Catch me, please!

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A man in a business suit walking on a tightrope in the sky balancing a pole, while underneath a big hand holds a big red pillow This is an image that to one leader represents leadership.

I use images to assess leaders and guide them in leadership development. The model is called Visiva Leadership®. In this blog, we explore real-life case studies of the model at work. Let’s take a look now at this image.

I received this image many years ago from a leader who was young in age and at a junior level in his career. He had just profoundly changed his career by moving from academia to the pharmaceutical industry. He loved science and he was very eager to learn the ropes of developing medicine. To move from academia to the pharmaceutical industry was a big change, as the two worlds couldn’t be more different. For him, academia was the crucible where he could interrogate, think, experiment, discover, share, and challenge his science with other scientists. Pharma was an unknown world with many different, complex, and intricate paths that he had not yet figured out. At the same time, pharma was an attractive and highly stimulating environment since he wanted his science to be translated into medicine – medicine that could potentially impact an incredibly large number of people. It was his dream and he was metaphorically walking on clouds with excitement. To make things more complicated, he had joined the pharma organization when the company was experiencing a wide disconnect in trust between senior leadership and the rest of the organization. The organization was manifesting a culture of “just-get-it-done,” uncaring of the consequences.

When we started working together, he felt that despite pushing himself to quickly learn the ropes, whatever he was doing was not the right thing. He didn’t feel supported by his manager nor was he able to learn from him. Worse, he felt that the environment was not safe, and failure was not embraced as a way of learning but experienced as a reprimand. While he had been a very successful academic scientist, he now felt a very unsuccessful nobody. How could he change all of this? What did he need to make a positive move from academia to pharma?

The discipline of the image

When we objectively translate an image, we need to create a solid structure for our work by doing three fundamental things: 1) we always move from separating the elements of the image to seeing them as a whole; 2) we create relationship among the elements so we can observe the innate and dynamic energy of the image; and 3) we manage the dynamic energy to direct our actions and to bring clarity to the issues that we want to manage.

Let’s see what that means for this image.

An image of disproportions and opposites

A man in a business suit … walking on a tightrope in the sky … balancing a pole … below, a big hand holding a big red pillow.

There are a lot of elements in this image that appear to us all at once. Just reading the above sentence could make our heads spin at the thought of making sense of it all. In these cases, my mentor always used to say, “Let’s go slowly here.” There is so much to observe, unpack, and be said that we need to slowly peel the onion layer by layer to decipher the image.

A man in a business suit. The man in the image is wearing a business suit versus, for example, a lab coat. This element can orient us toward relation with a business/corporate environment as opposed to an academic environment.

Walking on a tightrope in the sky. “Tightrope” is the refined skill of maintaining balance while walking along a tensioned wire between two different points. Furthermore, “skywalk” is a form of tightrope which is performed at great heights and length. These elements bring to our attention many meanings, such as:

Moving from one point to another, as, for example, moving from academia to pharma.

The intention and ability to build and perfect particular skills, since walking the rope is not something we do every day and without training.

The courage of taking a risk: it is not only a tightrope; it is a skywalk! It is a transition that can feel both exciting and precarious.

Metaphorically speaking, we say "walk a tightrope" when trying to balance two opposing views with little room for compromise or error. This was the situation that our leader was experiencing.

Balancing a pole. A pole is a tool used to increase balance: it results in less tipping and allows the performer to correct sways. We use tools to help us to perform particular tasks. It is a connection, a bridge between us and the task at hand or external world.

Below, a big hand holding a red big pillow. The hand in this image is much bigger and out of proportion relative to the size of the man walking. The hand is holding a big, red, and apparently very soft pillow. The hand is a very powerful symbol: a hand can caress or it can strike. A hand does things. In this image, the hand, coming almost from nowhere, is showing support – a support that is amplified by the presence of the big pillow. When the leader described the hand, he called it the “special providence,” or the extraordinary intervention in the moment of need. A pillow provides a soft landing and can mitigate a potential fall.

Connecting the dots

By relating and connecting these very different elements together, we can feel the dynamic of this energy. This leader was both using energy and in need of energy as he was walking the tightrope, as he was taking the risk of moving from point A to point B, as he was adapting to his new business suit and, finally, as he was using tools to help himself.

When we went back to the question: “What do you need to move successfully from academia to pharma?” the response was undeniably clear: “I need to feel safe if I make mistakes. I need to feel supported.” He wanted a hand to catch him if he failed or fell off the rope. He wanted a safe environment where failure was recognized as a way of learning. He wanted to be supported while learning from his own failures to improve his future performance.

Taking personal accountability

There is nothing we can do to change another person such as, in this case, the leader’s unsupportive boss. We all know that; he knew that. As a scientist, he also knew that the brain processes an irritation as a life-or-death threat, and in that precise moment the amygdala starts the fight-or-flight response. This is a very bad response at the time when we need our brain the most! Therefore, to bring resolution to the issues we were unpacking, our work focused on managing his personal reaction instead of expecting his manager to change. In other words, we worked on strengthening and leveraging his personal accountability for how he was responding to the irritation of not being supported by his boss.

Viktor E. Frankl, neurologist and psychiatrist, says in his book Man’s Search for Meaning: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Our leader could not change his boss, but he could change how he was reacting and responding. He recognized that by changing himself and his response, he would also be changing the environment in which he was operating – one action at a time. And so, he did.

The continuing power of the image

During a recent business trip, I passed by the city where this leader now lives and works, and I stopped by his office for coffee and a chat. He is now the Senior Vice President of Clinical Development. Pinned on the wall of his office is this same image. He smiled and said, “This image is more valid today than it was years ago. Today, I am not the man walking on the rope. I am the hand below as I build an outstanding, high-performing team where safety, respect, and truth are brighter than the darkness of the past.”

The highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety. Does your organization and your team create psychological safety? What are the images of leadership that are emerging in your organization? What is your image of leadership?

Please contact me at letizia@letiziaamadinilane.com with your questions or comments!