Imagine that you have an incredible misconception about what it takes to be a medical doctor. You don’t know that you need to study intensely for eight to ten years. You don’t know that you need to work forty hour shifts. You don’t know that you need to touch dead bodies and examine wounds and talk to people whose relatives are not going to make it. You don’t know about hospital inefficiencies or the difficulties of getting paid by HMOs. You have no idea of the difficulties dealing with insurance companies. As a result of this ignorance, you don’t know what emotions you will feel or not feel as you do this work; and you don’t know what the rewards and costs will be.
Wouldn’t you be better off if you’ve at least been given a snapshot of that reality in advance? Shouldn’t we let people know what it takes to lead before they choose that role, too?
Where do taboos get their power? It’s a fascinating question because it gets to the heart of why one thing can be so tantalizing to some, and so repellant to others. I believe that taboos are so powerful because when we approach one, we touch a nerve. The surprise of the touch can cause you to start or jump back. It’s not easy to recognize when we feel a taboo personally; but sometimes we can see the affect of a taboo in others. Consider the next time someone around you becomes highly emotional, sensitive, titillated or defensive about something; chances are they are reacting to a taboo. The attraction or threat is powerful because it goes deeper than the surface level of consciousness. By the time we are adults, we have become adroit at controlling and influencing our feelings and thoughts on the surface. But taboos tunnel deeper than that and strike at the heart of something older, more primitive and instinct driven:
Taboos are issues or ideas which are too painful, embarrassing, threatening or complicated to talk about openly. Webster’s Dictionary defines a taboo as, “a sacred prohibition put upon certain people, things, or acts which makes them untouchable…” In daily life, taboos are emotional hot-buttons, something we may be attracted to privately, but ashamed of publicly. As social beings, we go to great psychological lengths to avoid talking about them openly. Rather than deal with their reality, we prefer to talk about the mask hiding their reality. In that sense, taboos produce myths as much as euphemisms – glamorized falsehoods or false pictures which have the air of truth but none of the substance, the pithiness of wisdom but none of the depth.
Taboos are painful, touchy, intimate, difficult to discuss and politically incorrect. By holding the taboos of leadership up to the light, judging them for good or bad, exposing their myths and revealing their underlying truths, I hope to create a helpful and instructive description of leadership that will benefit leaders, their followers, and those who aspire to become one or both.
Leaders are in the business of understanding what their employees think and feel. If employees, in turn, could learn to see the world from their leader’s point of view, maybe that understanding would help them appreciate and support their leader better. Every leader I’ve ever talked to has told me that the view was surprisingly different from the top floor. Or, as my dad said, “Funny how your old man got smarter and wiser the day you became a father.”
