“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” 
– Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

I’ve been noticing semantic overload more frequently since I wrote about the word “company” a couple weeks ago, and I was recently reminded “community” is another word used at the convenience of the speaker, sometimes to obscure reality. Then, I was sharply reminded that I overload the word “leadership” in a way that is lost on most folks, and it made me ponder how my teacher explains “martial arts” to someone new after his fifty years of practice.

We use taxonomy to describe the relationship between different ideas, and those relationships can vary by culture. Biology is a type of science and shrimp is a type of seafood, but how we distinguish colors is more complex. We made up “LGBTQ+” because we needed an umbrella term, something at the top of the taxonomy, to talk about those experiences. How people react to and understand these words’ semantic meanings and their taxonomical relationship to other words is a huge part of communicating ideas.

When I’m working on aligning process & ideas, getting folks to agree on terminology that we can use consistently (and accurately represent in our software tools) is a critical piece of the challenge. A brief glossary of terms can often have more impact than a dozen complex diagrams and documents, because if you’re not clear on the words we’re using, you’re definitely not going to understand the strategy we use those words to build. I often tell folks I’m looking for “first principles” in those conversations, which is my term for the assumptions that come from both the words we’re using and the context we stopped talking about because we thought everyone understood it the same way.

Asking a “stupid question” like “What does that word mean to you?” is absolutely critical to alignment work. When you start feigning understanding to fit in, you end up with fake alignment from jargon that creates safety for the speaker with intentional vagueness. “Can you action that and then circle back?” is a sentence that vaguely implies “do the thing, then tell me” without actually explaining what you’re supposed to do, how to do it, or how you’re expected to communicate next. I’ve found it safe to assume it’s because the speaker doesn’t actually know.

In my mind, “leadership” is the taxonomical apex of everything I’ve written on this blog, including how to define success, or the first time I resigned, or focus transitions, or bullies, or expectation I put on myself, or building moats, or just being vulnerable by talking about grief — This is all my story about learning to be a better leader.

When my teacher talks about martial arts, he emphasizes the practice outside the mats. You don’t spar just to be good at sparring, you spar because it teaches you about the battle inside yourself. You don’t meditate to meditate better, you meditate because eventually you’ll instinctively take a breath before responding when you feel attacked, and that breath will change your life.

I think about leadership skills when I’m navigating a tense situation with family. I think about it when I’m doing community moderation. I think about it when I’m writing an email at work. And I think about how fifteen years of martial arts have made me a much better leader — yes, including getting punched in the face in the painfully-not-a-metaphor sense. Just as my teacher sees every moment of life as an opportunity to apply martial arts, I see it as an opportunity to apply leadership. Just as he would never be comfortable being called a master of his art, I’ll never feel like I’ve remotely mastered mine, because no external validation will ever appease our intrinsic desire to be better and follow that thread forever. Even when I desperately tried to rest from that journey, I realized it wasn’t for me.

Leadership is choosing to act carefully and with intent, even when you’re exhausted. It is taking care of the group, but also taking care of yourself. It’s listening carefully to each story you are told, thinking about how you fit into it, and developing the wisdom to choose whether it needs edits before you repeat it. It’s the art of hearing dissonance in a conversation, the resolve to choose to solve it, and the skill to actually do it. It’s demonstrating vulnerability, creating psychological safety, empowering people, and constantly struggling to speak to others with the same semantics & taxonomies so you can get a deep enough understanding to say something real to each other.

Leadership is synthesizing where all the stories and challenges are steering a group, and deftly nudging the steering wheel at just the right moment, without most folks realizing you did it. It’s the experience to know that moment when you see it. It’s the quiet confidence that the nudge mattered even if no one says so. It’s also the wisdom to accept when you’re not in position to deliver the necessary nudge and figure out a new plan.

Leadership is listening to the same complaint again because it matters to someone else, which means there is some truth there you don’t understand yet. It’s patiently repeating the plan for the eighth time like it’s the first, and examining why they didn’t hear it the first seven times with genuine curiosity. It is not valuing your time above anyone else’s, nor prioritizing your comfort over theirs. It’s accepting you don’t get any time off from the work no matter how good you do or how badly you think you need it.

Leadership is seeing every moment of change as an opportunity to make things better for everyone. It’s consciously choosing which hat to wear in this moment — coach, mentor, sponsor, counselor, partner, protector, listener, or friend. It’s the ultimate skill to make the world a little better, one moment at a time, tailored to the power you have, not the power you wish you had.

I often see people called leaders who simply are not. I often see things called leadership that are the opposite. I see a world where people think leading is what their manager does at work, when what they’re actually doing couldn’t be further from it (and it isn’t conferred with a job title). In moments of weakness, I think about how much easier my life would be if I could just ignore it, or wonder if I’m delusional. But, I’ve found a few people who agree with my particular world view, and it keeps me grounded when the volume of the dissonance gets louder for a while.

I may have semantically overloaded “leadership” to the point it’s nearly useless in casual conversation, but I’ll stick with it anyway as my own umbrella term. Maybe I’ll even understand it someday. For now, I’ll leave you with the exact same answer my teacher uses to explain martial arts: It’s learning to respond well.