How to Be a Leader in Tumultuous Times
A man walks out of the White House after a long day of work to the sound of deranged howling.
“I have to ask you to stay back, Congressman,” says a security guard. The congressman is undaunted and strides towards the source of the disturbance as the guard explains that a guy tried to break into the building and then started tearing his clothes off.
It’s a sad sight to behold – a skinny man sitting on the ground, tied to a pole, pants around his ankles, screaming. Blue and red lights flicker over his shadowy figure. His mouth is wide, teeth stained, eyes roving, unkempt hair framing a face twisted with fear and desperation.
The congressman squats to his level, his expression one of stone-faced steadiness, his gaze never leaving the man’s anguished face. He waits until the man’s screams subside into surprised silence before speaking low, just to him.
“Nobody can hear you,” he says calmly. “Nobody cares about you. Nothing will come of this.”
Soft and brutal. The man tied to the pole deflates, all the energy ebbing away – the anger, the fear, and also the hope and passion that brought him there.
“Why don’t you let these nice gentlemen take you home?” The congressman asks, before standing and swiftly walking away without a backward glance. “Cover him up, it’s cold out here,” he adds magnanimously to the security guard as he slides into the back seat of a glossy car.
This is a scene from the second episode ever of House of Cards. The human embodiment of control arrives on the scene to address the human embodiment of chaos, neutralizing it quickly. The sleek structure of authority triumphs simply by reinforcing the message that all effort is futile.
Throughout the series, this theme continues. Congressman Frank Underwood, an ambitious man with a gift for manipulation, slithers up the ladder. He doesn’t falter. He is almost inhumanly assertive, calm, collected, always a few steps ahead of everyone else.
He not only controls the tides of chaos, but works hard to bend them to his will. While keeping things under control in his own domain, he lobs small, covert chaos bombs into the lives of his adversaries, knowing it will cause their downfall, watching them struggle from just far enough away that he isn’t caught up in it. We hate him, but are also strangely rooting for him.
And it works, until it doesn’t.
Is he evil?
The Titan archetype is about leadership, being trustworthy, earning respect, decision-making, calm authority, having your ducks in a row, reinforcing healthy boundaries, and taking responsibility. It can go very right or very wrong. The Titan storyline is one of the oldest and most difficult for humankind, played out in global politics, business, and our relationships, century after century.
Today I want to zoom in and speak about the Titan residing in your soul, inside all of us, on a personal level. Choosing to step into healthy leadership is how we change the world, especially a world where we feel distinctly not in control.
The Titan is a Human
Acts of chaos have the power to topple nations and change lives. It can arrive in the form of a tsunami, pandemic, or war. Or it can be much more personal –people expressing doubt in your abilities, undermining you, or betraying your confidence. It can be a house fire, an affair, bankruptcy, a scary health diagnosis, or an event that brings up the ghosts from your past.
When chaos arrives in the night, I don’t care who you are, you do not like it. This doesn’t make you weak, it makes you human. You want to control it. You feel helpless when the ability to control your life’s narrative slips from your fingers. We may not understand those who go to such violent lengths to inflict pain on others to save themselves, maintain their power, or expand their reach, but perhaps we can acknowledge that we too have a compulsion to control, and that when we do, we often do so in less-than-wonderful ways.
If you have ever been wronged or faced unexpected circumstances and responded with anger, coldness, or a desire to punish someone else, you’ve been here. If you’ve blamed others or the universe for your dissatisfaction or pain, you have been here. If you’ve cut someone out of your life, undermined someone behind their back, fired someone, or judged a situation or a person immediately without being open to hearing another perspective, you’ve been here. If you’ve made a mistake and chosen not to address it, or if you’ve found yourself listing reasons to explain why you did what you did rather than apologizing, you’ve been here. We’ve all been here.
If we can breathe and see how human this troubling Titan is, I think we’ve entered a place where we can start to change. The kind of authoritative control that takes our breath away on the news, that comes from the highest levels of huge corporations, and shows up even in the people we work with – the kind of control that we hate because it introduces more chaos in our lives and the lives of others – is actually something we can control. We control it through understanding that we can do something about it if it is human. This requires a simple but difficult acknowledgement: I see the Titan in you, and I see the Titan in me.
When Control becomes Chaos.
When Chaos becomes Control.
The age-old tale of chaos and control isn’t a story of good and evil, although we find comfort in blaming the devil when horrible things happen. When we blame the devil, the only thing we achieve is creating a gulf of separation between That Person and us. They are over-controlling and power hungry. They are evil. They are inhuman. I am responsible and kind. I am good. I am human. I will never understand. I will never forgive. I am different.
But the thing is, they are human. We find this deeply disturbing, because somewhere deep down we wonder if we are capable of this. Surely not. I would never. A story of good and evil quickly shuts down this line of questioning.
But with humans, things get all blended together. If someone asserts enough control, they cause chaos for others. If people experiencing this chaos can tap into calmness and decisiveness, they reassert control, which can create chaos for those at the top.
We even see this on a character level. Think about it. We have fictional Frank Underwood, causing scandal, leaking information to hungry ears, and crafting subtle political bombs that serve to undermine, rot power from the inside, and make way for him. He does so with care and precision while wearing well-cut suits and a perfectly formed mask of benevolence. Is he the face of an impenetrable, shiny system, the US government? Or is he a havoc-reaper in its midst, a creature of chaos undermining all its structures? It depends where he’s directing his energy.
Or we have Jack Sparrow, pirate of the Caribbean. A man who is unpredictable, criminal, lackadaisical, and a thorn in the side of great Imperial Britain. He seems to be for nothing, going wherever the winds blow him, taking what he wants along the way without a second thought. And yet, he is a leader. He lives up to a code that runs deep. Others innately trust him and look to his authority. He is a captain, calm and decisive in the face of powers (both controlling and chaotic) much greater than him.
The Power of Your Leadership Story
In leadership, stories become immensely important. The stories we tell ourselves are the lens through which we see other people and make sense of our circumstances. When leaders tell themselves stories, we see them acted out in the real world like self-fulfilling prophecies. This includes our stories.
The Story of Fear
One story we have access to is the story of fear. The Titan’s story of fear begins with the discovery that the situation is not as under control or secure as you thought. On a business level, perhaps you realize someone cannot be trusted, or things are sloppy. Clients are dissatisfied. The accounting books are a mess. Some chaotic thing happens that makes it very clear how fragile the whole thing is, and you’re standing on the top of it.
Regardless of how it happens, the Titan story of fear is one of a loss of trust. In yourself, and in others. The fearful Titan starts making harsh judgment calls (this happened because that person messed up), draws up more rules in the name of efficiency, higher profits, or more success, becomes bossy, authoritarian, and dismissive, and makes executive decisions from a place that is no longer calm and thoughtful, but desperate and quick-tongued.
The fear story is: I alone will make decisions and make things happen, because no one else here can be trusted. Some other power wants to bring me down, and that is not going to happen.
This can happen even inside ourselves. When we realize we’ve gained weight, when we don’t have enough money, when we’ve messed up – we squash our rising sense of chaos with more rules and self-punishment. We treat ourselves like badly-behaved children that need to be silenced and put in place. Compassion disappears. The unhealthy Titan isn’t inhumanly evil, but rather deeply afraid.
Healing the Leadership Story
Nelson Mandela ended apartheid and took huge strides in re-uniting the racial divide in South Africa. Rwanda has become a model of what reconciliation can accomplish after a horrific genocide. Germany, post World War II, quickly became a progressive country that was embraced by its neighbours. This isn’t to say there is not still pain, or there are not still problems with any of these examples. Humans are complex. But we are also resilient, and all is never truly lost.
In the face of chaos and tragedy we have the choice to lean into our gifts and shared purpose, rather than our fears and worst moments. Rather than seeking to control and blame, we can find a balance between control and chaos and move forward in a different way. Embracing chaos for the leader means releasing what you thought was the best way forward, making way for new possibilities. It means factoring chaos into everything, because the world changes continually - you can either change with it, or be a stick in the mud and experience the consequences later.
Strong leaders:
• Focus on the outcome they want rather than the mechanisms they think will get them there
• Release the belief that they can truly control anything outside of themselves
• Listen before they speak
• Are transparent when they communicate
• Choose humility and honesty when things go wrong or they don’t know
• Trust in others, especially in experts they have hired, taking their voices and knowledge seriously
• Let people know they are valued, making them feel safe to speak honestly
• Have awareness when their personal fear clouds their perception of others or of events happening around them
• Look inward for solutions rather than blaming events or other people
• Understand that what they choose to do now matters more than any real or perceived chaos that is happening
• Lean on the family they have created. Together, you can be strong without harming others
• Take the time to consider, investigate, and work through crises before acting
• Ask: Am I supporting others to grow and become leaders in their own right, or am I trying to keep them small?
• Ask: Am I assuming that I know everything about this person? Am I assuming I know everything about this situation?
How you do this thing is how you do everything.
Frank Underwood’s main problem, like so many Titans, was not an inherent evilness. It’s that when he knelt down and spoke to the embodiment of human chaos at its lowest point, a man tied to a pole, screaming in fear and anger and desperation, and told him that no one could hear him, nobody cared about him, and nothing would come of this, he was speaking to himself.
Brittany Veenhuysen is a writer and co-founder of BrandPsyche. With a BA in English and a philosophical lens, she uses strategic storytelling to connect entrepreneurial folk with people they love to serve.