Both Ends of the Rope

I have built a whole way of leading around one picture. You are hanging off a cliff by a rope, a thousand feet of air under you, one person on the other end. My high school coach handed me that image before he would let me on his offensive line, and I have spent twenty-five years telling rooms the same thing he told me. Be the person you would want on the other end of that rope. Strong, steady, the one who goes to the bottom with you before he ever lets go.

That is the easy half. Everybody wants to be that guy. Everybody wants to be the one who holds on.

Here is the half I did not want to learn. A rope has two ends, and it does not matter how good a rope-holder you are for everyone else if you will not grab the rope when it is your turn to hang.

I found that out the hard way. There was a stretch of my life where the ground gave out under me, the quiet kind of hard that nobody sees from the outside. I did the opposite of everything I preach. I had people, good people, rope-holders I would have run through a wall for, and they came looking to hold the other end for me. I would not let them. Not because I did not need them. Because I was too proud to be the one who needed catching, and too ashamed to be seen halfway down the cliff.

I told myself that was strength. It was not. It was pride wearing strength's jacket. A leader who pours himself out for everyone and refuses to be poured into is not strong. He is just running on empty and getting quieter about it.

I keep coming back to a soldier I have written about, a WWI lieutenant named Edred Pennell, whose pocket Testament sits in my collection. In the middle of the war he kept stopping to read a line and mark the date beside it. He carried his men and his country, and he never stopped tending his own soul.

That is the part I missed. You cannot hold the rope for someone else if you have let go of your own. The people counting on you do not need a leader who is proud of how much he can carry alone. They need one who has done the private, unglamorous work of staying whole, and who is humble enough to let the people who love him take his weight when it is his turn.

If leadership is service, and I believe that all the way down, then this is where a lot of us get it wrong. We think service only runs one direction, out of us and into everyone else. But you cannot serve from empty, and you cannot really serve people you will not let close enough to serve you back. Being willing to be held is not the weak link in the system. It is the thing that keeps the whole thing standing.

So I will ask it both ways now, because a coach taught me the first half and life taught me the second. Who is holding your rope? And when it is your turn to hang, are you willing to grab it?