Literary insight on the executive psyche
I noticed how people played at being executives while actually holding executive positions. Did I do this myself? You maintain a shifting distance between yourself and your job. There’s a self-conscious space, a sense of formal play that is a sort of arrested panic, and maybe you show it in a forced gesture or a ritual clearing of the throat. Something out of childhood whistles through this space, a sense of games and half-made selves, but it’s not that you’re pretending to be someone else. You’re pretending to be exactly who you are. That’s the curious thing. (103)
That’s Don DeLillo from Underworld, quoted in the excellent blog Research as a Second Language. Frighteningly common, and I myself have not always been immune. It’s something to think about when you’re deciding how you want to show up as a leader.
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