The Ghosts We Need

Ebenezer Scrooge did not change by trying harder.

By the night the ghosts arrive, everyone in his life has become a role. Bob Cratchit is a cost. His nephew Fred is a nuisance. The poor are, in his words, “surplus population.” Scrooge is not a villain in his own eyes. His ledger is accurate. It simply leaves the people out.

He does not reason his way out of it, and no one argues him out of it. Three visitors interrupt him and make him look at what he could not see from where he stood.

The default

Leaders do a version of this, and most of us do it under pressure. The board member who blocks everything. The development officer who “just doesn’t get it.” The donor who is “only transactional.” Each one becomes a character in our story, and once someone is a character, we lead the role instead of the person.

The hard part is that we cannot see it happening. From inside our story it does not look like a story. It looks like the way things are.

That is why trying harder does not work. Research on self-awareness suggests that the higher leaders rise, the wider the gap grows between how they rate themselves and how others rate them, a point the last note, The Cleaning Station, takes up in detail. Chris Argyris found that skilled professionals are often the most defended against learning what they are missing. Good intentions cannot fix what we cannot see.

And it comes back. We relearn this lesson not because we failed to stay consistent, but because the default returns. The question is not how to become a leader who never does it. The question is what will interrupt us when we do.

What the ghosts did

Dickens gave Scrooge three kinds of interruption. Each has a counterpart a leader can build.

The ghost of the past showed Scrooge who he used to be and how he got here. For a leader, that is someone who remembers what you saw in a person before they became “the problem,” or a simple question: what did I believe about this person when we hired them?

The ghost of the present took Scrooge into rooms he was not in, like the Cratchits’ kitchen. For a leader, that is someone who will tell you what your decisions look like from the other side of the desk.

The ghost of the future showed Scrooge where things were headed if nothing changed. For a leader, that is a standing question: if I keep treating this person as this role, where does it end?

None of these depend on the leader being wiser. They depend on someone, or something, being allowed to interrupt.

A practice for the week

1. Name one person you have turned into a character. Write down the role you have given them, in a few words.
2. Find someone who sees that person differently, and ask what they see.
3. Give one colleague permission to haunt you: “When you see me doing this, say so.” Then thank them when they do.

Scrooge did not need to become a better man on his own. He needed visitors. So do we.