I have not come across too many leaders who were not fixated on solving the problems their team faced. The difficult part is figuring out what the true problems are. Not taking the time to truly listen to our people and getting to the deeper issues can have long-term impacts.
Here is a parable I came across known as The Sound of the Forest:
Back in the third century A.D., the King Ts’ao sent his son, Prince T’ai, to the temple to study under the great master Pan Ku. Because Prince T’ai was to succeed his father as king, Pan Ku was to teach the boy the basics of being a good ruler. When the prince arrived at the temple, the master sent him alone to the Ming-Li Forest. After one year, the prince was to return to the temple to describe the sound of the forest.
When Prince T’ai returned, Pan Ku asked the boy to describe all that he could hear. “Master,” replied the prince, “I could hear the cuckoos sing, the leaves rustle, the hummingbirds hum, the crickets chirp, the grass blow, the bees buzz, and the wind whisper and holler.” When the prince had finished, the master told him to go back to the forest to listen to what more he could hear. The prince was puzzled by the master’s request. Had he not discerned every sound already?
For days and nights on end, the young prince sat alone in the forest listening. But he heard no sounds other than those he had already heard. Then one morning, as the prince sat silently beneath the trees, he started to discern faint sounds unlike those he had ever heard before. The more acutely he listened, the clearer the sounds became. The feeling of enlightenment enveloped the boy. “These must be the sounds the master wished me to discern,” he reflected.
When Prince T’ai returned to the temple, the master asked him what more he had heard. “Master,” responded the prince reverently, “when I listened most closely, I could hear the unheard—the sound of flowers opening, the sound of the sun warming the earth, and the sound of the grass drinking the morning dew.” The master nodded approvingly. “To hear the unheard,” remarked Pan Ku, “is a necessary discipline to be a good ruler. For only when a ruler has learned to listen closely to the people’s hearts, hearing their feelings uncommunicated, pains unexpressed, and complaints not spoken of, can he hope to inspire confidence in his people, understand when something is wrong, and meet the true needs of his citizens. The demise of states comes when leaders listen only to superficial words and do not penetrate deeply into the souls of the people to hear their true opinions, feelings, and desires.”
Most of us see the surface problems like the prince did during his first visit to the forest. Once we see an issue, we jump on it. These are those problems where we make those surface-level checklists to “solve” the issue. For example, Amn Johnson forgot to lock the building door when he left. He knew he was supposed to and failed to do so. The solution is not to create a checklist to remind him or add a “lock me” sign to the door. The solution is to find out why he forgot and deal with that problem.
In the short term, this is a timely and unattractive method. However, this is how you start to learn that multiple trends you are dealing with are interrelated and can get them at the root. In the long run, our added processes and checklists are only continuing to tax our teams who are already juggling a lot. It will get to the point where we are creating systems to manage our made-up systems.
My job and life became so much easier and more fulfilling when I learned this lesson. When I learned to not chase band-aid solutions and look for what was causing the cuts in the first place, I was able to remove a pain point from my team, not add one more.
Take the time to see if there is a deeper-rooted problem to the issues you encounter.
Deliberate Development 