Vachon Imagined

I worked for a retired Military Police Colonel who, when he was a Captain, used to have his First Sergeant replace telephone receivers because he would bang them against the desk until they broke.

Back when those were still a thing.

Anger-management classes were in his future, and he knew it.

To become an effective leader, he had to stop reacting to his anger.

Imagine an angry leader.

I’ve worked for them.

You have too.

You are them.

Anger takes over, and suddenly a room that was once relaxed and full of possibility becomes scorched earth, everyone standing around holding their coffee cups—the only things that survived in a room of bones.

Anger is life.

That’s what it is.

But when we don’t know what it is communicating, we can come to believe, “Oh yes, this is who I am. Now everyone just has to tolerate it.”

Clearly, that doesn’t happen.

People file complaints.

They spread rumors.

They take what you’ve given them and spread it themselves.

That’s not tolerance as much as it is sometimes vengeance.

So what did my leader do over time?

He matured.

He recognized where he needed support, and he got it.

This Ranger, with more medals than most people will see in their lifetime, took responsibility for himself.

And he became a leader who listened.

Was he perfect at it?

No.

But I will say this:

When he was listening to me, he made me nervous.

Because he didn’t react to what I said.

He listened.

And it’s funny how much we want people to get caught up in our drama. We want them to enter our story, to react to it, to prove that they care by becoming emotionally involved in what we are experiencing.

But listening is far more powerful.

And far more productive.

Because when someone listens without being consumed by what you are saying, they aren’t abandoning you.

They are giving you something far more difficult:

a place to be heard without giving your story control of the room.

That is leadership.

And perhaps that is love, too.

It happens sometimes gradually, sometimes without warning, until anger and fear become the only tools a leader knows how to use.

And putting them down?

Well, that’s like telling someone to change their personality today.

Change the way they think.

Change the way they speak.

Change the way they lead.

Change the way they’ve learned to survive.

It’s harder sometimes than we like to admit.

Because we are so worldly.

We are so human.

We build habits out of our experiences, identities out of our wounds, and personalities out of the ways we’ve learned to protect ourselves.

And then one day someone asks us to put all of that down.

Not because we are bad.

But because it no longer serves us.

And that is where maturity begins.

Not when we become someone else.

But when we finally become willing to stop defending who we have been.