What are you still obeying?

A baby elephant is born in a tent. It is small, clumsy, and has no idea what it will grow into. The trainer comes in on the first day, because an elephant born in a circus has to be trained from the start if a human is ever going to control it. The trainer carries a stick. From then on, every time the baby does not comply, the stick comes down. In real circuses, that stick had a name, the bullhook, a short cane with a metal hook on the end, and baby elephants met it within weeks of birth. (animal cruelty - mostly banned now, rightly so)

The elephant grows up with that stick as the centre of its world. The stick is the obstacle. The stick is the judge. The stick is the pain. Years pass, and the elephant becomes a huge, beautiful, powerful animal. But the same fear is still there.

The audience sees it from the stands: four tonnes of muscle obeying a small man with a small stick. It looks like a miracle, or a magic trick. Surely the elephant knows it could toss the trainer and the stick across the ring without effort. Just compare the size of the animal to the size of the stick.

How can something so powerful be controlled by something so small?

The audience sees the size of the stick. It does not see the history behind it. The elephant has learned to expect pain, and growing bigger does not erase that learning.

This story makes me think about the things we learn to fear.

Ask yourself: what is your stick?

Being laughed at when we speak. Being rejected when we ask. Being punished when we disagree. Sometimes we learn a rule that helps us get through those experiences: stay quiet, don't ask, don't challenge.

Then we grow. We gain skills, experience, relationships, and choices. We enter different rooms with different people. Yet we still follow the old rule without checking whether it applies. Guided by fear.

Mine was making my work public. I grew up learning that you always pay attention to what other people think of you, and what they will say. That rule kept me safe as a kid. As an adult, it kept my thinking in a drawer. For years I could teach in a room, but putting my own ideas somewhere anyone could read them and judge them felt like the stick coming down. It took a lot of reflection and a lot of small experiments before I could press send on the first issue of this newsletter. You are reading the result. The stick was never as big as it looked from the inside.

Our "stick" might be someone's disapproval. The possibility of looking incompetent. The discomfort of saying no. Not everything we avoid is a stick. Some things we avoid because they are not worth it. A stick is something you could handle and still avoid.

Leadership development is about uncovering those rules: what they once protected us from, what they cost us now, and what it takes to try a different response.

The cost is the part we underestimate. The stick does not just keep you quiet in one meeting. It decides which jobs you apply for, which people you avoid, and which ideas never leave your head, for years.

Where does this show up most? In transition. A bigger role, a reorganisation, a crisis. The old trainer is not in the room any more, but the moment the pressure rises, you flinch as if he were.

But, there are things we can do 👇

Why the fear does not shrink when you grow

The elephant is not stupid. Its brain is doing what yours does.

Research from the University of New South Wales found that avoiding what you fear keeps the fear alive. When people have a way to avoid the thing, they go on expecting harm long after the danger is gone. When they cannot avoid it (by research design), they find out quickly that they could handle it, and the fear starts to fade.

That is the whole mechanism. Every fear is a prediction: if I speak up, they will laugh. Avoid the situation and the prediction is never tested. The elephant obeys, so it never finds out that the stick cannot hurt it anymore. You stay quiet, so you never find out that nobody would have laughed.

Fear needs distance to survive. Learn about it and it starts to shrink. Meet it face to face, and most of it does not survive the meeting. Usually you discover one of two things: the threat was smaller than the one in your head, or you were stronger than you thought.

You cannot see your own stick

The audience could see what the elephant could not. Other people can see an angle of your stick that you are blind to. They are not always right; they may miss consequences you understand very well. But they can tell you what they see, and that is something you cannot do for yourself.

Research from Karolinska Institutet found that watching another person safely face something you have learned to fear can reduce your own fear, and that fear was less likely to return than when people faced it alone. Your brain borrows a little of their safety.

This is why I insist on cohort learning (instead of just 1-on-1 coaching), with an expert in the room but learning done together. People go deeper into the origins of the challenge, and learn faster, when they can see each other's challenges and borrow each other's courage.

Who in your life can see your stick for what it is?

✨ Adventure of the week

Pick two people who have watched you under pressure and know your circumstances well enough to be specific. One from work: a colleague, a former boss, someone who has seen you in a hard meeting. One from outside work: a partner, an old friend, a sibling. Choose people who will be candid.

Ask them for a conversation (it is always better to talk) or send each of them this message:

"Quick question, and I want the honest answer. What do you think I avoid, even though I could handle it? If you can, give me a specific time you saw it: what was happening, what I did, and why you thought I could have handled it."

The example matters more than the label. "You lack confidence" gives you nothing to work with. "In the budget meeting in March, you had the numbers, and you let Mark talk over you" gives you a pattern you can look for.

Then stop. Do not explain the question. Do not add "I'm reading something about fear." Do not send a second message when the first one sits unanswered for a day. Anything you add tells them what you hope to hear. Give them some time.

Before the answers come in, write down your own guess. One line. Fold it and put it away.

When the answers arrive, treat them as candidates, not verdicts. If both people name the same thing, that is a reason to look closer, not proof; they may share the same incomplete picture. If they name different things, compare the situations: maybe you have two sticks, or maybe one stick shows up differently at work and at home. If an answer makes your stomach tighten, notice that. It may mean they hit something true. It may also just mean the answer was unfair or embarrassing. The tightening is information, not a conclusion.

One warning. The answer may sting, and your first instinct will be to argue with it. Arguing closes the conversation, so say this instead, and nothing else: "Thank you. Tell me more."

Once you have a candidate, do not try to fix it. Over the next few days, reflect on three things to learn more. Where did I first learn this, and from whom? When did it last show up this month? What did I do in that moment?

You are not facing the stick yet. You are learning to recognise it when it walks into the room, and finding out what it is really telling you.

Until next time, keep evolving ✊