I am joining with 50,000 other people participating in “1,000 Words of Summer.” The “challenge” is to write 1,000 words a day from May 29 to June 12. I am starting May 31 and continuing through the end of June. Some of them, like this first effort, might end up here.

The official story I decided to tell myself allowed me to self-flagellate and wipe my hands of the whole affair.  The wiping of the hands was basically: “Fine, I couldn’t do it—I failed—and so I am walking away, and I am not looking back.” This is the official story of my failed leadership at that time.

There were and are only two little problems with the story.  First, my heart kept a small secret alternative story (that I would bring out periodically when the pain got really bad). That small secret was that I had not failed, but that “they” (I may reveal who they are at some point) didn’t like my ideas, demeanor, dress (?), communication style… Take your pick.  It didn’t really matter why “they” did it, but they did, and I was forced out—and maybe I should have fought back. 

That story is in a small box I keep on a remote shelf, but as time goes on, I bring it out periodically to inspect it in light of the passing years. Like the official story, it is simple. Neither story forces me to do the hard work of figuring out what the hell happened back there.

The reason why this is important is because of the second problem: I did walk away, but I keep looking back.  In fact, I keep circling back over and over to try to draw some lessons from the whole ordeal, but I can’t.  The main reason I suspect I have not been able to is that my stories are so bereft of context and important questions.  They are pat answers I can tell myself, so I don’t have to do any real spadework. But I CAN periodically trot them out to generally feel bad or use the affair as an excuse for the lessons I have never learned.

So, here I am, twenty years on, and, frankly, stuck in an experience that I believe holds important lessons for me, but I have never identified a single one.

A few weeks ago, I returned to the “scene” of the debacle.  I mean that literally.  I was back in the home we owned back then (not important to this reflection, but we bought it back after all these years and could not be happier). 

I wrote my resignation letter from that house. And there I was sitting at the same kitchen counter, on the exact same barstools, just across the room from the spot where I broke down, and my daughter held me while everything just fell apart. 

I am happy to say that I was not “triggered.”  No tears. No deeply sad reflections. More of a sigh of relief that I felt no powerful emotion sweep over me. A small victory?

But still, what did/does it all mean?  

By some weird fate of timing, I recently sat through two different workshops on the theme of leadership (I will have more to say about at least one of them at another time).  I did not choose to go to either one.  I was asked to come to one since I had suggested the facilitator to my HR department as someone who might have some useful insights for staff.  I agreed to go.  I was “voluntold” to go to the other one.  Ostensibly, it was a great professional development opportunity, according to my boss, who took it and immediately signed me up.

I don’t “do” professional development, generally speaking.  At this point in my career, I have a pretty large toolkit, have adapted to every new tech challenge thrown my way (okay, NOT AI), and have actually introduced some recent innovations to my team.  I am not saying I have no room to grow; it’s just that I am overwhelmed by the day-to-day and really do not have time.  If I saw a burning need, I would go for it.  I don’t, so I don’t.

That includes leadership. Sigh.  I have held leadership roles: supervised people, served on boards, started organizations, and was the Mayor of my small CA city. Of course, as one of the trainings stressed, having authority does not equal providing leadership.  True, but I think I have led—both from places of official authority, and from less formal roles.

But, to put it bluntly, the sand is running out in the hourglass of my career, and whatever leadership role I currently hold will end soon. 

The point is, shouldn’t someone younger have been offered my place in these trainings? Someone who has a whole career—or a large chunk of one—ahead of them?  

Yes. But, as I said, there were reasons.

I will be honest: I spent the better part of both training sessions (five days total!) doing a post-mortem on my leadership.  Not just the failed one that is the source of this reflection.  I won’t say it was five days of agony.  Apparently, I have done a few things right according to the experts who developed these courses. But a lot of it was not fun.

The thing about leadership—at least my experience of it—is that no one really gives you real-time feedback on how you are doing.  Leadership is lonely because no one really tells you whether you are succeeding or failing at it. Even if you get a coach to help you think through things, they are rarely (never) going to say “you are good at this.”  

Now, maybe, I have never received feedback on my leadership because I have not, in fact, been very good at it, and, because people generally like me as a person, they have not been able to say, “Robb, you are not very good at this.”  

That is possible.  

And so, whatever the case, I have never known how I am really doing.  In the training, as noted, I did have a few moments when I thought, “Yeah, I did that.” But mostly I was left wondering.  And the wondering left me confused about whether I simply did not get the whole leadership thing, or whether, if I had simply been a bit more proactive about learning about leadership, I could have done a better job—or at least known I was not doing a good job. 

And that really is my confession—both about my old stories and my life.  I have been in too much of a hurry to do stuff, and have never really stepped back to ask if I am doing it well or could do it better.  I have gained some skills, but just enough to answer the questions directly in front of me. 

I have never gone deep.  I have rarely reflected. I have not drawn lessons.  

But it is not too late, notwithstanding the general lateness of everything now.  I may, finally, be ready to go back to not only the aforementioned stories about my failure, but a few others that hold lessons that I might, still, at this late date, put into practice. 

I’ve got some work to do.