What Are You Going to Be For Halloween

It's October, and Halloween is in sight.

You walk into the stores and see the scary 12-foot-tall ghosts and candy aisles containing such a plethora of candy that a kid's eyes glaze over like he's entering Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

(Or should we call it Charlie's Chocolate Factory since he gets it in the end?)

I remember that sense of wonder and fun as a kid.

And every year there was THE question:

“What do you want to be for Halloween this year?”

Some would say a fireman or a cop.

Others wanted to be an astronaut, a princess, or some other variety of mini-adult.

Now, where I grew up, October meant cold.

And frequently, it meant snow.

So whatever costume we chose had to be big enough to fit our winter coats underneath.

Then we'd go around the neighborhood, knock on doors (or ring doorbells), and yell our best:

“TRICK OR TREAT!”

Our well-meaning neighbors would usually recognize what we were dressed as.

Sometimes they had to ask:

“Ohhhh...and what do we have here?”

Then we'd get rewarded with candy.

We'd go home with our bags overflowing and feast for days on the rewards of dressing up.

It was somehow magical.

It was one of the best parts of being a kid.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about identity and how we define ourselves.

And I've realized something.

We never really stopped dressing up.

Even as adults, we put on “costumes.”

We change how we look and how we present ourselves to the world.

Some people put on a three-piece suit because it says “professional.”

Others dress more goth because it communicates something completely different.

We use clothes, hairstyles, titles, cars, hobbies, careers, political affiliations, social groups - all kinds of things -

to communicate something about who we are.

And then something really interesting happens.

We start treating those things as though they ARE our identity.

Then we look for other people wearing similar costumes.

People “like us.”

Because somewhere along the way, we learn that being around people who seem like us feels safer.

But here's the thing:

How we dress isn't our identity.

What we do isn't our identity.

Those things may tell you something about us.

But they aren't us.

Remember those winter coats we had to wear underneath our Halloween costumes?

I've been thinking about those, too.

Because adults wear things underneath their costumes.

We wear defenses.

The person who always seems angry may have learned that anger keeps people from getting too close.

The person who has to be the funniest person in every room may have learned that if everyone is laughing, nobody is looking too closely.

The person who seems to have everything perfectly under control may be terrified of what happens if they admit they don't.

What we see isn't necessarily who someone is.

Sometimes it's simply what they've learned to wear.

And THAT is where leadership gets interesting.

As leaders, we're called to see beyond the costume.

And sometimes, beyond the coat underneath it.

We're trying to see the actual human being standing in front of us.

The person with hopes.

The person with fears.

The person who wants to matter.

The person who wants to belong.

The person who has learned some incredibly useful ways of navigating the world — and probably picked up a few defenses along the way.

The person who may simultaneously contain the eight-year-old child who dreamed about what life could become and the 45-year-old adult who's worried about the mortgage, the kids, the career, the relationship, and whether they're doing any of it right.

That's a real person.

A messy person.

And leadership isn't simply about “getting shit done.”

It's about getting shit done with real, live, messy people.

Maybe that's one of the privileges of leadership.

We get the opportunity to see people beyond the costume they're wearing.

Beyond the job title.

Beyond the polished LinkedIn profile.

Beyond the defenses.

And when we've created enough trust that someone doesn't have to spend all their energy protecting themselves, something pretty amazing can happen.

They can grow.

They can experiment.

They can screw up.

They can discover strengths they didn't know they had.

They can become something they couldn't see in themselves before.

Remember the question we used to ask kids every October?

“What do you want to be?”

Maybe that's not such a bad question for leaders to ask.

Not:

“What do I need you to do?”

But:

“Who are you trying to become - and how can I help you get there?”

Because leadership isn't about creating better costumes.

It's about seeing the person who's been underneath them all along.

And THAT is where the magic lives.

Until next time, my friends,

Be EDified!!!