Solitude, Focus and Relationships
Wildfire readers who have taken in this column before know that I view leadership as an inherently social and collaborative process, something that people engage in together. I largely avoid highly individualistic and leader-centric models, which I generally regard as classic, but outdated. Plenty of evidence-based support exists for my position. Therefore, given my orientation, readers can imagine my reaction when I first heard essayist William Deresiwicz talking about great leadership requiring solitude. My reaction was “Solitude a part of leadership? Are you kidding me? No, no, no. Leadership is all about people interacting with people.”
Deresiwicz, a former Yale University professor, became an Internet sensation after he delivered a lecture entitled Solitude and Leadership to the plebe class at West Point last year. I recommend reading the professor's lecture, which appears on The American Scholar website (www.theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/).
I first heard of Deresiwicz, his ideas on leadership and his West Point lecture when I listened to Robin Young interview him on the radio program Here and Now. The interview and his ideas intrigued me, and I followed up by reading the full text of his lecture. In it, Deresiwicz argues that leadership requires solitude, focus and meaningful relationships. Without those three things, he says, would-be leaders struggle to arrive at thoughts that are truly their own and to develop either the moral compass or moral courage necessary to act on those thoughts.
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I could not help but draw connections between Deresiwicz's experiences in academia, the parallels he drew between his civilian college students and aspiring military officers, and the world of emerging young leaders in the wildland fire world. All face the same social forces, and Deresiwicz sees many of those forces as barriers to effective leadership, as do I.
I began thinking about solitude, focus and meaningful relationships and their impact on leadership. I must admit, when I first heard “solitude and leadership,” I envisioned leaders aloofly holding themselves apart from others, something I consider hostile to leadership. However, Deresiwicz actually made three important points. First, leadership requires vision, the ability to find new direction. Second, vision requires the ability to think for oneself, rather than necessarily maintaining the conventional wisdom. Finally, and the core of Deresiwicz's perspective, the ability to think for oneself requires introspection, concentration of focused work, sustained reading, and the ability to engage individual people in prolonged, uninterrupted talk. All require opportunities for solitude.
I work with leaders every day. I am talking about real leaders — people who understand that their job is to bring about positive, mutually beneficial change at the individual, crew, unit or organizational level. However, most of my colleagues work in bigger, bureaucratic organizations, in which leading with vision can prove difficult and frustrating. To do so, leaders need a little alone time, opportunities to think without distraction. That includes distraction from one's own technology and social media. I have previously shared my belief that people need to “hang up and lead.” I also created a little stir while teaching L-480 this year, when I casually suggested that the motion of looking down towards one's palm is a big barrier to command presence. This is a place where William Deresiwicz and I agree 100%.
Deresiwicz contends that when we disperse our thoughts into an environment of nonstop electronic and social input, we inundate ourselves in a flood of other people's thoughts, soaking ourselves in the conventional wisdom. When we do so, we lose the ability to hear our own voice. We also interfere with our capacity to focus our personal values on the questions, problems and doubts we face. Deresiwicz would say, and I would agree, that leaders rarely find the answers to the questions they face on Twitter, Facebook or in their e-mail, but through introspection and concentrated, focused thinking without distraction. I advise leaders facing weighty matters to unplug every now and then; go somewhere quiet; and focus their attention on sustained, concentrated thought.
While I have come to understand the relationship between solitude and leadership, I still believe that leadership is fundamentally about trusting relationships between people. To trust, we must share experience. To develop a relationship, we must interact. Increasingly, our interactions take the form of frequent, but brief and insubstantial, electronically moderated communications from afar; and that does not cut it. Despite the convenience, necessity and productivity of our wired world, we need to regain the art of conversation and our ability to engage individual people in prolonged, uninterrupted, face-to-face talk. It is in these conversations that we generate original thinking and think aloud. I know that I get my best ideas when talking to others, and often do not know how I really feel about something until I hear myself say it.
Leadership requires vision, and vision requires the ability to think for oneself. I am a convert to the Deresiwicz view because I can see that the ability to think for oneself requires the solitude necessary to allow for introspection; concentrated, focused work; and the ability to engage individual people in prolonged, uninterrupted talk.
Mike DeGrosky is chief executive officer of the Guidance Group, a consulting organization specializing in the human and organizational aspects of the fire service, and an adjunct instructor in leadership studies for Fort Hays State University. Follow him on Twitter @guidegroup or via LinkedIn.
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