Dirty Diapers
Have you ever changed a dirty diaper? And I’m not just talking about a “Johnny-took-a-little-tinkle” diaper. I’m talking about a “This-baby-just-excreted-a-nuclear-bomb” kind of diaper. Oddly enough, the metaphor of changing a dirty diaper has some powerful correlations to leadership for us to grasp. Dirty diapers are an unavoidable part of both parenting and leadership (hopefully only one of those applies literally). In the metaphorical sense, “dirty diapers” are everywhere. They are the explosive divide between people of differing opinions spurred on by political elections. They are the deeply embedded prejudices we harbor, sometimes unbeknownst even to ourselves. They are the clash in personalities that, built up over long periods of time, morph from smoldering embers into violent volcanos. Just like parents must face the stench and discomfort of dirty diapers in order to keep their babies clean and healthy, leaders are also charged with protecting and defending their organization’s culture from the devastating affects of these “dirty diapers”.
Unfortunately, these ticking time bombs of character excrement are often so overwhelming to leaders that we tend to default to destructive leadership practices. But before we go there, we first need to return to our analogy to learn why we respond in these ways. Like all of us, diaper changers are gifted with five primary senses: hearing, smell, sight, touch, and taste. One typically utilizes all but that last one to effectively accomplish this task (try not to think about it). First, our diaper changer (we’ll call him Sam) must be alerted to the fact that his baby has a sanitation issue. This is typically made known thanks to the first two senses of hearing and/or smell. The baby will either cry because of his or her discomfort or Sam will smell the diaper’s dirty contents. Great, he has been alerted by the sound or the smell of a problem. But now what? Sam can’t smell or listen the baby into a clean diaper! That’s why he must now move on to the use of touch and sight as he picks up his baby and lifts him or her onto a changing surface, takes off the clothes, and opens up the diaper. Wow! Houston, we have a problem. Now Sam’s eyes can see just how bad the problem was that he heard or smelled earlier.
Now that there is no disagreement amongst the senses, it’s time to fix the problem. Yet while smell and sound executed their roles perfectly by triggering the alarm, they are unfortunately now out of their element. Their strengths were just what was needed to identify the problem. However, they can now do very little to fix the problem, which is why touch and sight swoop in to save the day! Sam now utilizes these two senses as he grabs a wipe, cleans up the toxic waste, opens up a new diaper, and offers new life to his once soiled child.
In the same way that Sam’s senses of smell and sound alerted him to the fact that his baby’s diaper needed to be changed, it is often our emotions or feelings that sound the first alarm to the presence of a culture problem within our organization. Whenever there is a dirty diaper amongst the ranks, our emotions are a powerful tool for identifying threats to our people and organization. If you are a leader and there is a feud between your people that is causing you feelings of anxiety, anger, or fear, those emotions are useful and must be heeded if you want to maintain a healthy culture in your organization! And just like it was Sam’s sense of touch and sight that enabled him to change the diaper, it is our logic that is often responsible for devising a solution to the problem. While detecting problems through emotions is often a messy and chaotic process, fixing problems is often best done with the calm, cool, and collected nature of logic.
Overwhelmed
Wouldn’t it be great if leaders tackled their dirty diapers by utilizing both their emotions and their logic in the proper order? Unfortunately leaders are too often overwhelmed by the stench of the diaper and then resort to using the one which they feel most comfortable leading in. Leaders on one end of the spectrum tend to remain fixated on the use of emotion to address the issue. They start off doing a great job of acknowledging the feelings of their people which helps them build what I call “relational equity” with them. They are able to truly smell and acknowledge how stinky the situation is. But then they try to change the diaper by continuing to listen and smell even more. As the stench and crying become more odious, leaders in this category will actually start to add to the problem, not fix it. Emotional responses may be necessary to acknowledge our emotional needs, but when left unchecked, emotion has a fiendish habit of hijacking all attempts at redeeming the situation.
“While detecting problems through emotions is often a messy and chaotic process, fixing problems is often best done with the calm, cool, and collected nature of logic.”
“Emotional responses may be necessary to acknowledge our emotional needs, but when left unchecked, emotion has a fiendish habit of hijacking all attempts at redeeming the situation. ”
On the other end of the spectrum are the leaders who champion the power of logic. Logic is often seen as the protagonist who holds the sole power to vanquish the threat at hand. The problem with exclusively employing logic is that it might be great at solving problems but probably not so great at identifying them. So while logic is like the eyes and hands that were able to actually change the dirty diaper, leaders who try to address culture problems purely with logic and without emotion will find themselves missing the whole point while possibly adding to the frustration of those struggling with their problem because what they needed more than a logical solution was simply for their leader to understand them.
Shots Fired
Let’s imagine one possible scenario where this would apply. Imagine that you are the designated team captain of a city league softball team. Even before the season began, two of your teammates have had it out for each other. Jimmy thinks Johnny is an arrogant glory hog and Johnny thinks Jimmy is a passive aggressive door mat. Not a game goes by where shots aren’t fired between the two, yet you are hesitant to step in as you are holding out hope that they will eventually just “grow up” and work things out between the two of them (because grown-ups don’t have problems). Then it happens. During one of the final games of the season, Jimmy fires out a nasty insult at Johnny and Jonny fires back in return.
The proverbial straw has just broken this fed up camel’s back.
With a frustration that has built up over weeks of these two children’s immature banter, you shoot up from the bench pointing your finger at the two as you shout, “That’s it! I’ve had enough! You two are benched until you can learn to behave like adults and not whiny little snowflakes!!” Their bewildered eyes aren’t the only ones staring at you now, but you don’t care! You feel totally justified. After all, it’s not your fault! They’re the ones that pushed you to the breaking point. If the two of them can’t act their age, perhaps they should try out for a T-ball team to find some players more their maturity level.
“Only once we are able to heed the direction toward which our emotions point us while simultaneously reminding them that they are not in charge of our actions will we become effective in nurturing a thriving culture.”
What happened here? Well for starters, your emotions were right about one thing: there was a dirty diaper in that dugout! The frustration that you felt was an indicator that your team was unhealthy because Jimmy and Johnny’s feud was probably affecting the whole team, which meant you as a leader needed to step in. The problem is that you stepped in using the wrong tool. Emotion warned you that something needed to change but logic would have probably been a much better tool for devising a solution. Someone once told me that “emotion is a terrible leader but a powerful friend.” Only once we are able to heed the direction toward which our emotions point us while simultaneously reminding them that they are not in charge of our actions will we become effective in nurturing a thriving culture.
Let’s return to the dugout. This time, instead of losing your cool after Jimmy and Johnny’s most recent episode, you decide to put on the logic ballcap. “Jimmy”, you say with complete composure, “what you said was inaccurate. Johnny’s face looks nothing like the backside of a constipated monkey. And Johnny, what you said was also untrue. Jimmy’s mom’s scale couldn’t have told her ‘One person at a time please’; scales can’t talk.” You smile as you congratulate yourself in your head for addressing the problem. “Why become emotional when you can simply solve the problem logically like I just did?” you think to yourself.
How much do you think your comments helped alleviate the tension between Jimmy and Johnny? Yeah, probably not much. In fact the way you brushed over their feelings of hostility and pretended there was no dirty diaper likely added more fuel to their frustration. Talk about making a crappy situation worse!
“Dirty diapers are poison to potential and it is the responsibility of leaders to employ both emotion and logic in cleanly removing them.”
Each of us is wired to lean more toward one side of the spectrum than the other. I veer toward logic more than emotion and that’s okay! What’s not okay is being okay with just okay. You are a leader which means people are counting on you to empower them change the world in whatever way they’ve been charged to do so. Dirty diapers are poison to potential and it is the responsibility of leaders to employ both emotion and logic in cleanly removing them. If you can learn to celebrate emotion’s ability to pinpoint the problem and logic’s skill at ideating a solution, there will never be a threat to your culture that you can’t vanquish.
Let’s go change some diapers.