how good do you think i can be? or, “excuse me, ma’am, your ontology is showing”
My hope is that the advice and ideas and moves that show up on this blog are practical. You can put them to work real quick and see if they work for you.
But a steady supply of hacks can mask the more fundamental work leaders can do. If you “optimize upstream,” eventually you take a hard look at core beliefs. Your beliefs are upstream of all your actions.
To throw it in local Louisiana terms, I can give you lots of levee talk but if your Mississippi ain’t flowing right, levees won’t matter much. Headwaters rule.
So let’s go to the headwaters for a minute. First, with a tiny bit of Greek. Within philosophy, “ontology” is the study or theory of being. From the Greek “ontos”.
As a leader, your ontology matters. It’s worth getting clear on it. When it comes to your people and your shared efforts, what are your deepest, most core beliefs? More specifically, what are your answers to these two questions:
What do you believe we’re here for? Not just “we” at this company or on this team, but “we” as, like, humanity. What are people for?
What’s the best we can hope for? From this teammate, in this moment, from this shared endeavor?
Part of what you’re offering to your people, even in the mundane exchange of emails and Slack messages, is this ontology. You’re offering a take on what it means to be human, why we’re here, what is worthy of effort, what is the best we can hope for.
Your take on those questions is going to show up in your work. It will show up in the micro-moments and the macro-moments. Your instincts, your go to moves, and what feels “natural” to you in your leadership (perhaps also in your parenting, if you’re a parent) - all of those are reflections of, manifestations of, your ontology. Your takes on these core questions.
Something I find inspiring is that, whatever your ontology is, a) it’s yours and b) it’s not fixed.
You can change your beliefs. You can choose a new identity. You can make that identity as narrow and monolithic or as big and diversified as you like. And it goes further.
You have your ontology - what you believe is true about yourself and what you believe is possible for yourself. You also have an ontology of others - what you believe, generally speaking, is true about people. And then you have a specific ontology of Tina the Gen Z intern, Jan in Operations, Mark in Marketing (and so on).
You believe something about what they’re here for (on Your Team and on Earth) and what they’re capable of. Whether you say it or not, they’ll pick up on it. (It’s better to say it and say it often).
Maybe the most potent responsibility you have is to get real with yourself about those beliefs and to make sure, no matter what other characteristics they have, that they don’t sell your people short.
A big fat humane ontology - all of the best leaders I’ve come across have this. They didn’t let me get away with a small vision of myself and what we could do together. They had this bold ontology for different reasons and expressed it in ways as unique as their own personalities and their own contexts. Some leaders believe we are children of God and some believe we dem boyz. (Deion Sanders apparently believes both and I delight in each moment of it).
All the best ones decide, somewhere along the way, that we’re here to do big things and we will. That’s what we’re for. That’s what is possible.
-Eric
