9/11 always brings back a flood of memories. That’s not what this article is about but it is where I’ll start my stream of consciousness…

In 2001, I was a member of a disaster relief team rebuilding Kosovo after the war. I had just arrived back in Kosovo from Switzerland and was settling back into our team house when a call came over the radio telling me to turn on the BBC.

I turned it on. But I didn’t understand what I was seeing. No one did.

A plane had just crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. We could see images of smoke coming from the side of the building. A reporter excitedly described the scene and filled time while trying to pull in reports.

As I continued to watch, to my complete shock, we saw the second plane strike the South Tower. Not long after, a third hit the Pentagon.

I bounced back and forth between BBC and CNN trying to understand what was happening.

While I watched, the South Tower collapsed. Then United Airlines Flight 93 crashed. Then the North Tower collapsed.

It was horrible and confusing. No one knew what was happening, or what was next. You could feel the status quo of the planet bending.

I was the only American on my team. Our local staff were Kosovar Albanians. The expatriate staff were British or European.

Over the next few days, as the death toll rose and we began to learn more, many of the expatriate members of my team began rationalizing why someone would attack the US.

Perhaps it made sense. Perhaps the US deserved it.

I felt very alone.

Then I began to experience something bewildering.

Local staff came to me in tears, expressing their grief over what had happened. They were deeply grateful for the US-led NATO intervention. We had stopped the war and ethnic cleansing.

Also, most Albanians are Muslim. They were ashamed and embarrassed to hear that the US was attacked in the name of Islam.

An old woman made a long trip to our office from her remote village because she had heard an American was there. She gave me gifts, a ring and a figurine, expressing her gratitude for the United States and her grief over what had happened to us. She didn’t know me.

Our Perspective and What’s Good Enough

I’m a patriot. I love my country. But the US isn’t and never has been perfect. No country is.

People often talk about whether America is ‘the greatest country on earth.’ I think that is an unhelpful frame. Greatest compared to whom? According to what measure? And what does the answer help us do?

Some patriots seem to need America to be the greatest. Other people seem to find flaws in nearly everything the US has ever done or is doing. Both perspectives turn into black or white, all-good or all-bad thinking.

One side can conclude we don’t need to improve. The other side can conclude that we can’t improve. It’s a judgement. And a very narrow one.

My expatriate colleagues sought to understand what had happened through a lens of justice: The US must have deserved this or it wouldn’t have happened.

I don’t know what the old woman thought about America. I don’t know what she understood about us at all.

What I do know is that she didn’t need us to be perfect to recognize something good. Her people had experienced oppression, neglect, war and ethnic cleansing. The United States had helped them. Now something horrible had happened to us.

She hurt with us.

Perfectionism Is a Horrible Burden

It’s a perspective I grew up with. There wasn’t really a ‘good enough.’ The standard was what was expected. Attention was paid to where I hadn’t achieved ‘good enough.’

I projected that burden onto others as well. I rationalized this with, ‘If you think I have high expectations of you, you should see the expectations I have for myself.’

I had very high standards and would let someone know if they didn’t measure up. I might have thought I was helping. I doubt they experienced it that way.

Perfectionism turns standards into judgment. Everything begins to look either good or bad. Success or failure. Acceptable or unacceptable. And because nothing and no one is actually perfect, our attention is constantly drawn to what is wrong.

I remember talking about this with one of our Albanian team members. I told her that, for me, life was like running my hand over a piece of wood. If there were flaws or rough spots, I could just feel them.

I thought she would see me as perceptive and insightful.

Instead, she said, ‘That sounds sad.’

That comment, and how sad she looked for me as she said it, became a catalyst for my change.

She didn’t say I was wrong for seeing that way. Just that it was sad that I did.

Remember, she had lived through the war as well. She knew how bad things can get.

There is something sad about living life acutely aware of what is wrong. It’s not a special skill. There is always a flaw to find. And if we relate to people that way, there is always a reason they aren’t quite good enough yet.

That being said, the ability to see what is wrong can be enormously useful. It may even be part of what makes us successful. We want doctors and mechanics who are good at diagnosis.

But as leaders, if we lose the ability to see what is good at the same time, that strength limits our ability to lead and develop people.

It has taken me years to grow away from that.

Success, Not Perfection

My mentor Alan Weiss uses a phrase ‘Success, not perfection.’ I believe he’s playing on the AA phrase, ‘progress, not perfection.’

But his approach goes further. It assumes or expects that success is possible without being perfect. I find that challenging and enormously helpful.

Letting go of perfectionism doesn’t mean letting go of standards or goals. If anything, I probably have higher standards in some areas than I did when I was younger.

But I relate to them differently.

A few standards are critical. There are lines around safety, ethics and basic responsibilities that need to be clear, communicated and protected.

But many of the standards we use to develop ourselves and others are directional. They describe where we are trying to go.

The point isn’t that we should already be there. It’s that we are trying to get there.

As leaders, we set standards because we want to grow and because we want to help other people grow. That means there will always be a gap between where we are and where we want to be.

Growth occurs as we work to close the gap, not by there never being a gap.

Standards are useful when they give us direction. They become destructive when we primarily use them to determine whether we, or someone else, are good enough.

I was 27 years old when I watched the towers fall. I was young. Now I’m 52.

I’ve never forgotten the old woman who sought me out. I’ve kept the gifts she gave me. Of all the ‘treasures’ I’ve gathered from around the world, those are the most meaningful to me.

She was poor. Poor in a way most Americans can’t perceive. But she was generous and traveled a long way to find someone she didn’t know. Just to say ‘thank you’ and express her grief.

She knew nothing about me. She couldn’t have known whether I deserved her kindness. I was just an American, and something terrible had happened to my country.

She came at a time when the people I was surrounded by wanted to talk about and explore how America probably deserved what had happened. She wasn’t evaluating what we deserved. She simply reached out to me.

When I look at the ring and the figurine, it stirs up a hard to describe mix of emotions.

As leaders, we need standards. We need to see what doesn’t meet a standard and address it clearly. We also need to hold ourselves and others accountable and pursue something better.

But most of the people we lead are still becoming. So are we.

Maybe we can pursue ‘better’ without requiring perfection. Maybe we can see what is wrong without allowing it to become the defining thing we see. Maybe we can see the good that is, and that wants to be, and encourage it to grow.

Take good care,
Christian