Dear Unboxable Leader

Below is the introduction to “The Ground Truth Process: Name Your Work to Lead with Intention and Conviction”.

It’s a love letter—which is what I think the entire book wants to be.

I love letters. I’ve always loved letters.

My favorite time to get letters as a kid was at summer camp. Someone would stand with a microphone, and if your name was called, you had hundreds of folks watching as you went to collect that little marker of care.

Then the summer before college, my friends and I volunteered for a week as camp counselors. I decided to handwrite letters to each of my fellow counselors; each note identified something I admired in each of them and a memory of them that I loved. I wanted them to know that I saw them and loved them.

I can’t remember the details of what I wrote. What I do know is that every single person wrote back. They coordinated so all the letters would arrive at the same meal. I had to walk to the front again and again. I acted annoyed, but I loved it.

There is nothing like being seen, of someone demonstrating in a tangible way that what makes you you is important and meaningful. It’s what we’re all hungry for.

It’s what I offered when I put words to what I saw in the friends around me. And what they offered by writing back to me.

My work to this day is about putting together words that capture someone at their most specific.

I’d tell you more about what the love letter wants to tell you except I think it does a better job with that than any preamble could offer.

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Dear Unboxable Leader,

Your work and life are too nuanced, too rich for a simple label.

A box could never contain you.

And still: I mean it when I ask, “So what do you do?”

I want to know. 

I want to know what you spend your time doing and what you like about it and what part of it seems just right in your life.

I want to know what you do. Where are you in the things you make, the people you talk to, the tasks you have to complete?

I want to know how much time it takes to become what you are and whether you feel that it’s been worth it.

I don’t care about your title. I don’t even care if you answer with your job. 

I want to know what you’re proud of. I want to know what you create that matters to you and how it matters to you.

I care that you tell me something you love in this life.

I want to see you. I want to see you as someone who loves the world and lives in it with their whole being.

Tell me.

Tell me who you work with and what matters to you and what kind of change you want to make in the world.

Tell me what you know about your industry today and what you wish people understood about your job.

Tell me the weird things. Get nerdy—like, really, really nerdy—the parts you think aren’t relevant but are actually close to who you are as a person.

Tell me a brag or two. Let me see the vulnerability it takes to be proud of something.

Tell me where you’re going. Tell me what makes you angry in the world, what pisses you off to Roy-Kent-ripping-up-locker-room-benches levels.

Tell me what eases you, what calms you, what draws you in, what sets you at home.

I don’t care about the proof points of success and power in your industry. I don’t want to know you as successful. 

I don’t care how articulate you are. I don’t care about your grammar. I care that you speak and live with intention and conviction.

I care about your curiosity and what keeps you wondering and making things. You have no idea how powerful and skilled you are when you let curiosity lead the way.

I care about the way your face changes when you talk about something you love. How the secret joy is revealed in the softness of your voice, the breath in your cheeks, the pull at the corner of your eyes.

And when you ask me what I do, I want to tell you how my joy is in taking the language in our stories and seeing how it’s all connected, how every word is tied together in a perfect theme, a name that sounds like you. How we can put that thread into words and sing it like a song.

To do that, you have to let us see you.

Tell us your name. To name yourself is to let us in.

Not the name given to you by an industry or a job, but the one you give yourself, the one that helps you know what is yours in any room you go into, a name that lets you see yourself and everything you offer.

You know what your work is. You just need the words, the name, to tell us what it is.

Tell us how to love you. We’re ready.

Love,

Your Fellow Unboxable Dana Ray