The Power of your Platform
12 February 2021
Errol Amerasekera
What is the value or principle that you would put everything on the line to defend? What is the line in the sand that you refuse to let yourself, or others, cross? What is the ‘hill you are willing to die on’?
More than likely this value or principle represents some aspect of social and/or cultural change; something that strikes at the core of your moral framework and evokes your sense of doing what is right, as opposed to what might be easy. As we know, changing and challenging cultural ‘norms’, especially when they are long-term and deeply entrenched requires us to utilise our power and authority, our passion and commitment in how we grapple with the complexity of the change process. This is as true for changing cultures in a family or a community, as it is for change within an organisational or at the societal level. So at the heart of these rhetorical questions lies a challenge that is straightforward in its content, yet complex in its execution – how well are you using your platform?
Our ‘platform’ is the arena in which we have some sway and influence; it is where we have the power and potential to make a difference. Contrary to some beliefs, we all have a platform; an arena to do battle and to stand for those ideals that are intrinsically aligned to our deepest values and sense of who we are. For some of us that arena will be our family, our circle of friends, the local sporting club or volunteer association on whose committee we sit. For others of us, that arena might be a high-performance team, an organisation, perhaps even a country. This goes to one of my central beliefs – that we are all leaders in our own lives, even if that leadership is as mundane and commonplace as organising who does the washing up after the evening meal.
So don’t be fooled into thinking this is about the size of your reach, where you sit in the organisational chart or how many influential people you know. These criteria are largely irrelevant to the central premise of my question – how well are you using your platform?
Throwing stones…
Many, many years ago I was going through a challenging time in my then relationship. It was a day I was particularly pent-up with emotion, anxiety and self-doubt. Fortunately for me it was also a day where I had a pre-arranged session with my coach. As soon as the call with my coach started, I became a blithering, snotty mess. “Sh sh she da da doesn’t love me”, I blurted out through my tears, without giving my poor coach any context or warning.
After providing my coach (between my incoherent ramblings and outbursts of emotion) with a bit more of the story and the events that had led to my churned up state, she said “Errol, it’s like you are on the front lawn of her house, throwing stones at her window on the first floor and trying to get her attention” Of course she was speaking metaphorically, and not literally. “Yes, that is exactly how it feels” I said, feeling relieved that somebody was finally able to capture and synthesise the swirling mass of confusion, self-doubt, perhaps even self-loathing that I was feeling inside. She then asked “So Errol, why are you throwing stones at her window?” I replied “To get her attention of course!” almost indignant that she would ask a question where the answer was so obvious. But then she asked again “So Errol, why are you throwing stones at her window?” “To get her attention”, I once again replied, but now feeling confused as to why she was asking me again when clearly I had nailed the answer the first time. I think she might have even asked me this question third time, before she finally took mercy on me and revealed the answer. “Errol, you are throwing stones because it is inside you to throw those stones. Whether or not she comes to the window; whether or not she reciprocates your feelings; whether or not she loves you, does not really matter. What’s important is that you throw stones at her window, because in that moment, that’s what is inside you that needs to, that wants to come out.”
The reorientation to being internally referenced
This concept was so foreign to me. I remember sitting there in stunned silence with my mouth open. I had been conditioned for most of my life to believe that the worth and the merit of what I felt, of what I thought and of what I did was measured by how the world responded to me. If I am successful, if I am loved, if I make money, that must be affirmation, perhaps even confirmation, that what I am feeling, thinking and doing is right and is worthy. It’s what us coach/facilitator types call being externally referenced.
That day my coach was supporting me to be more internally referenced. In other words, my measure of success is based on the extent to which I can stay true to and honour what is inside of me and is yearning come out and be known. This is a measure whose outcome, for the most part, is within my control. From an internally referenced mindset, how the world, and those people in it, receive what I say and do and respond to me is of less importance.
Just for clarification, being internally or externally referenced is not a binary decision, it is not about being one to the exclusion of the other. The key is being aware of where on the spectrum we sit in any given moment in terms of the framework we use to orient our decision-making, our sense of success and our self-worth. Of course, as leaders, how people respond to us and in turn relate to their own leadership and align to their role, formal or informal, is important. But if this is our only criterion for success, then in effect we are held hostage by the opinions and reactions of others, to the detriment of our own set of values, principles and ethics.
In a world where so many of us ascribe our worth to the number of likes or followers we have; to our income; to our body shape/size; to our sense of popularity and status; this idea of being less externally referenced and developing the capability to be more internally referenced, feels all the more timely.
The risk here is that you perceive that I am against being externally referenced. This is not true. I value how people respond to me, I like positive feedback as much as any person. To be 100% internally referenced all the time would make relationships of all kinds untenable, because so much of creating healthy and functional relationships is being aware of the interpersonal dynamics and the verbal and non-verbal cues between two people.
So simply designing a program or agenda to be more internally or externally referenced, does not do justice to the complexity of what is required. Rather, what I am suggesting is that we leverage our self-awareness, judgement and discernment in a way which allows us to make a more conscious decision based on what is required in the moment. For leaders, what is required of us needs to be informed by what best supports us to be in service of the purpose of the organisation, the context in which we are working and our role within that context.
So what does throwing stones at windows have to do with using our platform?
Standing on your platform is an inside out process
The actual act of using our platform and speaking passionately and courageously about what’s important to us is an outer experience; it is very much about our relationship to the world around us and making a difference in it. However, it is most powerful and transformative when it is born out of something deep within us; something like the common thread that runs through the dreams we have for how the world, at least our ‘little’ part of the world, could be as well as the most painful parts of our existence and experience of life.
As regular readers will know, I have not posted for a while. I have been caught up in my own inner world; in a space where the weight of my own emotions has at times felt insurmountable and the creativity, let alone the inspiration, to write something meaningful has felt far away from my consciousness. In addition, my last post, The Inner Voices of Leadership, changed something in me. Being so ‘out’ about something so personal constellated some kind of recalibration, where the pendulum swung away from openness, away from vulnerability, perhaps even away from my own sense of leadership; and more towards introversion and self-reflection.
Of course, there is a place for introversion and self-reflection, we all need that space and time to process and ‘compost’ our experiences and emotions. Compost, when degraded sufficiently, transforms into nutrient rich and fertile humus (this is different to the yummy Middle Eastern dip made from chickpeas – hummus ;-)), which in turn supports the growth of the vegetation rooted in it. In a similar way, the purpose of these times of introspection is they allow us to compost and transform ‘wasteful’ emotions and belief systems and turn them into psychological humus. So eventually, when the time is right, those ‘seeds’ lying dormant within us send green shoots through the soil, reaching for the sun and growing something that previously did not exist.
So after spending the latter part of 2020 feeling rather introspective, perhaps even dormant, in the last few weeks I have felt those green shoots within me start to emerge out of my psychological humus and push through towards the sunlight. This of course was not a random event. Something very specific has bought me out of hibernation and at the same time provided me with a powerful reminder about using my own platform.
As many of you will know, a few weeks ago the review into racism at Collingwood Football Club was leaked to the media. For those non-Australian readers, or those whose roles aren’t involved in the sporting landscape, Collingwood is one of the biggest clubs in the biggest sporting code in Australia – the Australian Football League (AFL). To contextualise the enormity of this, it would be like a review into racism being done at the New England Patriots in the NFL or Manchester United in the EPL.
The “Do Better” review document was rather scathing in places and perhaps best summed by the line “It is clear that players and fans have experienced incidents of racism and that Collingwood’s response to these incidents has been at best ineffective, or at worst exacerbated the impact of the racist incidents”.
Perhaps predictably, a media furore erupted, with sporting, political and social commentators all having their say. As I said in my last post, for me, racism is personal. It is not something that I can read about, witness and see pulled apart and not have some kind of internal reaction. For me my initial reaction was anger, frustration, sadness and grief, all of which very quickly spiralled into hopelessness.
As a sporting community, as a society, as a country we have been in precisely this place so many times before. And while changes can be seen happening at a glacial pace, in the big picture of things, not much has changed. And here, as much as racism is personal to me, I am not just talking about racism. I am also talking about how we address sexism and gender equity; questioning does the growing disparity between the haves and have-nots really matter to us; how we acknowledge and work to change homo- and trans-phobia; how do we change our thinking around the causes and support systems needed to address mental health challenges and addiction; how do we create organisations and workplaces that are not only inclusive but also transformative, and people find joy and purpose in their work? Our lack of significant forward progress in these important areas, important to me anyway, can make me feel hopeless and powerless and tempts me to surrender to the belief that I have no influence over the issues and challenges that are so close to my heart.
Using your platform is good for your mental health
My sense of powerlessness and hopelessness comes from the belief that I have not got a platform or influence, and even if I did, I would not be able to make any discernible change. In other words, my sense of power and hope gets eroded when my thinking becomes too externally referenced.
Part of my emergence out of my ‘dormant’ state and subsequent impulse to write again, comes from this sense that I haven’t got a choice. As my coach said, it’s what’s inside of me that needs to, that wants to come out. For me, that gives me hope, and helps me to access an internal power source, one that we all have, even if it feels out of reach sometimes. So using whatever platform I have, and doing it in a way that is more towards the internally referenced end of the spectrum, helps to ease my feelings of hopelessness. It once again aligns me to my purpose and the power I have to make a difference, even if that difference is changing the way I see myself. And this is good for my mental health; because in a world that sometimes feels out of control, where I feel like piece of seaweed being aimlessly tossed around at the whim of the ocean and her waves, it returns my focus to something that I can control – myself!
So in conclusion, what is inside of you that wants to, that needs to, come out and make a difference in your world? In terms of the challenges, the hardships, the pain you see around you in your family, your community, your organisation, ‘what is the hill you are willing to die on?’ In other words, how well are you using your platform? Of course, the irony in my question (some might say challenge) is that I’m using my own platform to talk about how you are using your platform. This is an irony that I am okay with.