There is a childhood memory that remains remarkably vivid for some of us: the first sighting of a lighthouse. Impossibly tall, unwavering, and reassuring, an absolute beacon of hope calling lost sailors home. For others, this perception may have been shaped by a steady diet of Enid Blyton’s adventure books.
And then there is also the grown up knowledge of a lighthouse. It doesn’t detail direction, but it certainly is a useful guide. Rocks. Reefs. Coastlines that can wreck a ship if it gets too close. The message is never, “Come this way.” It is always, “Not this way. The way ahead is uncertain. The way ahead is rocky.”
The lighthouse is a familiar metaphor in conversations with leaders these days.
A recent Deloitte study found that only 15% of employees strongly feel their organisation’s leadership has a clear sense of direction.
And while it may be tempting to read that statistic as evidence that leaders need better answers, there might be another lens to see this from:
What if people are not looking for certainty as much as they are looking for honesty? What if the most useful thing a leader can do is distinguish between what is known, what is unknown, and what appears risky? Especially amidst all the uncertainty we live in.
That does feel closer to the work of a lighthouse than a GPS. The lighthouse does not pretend the storm isn’t there. It does not claim to know exactly where every ship should go. It simply illuminates what it can.
That is probably why some leaders are trusted even when they do not have all the answers. They share what they are seeing. They are transparent about what they do not know. They help people make sense of the terrain without pretending to possess a perfect map.
They are just ‘the lighthouse’.
If this conversation is alive for you, or if you’re looking at finding a switch to your light house, write back or look us up. Maybe we could navigate together.
