Passing Through

What a leadership pattern I keep watching taught me about experience, arrogance, and the years we are given

It is often said that experience is the best teacher.

I thought about this concept while hiking the Chain Lakes trail near Mount Baker in Washington State. While climbing in elevation in a relatively short distance, one can experience views of crystalline lakes, sublime patches of meadow filled with summer flowers, and stunning views of Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan. I treasured every moment despite my wonky knee, which was still recovering from a sprain.

It was the first hike where I made a conscious effort to think about the experience. But the truth of the matter is that experience can be won or lost on the battlefield of daily life. We experience a great deal during our day, and if we are not careful, we are not the better for it. I have found that experience is not the best teacher. The only way that experience enriches us is if we take the time to evaluate what we are actually experiencing at the time.

A humble hike can be a meditation about life if one is really open to it.

One of the things that I was turning over in my mind while catching my breath on a switchback was how experience relates to leadership.

I have found myself wrestling with unexpected personal life changes during the past number of months. And as I work through transitions, I have found myself reading and watching other leaders who found themselves in similar circumstances. Clearly there are those who allow their years of experience to enrich them. You can tell a mellow wisdom in them as you read their writings or sit down with them with a coffee. Leaders with evaluated experience are a rare breed, like finding a gem among the clay. I thought about that while drinking in a glacier-fed stream making its way down into a valley. What does it take to be one who is constantly questioning, quietly pondering, and despite the years has a posture of a lifelong learner?

I have watched more than one leader like this, gifted, genuinely well-meaning, who built something real once. The fact is that the world is not what it once was and has moved on in significant and transitory ways. The approach that once worked in the golden haze of the past stopped working. And I have seen leaders fail to ask why. They simply repeated it louder, more convinced, less willing to hear otherwise. Experience had given them a right to be right and an outdated method. It never gave them the humility to notice the expiration date.

The challenge is that deceptive ploy that experience provides for us. We feel that since we have been at a certain role, or have been mentored decades ago from a past leader, that we have the answers. There is a choice between evaluated experience and what I call passive arrogance that older leaders fall into. And it is not always obvious unless we pause on the trail and consider where we are heading.

I have been thinking about this since the news came that Glen Hansard died this week. Watching old videos of his concerts since, I noticed that in more than one, right before he played, he would talk about the simple act of being kind to one another. He felt that our place on earth was to "go deeper and to somehow get wiser." That is close to what I was circling on that trail. It is not whether you have lived long, but whether living has changed you.

I would like to think that I am exempt from this since I am aware of the distinction. That it will be other leaders who will harden into marble images of passive arrogance, and not me. But the honest answer is I do not know yet. I find myself in the middle of my own transition right now, not past it, and times like these are exactly when a person either evaluates or hardens. I cannot tell yet which one I am becoming.

What I do know is that the leaders with mellow wisdom, the ones I keep returning to, share one habit. They pause. Some journal. Some sit in silence before the day starts. It is not the years that made them wise. It is what they did with an ordinary Tuesday morning, over and over, for those years.

The Chain Lakes trail eventually leads you to the magnificent and aptly named Artist’s Point. From there, you are treated to spectacular views of Mount Baker, Mount Shuksan, and the valleys leading into the North Cascades. As I stood there, I was swept away by the beauty and craftsmanship that only God can produce. You can’t find that on a screen or a smartphone, and I found my heart recalibrating to the pace of dirt rather than megabytes.

I still had to descend the steep Wild Goose Trail to the car. But I found myself pausing at Artist’s Point, wondering if I had learned anything from the experience. An old Leonard Cohen line surfaced in memory as I tried to absorb the moment, about how men will suffer and fight and even die for what’s right, all the while knowing they’re only passing through.

Arrogance will ignore the passing of time. But for wise leaders, it is important to ask questions and allow the evaluated experience of the trail to make its mark.

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