Meet My Leadership Coach, The Jigsaw Puzzle
As my dad and I poured over our 1500-piece sailboat jigsaw puzzle during a holiday break, the metaphors between what we were doing and authentic leadership ran continuously through my mind. Paying attention to these metaphors can teach us a lot about our leadership qualities and how to apply to running a team.
Here are four concepts integral to leadership that I found hidden in that puzzle box.
Accepting Impermanence
At any moment, a three-year-old could come by and, while thinking she’s helping, systematically dismantle the border of your puzzle, just like my niece did. It’s amazing how long it took us to put together the first time, and how quickly we reassembled it the second time.
Impermanence also shows up when the puzzle has been completed. You may leave it around for a day or two to admire your production, but after that you dismantle it.
We tend to get attached to how things are, and we get bogged down by wanting to stay on top of all possible information. Comfort overtakes creativity and growth. We can counteract this by accepting - even embracing - the impermanence of our relationships, projects, business, and ultimately our lives. This act, paradoxically, is what fosters creativity, growth, and empathetic leadership.
A Perfect Fit Comes with a Satisfying Click
This is my favorite puzzle analogy. As my dad and I were working, he kept finding pieces that were so close to fitting but were not quite a perfect match. In a mock I’m-so-fed-up-with-this voice, he’d bark “get me my hammer!” so that he could make it fit. Of course, had he actually done so, that would just cause more misfit pieces later on.
Needless to say, my dad doesn’t stand alone in his desire to force things to work out when they aren’t quite right.
Sometimes the opposite happened; I would be 90% sure a piece would fit, but I would have to hold it up to the light just to make sure there weren’t any gaps. Sometimes a perfect fit leaves us skeptical and requires closer inspection.
Most of the time though, the pieces fell into place with an easy yet tangible, all-too-satisfying click.
Some relationships and connections just don’t fit and we’ve been taught to think that as leaders it’s our job to get our proverbial hammer and make things work. Other situations warrant closer inspection under a bright light. And when the connections are right, we’ll notice that satisfying ‘click’.
The Ability to Scope and Focus
It was hard to choose an area of the puzzle to work on, especially when we were just getting started. There was too much to do! But as you can imagine, we tried, out of hasty overwhelm, to work on the whole puzzle at once, and our rate of connecting pieces dwindled greatly compared to when we each committed to a certain area.
Part of our hesitation for committing to just an area was the initial time investment of gathering all those like-colored pieces from the bottomless 1500-piece pile, half of which were upside down.
Focusing on just part of a large project requires an analogous up front time investment. And it’s not easy, especially when things are just getting started, because there’s so much to think about. However, doing so forces you to choose the most relevant from an endless pile of information (half of which is upside down, remember).
In our puzzle, I naturally chose the easiest areas first and saved the fine-patterned areas like the skies, mountains and trees until the end. It’s funny because as the easier areas came together, the harder ones no longer seemed so hard, as if I was more ready for them, or understood them better in the context of the completed areas.
Pieces as Parts of the Whole
As my dad and I worked, each piece (especially the nondescript ones) seemed so insignificant. Each piece was individually hand-laid to produce the final product and each piece was critical to completion. Yet at the same time, each piece was nothing without the context brought by its surrounding pieces.
As leaders, we take action every day to achieve our vision, laying in a few small puzzle pieces. Without consideration of the final product and how our small step fits into it, we can get discouraged by a feeling of not having done enough at the end of each day. In other words, each action, devoid of its place in the bigger picture, may not seem to make a difference. Over time though, what a picture you will have constructed with all those tiny pieces! Keep your eye on the big picture.
Puzzles are relaxing and meditative. It’s easy for me to maintain a trance-like interest, yet without the urge to rush. We desire the end state of having a completed picture, and that pulls us forward. Ironic, because it’s the means to the end that we relish in.
Daily leadership, on the other hand, usually isn’t quite so relaxing and meditative. Does that mean it can’t be? Why is it so hard to relish in the journey?
If we weren’t so attached then maybe the means would be as rewarding as the end. If we looked for and tolerated only perfect fits, we wouldn’t waste our time on the wrong connections. If we took the effort to scope our projects and focus on one thing at a time, we’d be present and thus more calm. If we saw the pieces as parts of the whole, maybe we’d have more perspective.
If it sounds enjoyable, I hope you’re able to work on a puzzle over the holidays.
