I have had several discussions recently with business owners and senior business leaders who are working through how to successfully transition employees back to work as stay at home orders are being lifted.
These are complex issues and there is, I believe, no one right answer for every organization. The issues in New York City are very different from what they might be in rural Montana. This is what lead me to begin thinking about Presbyigetis.
Just so you know…I made up the word “Presbyigetis.” That said, I think it deserves some consideration, so I hope you will hear me out.
First, let me unpack the word.
Presby...
I am currently reading a fascinating book, Successful Aging by Daniel Levitin, who is a neuroscientist and so for many of us has instant credibility. Just say the word “neuroscience” and people give you automatic rockstar status, mostly because we know the brain is important and yet most of us couldn’t name 5 parts of the human brain anatomy.
I can just see that as a question on Family Feud. Steve Harvey says to the contestant, “We surveyed 100 people and got their top answers to the following question; ‘Name a part of the human brain.’
Two answer boxes pop up. One theme is Cerebral Cortex with 98 people saying this structure. The other is Amygdala with 2 people naming that. The reason these are the only two is that it is about as deep as most people can go, so when you say neuroscientist….well, I think I made my point.
In his book, Levitin has a section on perceptions and how they change as we age. He goes to great lengths to write about how, as we age, we can help our perceptions change for the better. One thing he argues is taking care of our physical bodies. Our 5 senses like seeing and touch, taste and smell, are critical to keeping intact because these are the inputs we have for creating perceptions in the first place. Levitin makes the case in his book that the most common of our senses to fail might actually be hearing (although seeing is probably right up there). The medical term for a loss of hearing is...
Presbycusis.
it literally means “old hearing.” Just like Presbyopia is “old seeing” and Presbyterian means “governed by elders.” The ‘Presby’ comes from Greek and means “old.”
Now old is not necessarily bad. With age also comes things like experience and even wisdom. In the case of our hearing or our eyes what it means is that if we have presbycusis or presbyopia we will probably need some help in the form of hearing aids or glasses.
Presbyigetis
…igetis as derived from the Greek as well. It means leader. So when you put the Greek for old, Presby; with the Greek for leader…Presbyigetis, you get Old Leadership.
We don’t have any physical fix, like a pair of glasses or hearing aids, we can stick on leaders to aid in their ability to lead. If someone invented that, sign up every human organization everywhere.
But we don’t.
What we do have are tools and assessments that can help leaders and followers get a better understanding of who they are. Things like personality traits (Myers Briggs, Predictive Index, Pearman, Disc, etc.) and assessments for emotional intelligence like EQi 2.0, and even MSCEIT. These are all good and insightful, but they have all been around 15 years or more.
Sure, something new comes to the market like the Enneagram and gets popular, but it turns out it is no better than a horoscope at giving valuable insight into who you are (All you Enneagram lovers, please no hate mail! I know you love your tool, but just because you love it doesn’t mean it is valid or reliable. You love it and I am good with that. What is it that PT Barnum said…”There is a sucker born every minute.”
It just doesn’t seem like we are getting any better at this leadership thing. Our country is more divided today than it has ever been. Our world is more divided today than it has ever been.
As I was doing some research for this article I came across a quote from a couple of researchers, Messick and Bazerman, from 1996…24 years ago. “Executives today work in a moral minefield. At any moment, a seemingly innocuous decision can explode and harm not only the decision-maker but also everyone in the neighborhood”.
I have to be honest, one action…seemingly innocuous…creating harm and havoc.
3 Things to aid your Presbyigetis
Focus on and teach values-based leadership. Talk about it in the morning when you rise, at lunch when you eat, and in the evening as you go home. Know the values are for your company (and family) and talk about them. Challenge each other on them. Be open with each other when you see values conflicting with each other. Values naturally conflict with each other and we need to talk about how this impacts our cultures. Firms are quick to talk about wanting things like “speed” and “quality” and “cost.” Most firms will have discussions and laborious meetings about the trade-offs realizing they can never have all 3. You can have speed and quality but not save money. You can lower your cost but it will lower your quality. You get the idea here. How many discussions have we had around “valuing people” “making money” and “corporate brand” or even how do we nurture relationships with “employees”, “customers”, “suppliers”, “the street” when it comes to decision-making. Really, all of these come down to what you really value. You can say you value this or that, but it is the actions of your organization that show what you really value.
Practice Impulse Control. Tension and stress and the speed of life are high these days. But they were high back in 1996 when Messick and Bazerman wrote their article. They where high back in 1964 and 1945 and 1921…Societies of people experience stress, the only thing that changes is the context. Leaders who exhibit good impulse control have the ability to not yell and scream when they don’t get their own way. Check your ego at the door, take a deep breath, and chill out. I can only imagine how important a decision or a conversation feels to you in the moment when you feel all the pressure. What if I told you that people saw you as intolerant, hot-headed, leap before you look, abusive, inability to maintain control, and tempestuous? You might cringe. You might say “that’s old so and so, you know how he is.” Until it ISN”T and as the leader, you harm everyone in the neighborhood. Practice some impulse control.
Get In Touch With Your Spiritual Side. If you do not believe you have a spirit then I have given you 2 things to work on above. You can stop reading now. This next point is just not for you. For those of you who believe you have a spiritual side, it is time to invoke it. You have ignored it for too long. It is time to pull out whatever reference you use, for me, it’s The Bible, and read what it says then start practicing what you are reading. Most spiritual books call for things like love and mercy and grace and forgiveness. Notice that I did not ask you as a leader to pull out your policy manual or the “law” which prescribes justice. Look where justice has taken us! Perhaps the biggest mistake we made as a society during the COVID crisis is paying for an extra streaming subscription instead of spending some time reflecting on what it really means to be human.
Do you suffer from Presbyigetis? If so spending some quiet time learning how to become a neaigetis, a new leader, might be just what the doctor ordered.