Radical Leap Excerpt

One

In one respect, at least, I'm a creature of habit. every day I'm in town, I head for the waterfront. Which is why, I realize now, it had been easy for him to find me.

It was another one of those typical San Diego days: the sky was blue and bright, and the ocean was sparkling as it slapped its waves onto the shores of Mission Beach. I was sitting on the seawall and watching the scenery walk, run, skate, and cycle by on the boardwalk. Here was the epitome of beach culture: beautifully sculpted people gathered together for the top-end-of-the-gene-pool convention. This world, with its high tattoo-and-body-piercing-to-square-inch-of-flesh ratio, was very different from the corporate world I, as a leadership consultant, worked in every day. That's why I loved living here; it kept me lively. I lifted my face to the sun, closed my eyes behind my Maui Jim shades, and felt the stress being sucked out through my pores.

A young woman's voice broke the spell: "Excuse me, sit, may I ask you a question?" She was around 22 -- blonde, of course -- and wore a bikini. None of that was unusual in this neighborhood. Her clipboard was unusual though, as was the stack of three-by-five papers in her hand.

"I suppose so . . . Depends on what the question is," I said, feeling a bit hopeful that I was about to enter into a classic middle-aged male fantasy scenario, if you know what I mean.

"I'm doing a study for my business class at USD. So I've been polling people here on the beach," she waved her stack of papers.

"And the question is . . . ?" I prompted, feeling the fantasy fade.

"What is leadership?" she asked.

A feeling of chilling synchronicity swept over me. I explained to this sun-worshipping surveyor that this was exactly the question I helped people answer every day for a living; that I had worked at one of America's top leadership development firms, The Tom Peters Company, for many years; and that it would take me at least a week and a lot more than a five-inch rectangle of paper to even begin to try to answer that question in a meaningful way. Still, I felt compelled to participate.

I'd heard a wide variety of businesspeople describe leadership; I'd heard consultants describe leadership; and I'd heard the gray-haired pantsuit-and-pumps crowd describe leadership. What I'd never heard was a description from a tongue-pierced, tattooed skater or a bikini-clad rollerblader. Here I was in the heart of San Diego slacker culture, and suddenly I was dying of curiosity to know what these people on the beach had to say.

"Listen," I said. "I'll make you a deal. I'll write you a definition of leadership straight from the management gurus, if you'll show me all of the other responses you've gotten so far."

She readily agreed, so I wrote a line from Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner's book, The Leadership Challenge: "Leadership is the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations." It's a great definition, and Jim is a friend of mine. And besides, it made me feel real smart to be able to manifest a quote out of thin air, as if I was saying "Watch this!" as I scratched the words down.

Then I collected on my end of the bargain and began to read her little questionnaires. I was shocked; they were right on:

* Gender: female; age: 24; occupation: sales; What is leadership? "Organizing people around a common goal."
* Gender: male; age: 26; occupation: programmer; What is leadership? "Standing up for what you believe in."
* Gender: female; age: 28; occupation: marketing; What is leadership? "Sticking your neck out when it's the right thing to do."

And on it went, just like that. Really good, thoughtful, and -- in my opinion -- accurate definitions. But then I found the one that said it all.

* Gender: male; age: 23; occupation: unemployed; What is leadership? "If I knew, I'd have a job."

"Now this is brilliant." I said. "'If I knew, I'd have a job.' He's right, I bet."

If even some unemployed slacker sitting on the beach knows how important leadership is, then I'm in the right business, I was thinking as I handed the pile of papers back to her.

"Can I play too?" He had been sitting next to me on the wall, listening to our conversation. "Sure," she said and handed him the clipboard.

"You write it down for me," he said. Salt-and-pepper hair stuck out from under his floppy black beach hat. A newly sprouting goatee pinched up at the corners of his mouth as he smiled. "Four words that describe leadership, he counted them off on his fingers. "Love. Energy. Audacity. Proof."

She wrote on her clipboard.

"That's it?" she asked.

"YUP."

"Want to explain?" she queried, looking a bit befuddled.

"Nah. Shouldn't need to. Except for one thing."

"Yes?"

"That's not just leadership; it's Extreme Leadership."

"Meaning?"

"Think about it for a while. You'll figure it out."

"Oooh . . . kay . . . " she said in that exasperated, drawn-out way that suggested eyes rolling behind her shades. She wandered off down the beach.

"That sounded pretty good to me," I said to the dude. "Dude" seemed to be the appropriate label. from his overall getup -- the open Hawaiian shirt, Teva beach clogs slung over his shoulder, and baggy khaki shorts -- he could have passed for late 20s. But the graying hair and wrinkles around his eyes suggested a few more years. It could have been too much sun. Or too much experience. I couldn't tell.

"It ought to, he said. "I heard you talking. You teach leadership, right.?"

"I try to."

"There is no try. Only do," he croaked in a spot-on Yoda voice.

"Oooh . . . kay . . . " I said in that drawn-out way that suggested eyes rolling behind my shades. I slid off the wall and stretched, trying to say "Gotta go!" with every bit of body language I could muster.

"Good to meet you . . . " he extended his hand.

"Steve," I said.

"Edge," he said.

"Come again?"

"Edge. Spelled 'Edg' with a soft g."

"Edg, as in 'on the'?"

"Or 'over the.'"

"Okay, Edg. Have a good one."

"Always."

Yup. "Dude" was the right label.

Two

Later that night, somewhere between sleeping and dreaming, I kept seeing that goateed face turned up in a smile and hearing his words, "love, energy, audacity, proof," like a persistent mantra. That and the girl's questionnaires got me thinking about my own leadership journey.

As a consultant, I'd been a leadership evangelist for 13 years. I believed that effective leadership could help people to accomplish a couple of significant things at work. First, it would help create a culture so vibrant and healthy that when people woke up in the morning and thought about the imminent workday, they wouldn't be overcome with a sense of dread and wouldn't doubt whether or not they could survive the day. Instead, they'd be filled with hope and the knowledge that they could bring themselves fully into their work and do something cool, something significant, something meaningful.

Second, an environment of total engagement would be more likely to create products and services so compelling as to virtually suck clients in the doors.

And even though I still felt as passionate as I ever had, I was beginning to suspect that, perhaps, I was being a touch idealistic. That scared me.

I know a lot of disillusioned consultants. When I was first starting out in my own practice, an older -- and supposedly wiser -- man named Patrick, who had built a sterling reputation as an executive coach and corporate change agent, told me that it was impossible to make a difference. No matter what you said or how you said it, no matter if you cajoled or threatened, no matter if you provided overwhelming evidence supporting your clients' need to change, they would never, ever listen to you.

"Then why don't you stop?" I had asked him.

"They pay me too much" was his response.

When the change agent becomes cynical, we're all in deep poop. I chose to dismiss Patrick as an over-the-hill burnout. So I started every project with hope and the conviction that the outcome would rock my client's world. And, with Patrick's sentiment echoing disturbingly in my brain, I ended each project somewhere between feeling mild satisfaction and what I can only describe as, "Oh well, maybe next time."

I was sure, though, that I'd had a positive influence on a good number of people. Right? They always paid me, didn't they? But if all I had done -- after all these years -- was broaden a few horizons and help a few folks try something a little different, had I really earned that money? Lying there at 3 AM I suspected I had not.

Then why don't I stop? My answer was different from Patrick's, because Patrick was a professional and I am a lunatic. Poet Charles Bukowski said it this way: "The difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing."

I do this work because I can't help it., I have to do it. If that means I'm nuts, so be it.

That was -- and I'm not being sarcastic here -- a comforting thought that early morning. But, love, energy, audacity, and proof? Was that what drove me? They sounded nice; they seemed like noble attributes. But they didn't seem like my attributes. I had to face it: the business of leadership was, for me, just that, a business.

Then it hit me -- as the obvious sometimes does when I'm not paying attention -- love, energy, audacity, and proof form the acronym LEAP. I'm not normally impressed by acronyms; I am, in fact, a bit leery of them. Many companies try to force-fit unpopular, flavor-of-the-month programs into snappy, acronymic labels (like QUALCRAP: QUALity Circles, Results, Accountability, Progress).

But the fact that LEAP was an acronym raised some interesting questions about Edg. Where did LEAP come from? Did Edg hear it somewhere or was it his own insight and creation? Was he talking from experience or just talking?

Alone in my room in peaceful pre-dawn San Diego, I found myself curiouser and curiouser about the dude called Edg.

Curiosity killed the cat, the saying goes, and satisfaction brought him back.