Remember, Reflect, and Raise

It’s a funny thing about life. We live forward but learn backwards. Psychologist Arthur Brooks calls this crystallized intelligence— our collected wisdom from living that grows as we age. It’s why he also advises college students to take courses from the oldest and most experienced professors on campus. ( hint.. I love that recommendation). Scientists have long been arguing the relative merits of nature versus nurture to describe the greatest influence on human behavior. What’s undeniable is the importance of our experiences in defining who we are, how we lead ourselves, and others.

 This past month I took a road trip with my adult daughter, my mother’s remaining younger brother in a family of eight kids, and his son. We visited where my mother and her siblings grew up in a deep hollow — part of the Ozark mountains in Arkansas. I visited the small high school where my mom graduated in 1946, and tried to imagine the difficulty she had in simply getting to school, excelling academically, and participating in extracurricular activities. I know all this from her school records and seeing first-hand how hard it must have been to get to the top of the mountain each day for school. When my parents divorced, I went to live with my Dad’s mother and saw little of my mom who passed away very young while I was in school.

 Now, with my uncle’s guidance I got to see firsthand where she grew up, talk to her younger cousin, walk in the old gym where she played basketball and try to fill in missing pieces of her life. The mother I didn’t know well with her granddaughter who never met her. But we honored her memory by showing up, seeing pictures, and visualizing challenges for a 17-year-old circa 1946. We remembered. The first part of my leader’s cycle begins with remembering past events.

 I can recall my first visit to the nation’s Holocaust Museum the year it opened in 1993. As I went from room to room and saw first-hand the artifacts of horror, I can still remember the silence of people and the soft crying around me as many recalled ancestors lost in concentration camps. Same thing with the opening of the Vietnam Memorial Wall in 1982. Marcel Proust noted that discovery is not always about seeing new places but looking at old places with new eyes. That’s crystallized intelligence again. Seeing again with greater appreciation and wisdom. Remembering makes you feel. Reflecting causes you to learn. Raising moves you to take appropriate action.

 Thoughtful leaders remember their own past experiences and those of others. They think about lessons embedded in stories, events, and situations that offer relevance to actions today.  I have watched countless leaders in many professions who feel it unnecessary to discuss an organization’s past with anyone and especially with previous leaders. That unforced error —one leading to possibly productive conversations with those who remember and would gladly share lessons that may influence your current effective decision making. Think how much you can learn by simply asking what someone remembers as important. Lessons you might apply. Most certainly, strategic thinking you might build upon. Smart leaders always learn from others. We don’t always have to make the same mistakes.

My cycle of remembering, reflecting, and raising offers a roadmap to thinking and doing in your personal and professional life. At a minimum, it’s appreciation and gratefulness for others who came before us.