix, speak into…?
2. What fits you?
What is your strongest gift to the world? What do you do better than almost anyone you know? Be precise, not ambiguous, or general.
3. What fills you?
What is your deepest joy? What lights you up? What activities or experiences bring great fulfillment?
These questions help us to find purpose. They may solidify our current position or perhaps they prompt a change of direction. Leaders who have been coached in these questions have found them to not only unlock purpose and direction for themselves but also to benefit the people they lead and work alongside.
Studies show that leaders who know their purpose are more engaged with their work and the people around them, they’re more productive, more likely to stay put in the long term, and less likely to burnout- their tenacity and good example is contagious. And as they also are empowered to pursue purpose, they are less likely to be competitive and insecure according to Dr Pippa Grange, a British sports psychologist and author of Fear Less: Face Not-Good-Enough to Replace Your Doubts, Achieve Your Goals, and Unlock Your Success. This has many beneficial outcomes for team cohesion and overall output, as Alfie Kohn author of No Contest: The Case Against Competition argues that:
“Evidence shows that the ideal amount of competition in any environment—for mental health, quality of relationships, interest in what we're doing, and quality of performance—is none at all.”
By knowing our own purpose and direction we are less preoccupied with competing with others and more compelled to help them find theirs. Freeing up each of us to simply excel.
We all have our own roads to journey and effective leaders help those around them find their way. I like to think that when we live out our purpose, it’s like the lights turn on inside of us. Light is attractive; in darkness, it draws us towards it and it helps us see. The same is true when leaders know their purpose. Knowing our direction allows others to locate us, follow us and empowers them to pick their own road. As Marianne Williamson puts it:
“As you let your own light shine, you indirectly give others permission to do the same.”
Go on an Adventure
Once we know what road we are on, we can embrace the adventure that spans out before us and the opportunity for exploration. Just as Bilbo closed the ‘perfectly round green door’ of Bag End and set out on that road ‘that goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began,’ we too have adventure up ahead. Once we’ve found our purpose we must continually explore it in order to live it out, step by step. We may now know our direction but this isn’t a static process – the road is long and there is much to discover about ourselves and the journey itself.
Disruptions
Just like any good adventure written in a book or screenplay the road picked doesn’t come without disruptions and dead-ends. It is inevitable that at some point(s) along the way of our leadership journey we’ll go off track. Our lives are full of distractions and we often have very little margin to detect when we’ve taken a wrong turn before it’s happened.
So what happens when we lose our way? Take the wrong exit or hit a dead-end?
I was recently staying on a remote Scottish Island in the Inner Hebrides and I decided to go on an evening run. This island had one main tarmacked road and because I wasn’t very familiar with the geography I thought it best to stay on the road so I could find my way back easily. I also wanted to be back in time before the roaming cattle (bulls included) grazed their way over to the field blocking my path home. Despite this, I was only a few kilometers in when the pull for adventure took me off track.
I wanted to run beside the crashing waves so set off on a dirt path towards the beach taking me through long grass and wildflowers and over sand dunes. I was delighted, feeling the salt air in my hair and running as I would have aged seven, wild and free. Thirty minutes later, still having not arrived at the sea, I realized I was lost. I couldn’t retrace my steps because, with no path to follow, I paid little attention to the turns I took as I bounded my way across the rugged terrain.
With no phone signal and no one around to ask for directions I had to rely on my own ‘sense of direction’ and it was getting dark … I eventually found myself on the little strip of beach left as the tide was coming in fast towards me and followed the coastline back towards the road. As I walked the narrow beach I came to a juncture where the tide was fully in and the only way out was up! I found myself scaling a cliff-face as waves crashed below me.
It was at this exact moment that I prayed repeatedly (and out loud!) that I wouldn’t fall! It’s fair to say that I got back a changed woman from the one starting out on a run a few hours before. I’d just learnt how resilient I can be under-pressure and grew in confidence because of it. Even the cattle blocking my path no longer phased me. While knowing the road I needed to get back on was fundamental in helping me focus and ultimately navigate myself back towards it; going off-track offered adventure, exposed me to new terrain and served as a testing ground for my resilience! This offers a brilliant window into what many of us experience as leaders.
Knowing our road – our purpose – is imperative if we are to lead ourselves and others effectively. It will serve as a destination to aim for and navigate ourselves back to when we inevitably go off track from time to time. And when we return to our road, what we’ve learnt will form us and inform the next steps we take. The off-track moments in our journeys often sharpen and form our understanding of ourselves and our purpose.
My story is typical of how we so often set off on a well mapped-out route but end up somewhere uncharted. Human beings aren’t machines, we can’t be programmed to just one setting, following one route. We are wired for exploration and experimentation in order to grow. So we venture off, get ourselves lost and then learn from these experiences.
It’s the detours, dead-ends and unexpected turns that make up your journey and they are crucial if you are to live out your purpose. It’s in these moments you really discover and experience all that you are made of! When the road takes an unexpected turn our strengths and weaknesses get exposed, we can no longer rely on rote and our ability to innovate and create takes center stage.
Tim Harford in his book Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World talks about how leadership qualities such as responsiveness, resilience and creativity cannot be disentangled from the ‘messy soil that produces them.’We can’t be sterile, strategic and tidy in our approach to embodying these qualities. Creativity and resilience often thrive in moments of unpredictability and disruption.
So in your leadership embrace disruption! Preempt it, learn from it and perhaps even create it if you need to catalyze innovation. Moments of disruption ultimately help us grow into more of who we want to be.
The road is long and at times the terrain unknown so if we are to be effective leaders, ones who lead out of our purpose, we must always be exploring. T.S. Eliot wrote that:
“We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”
Perhaps to pick your Road and yet keep exploring, we need to continuously ask ourselves What Moves, Fits and Fills me? at every turn or fork in the road. After many times of asking these questions a well-trodden path might form, leaving behind terrain for us to easily return to and a way others can follow. If we want to live a life worth following, we must live out our purpose, with all the twists and turns and exploration that ensues … It is the answer to a life well lived.
So, what road are you on?
