Having and Being

George Koukis Speaks Personally on
Why Leaders Must Be More to Have More

I have discovered throughout my lifetime that what most people seek is to “have more”—their focus on this singular pursuit pushes out and precludes anything else—including greatness—from being realized.

With this misplaced and myopic focus, what they fail to understand is that in the absence of first “becoming more,” anything material they believe they have gained is merely illusion—a mirage, or “false image” created by distortions of light, tricking us into seeing something that is not actually there.

By way of illustrating this co-dependency between “having” and “being” I will recount to you the event I have pinpointed as teaching me the most important lesson of my life—an event I have referred to often based on its depth of truth and the degree to which it changed my focus and path in every moment since it happened.

As I have recounted before, after receiving my diploma from the University of Technology Sydney and coming quickly through the ranks at Qantas following what I refer to as my “Me Do It!” moment, I joined Management Science America (MSA) in their recently opened Sydney office, where for six years I worked very hard—moving from consultant to Pre-Sales Manager, to Operations Manager, to General Manager, and finally Managing Director.

My business successes were significant enough that almost no one who knew where I had started could have predicted them. But I had worked hard and prevailed. So by the time I left MSA to open my own consulting company, I was luxuriating, if you will, in the fruits of my labor. I had moved my family to a lovely home in Hunter’s Hill on the North Shore in Sydney, became a member of the Sydney Opera House, and began to cultivate a number of hobbies that happened to include squash.

The squash turned out to be important because three friends I had on the team were investing very heavily in the stock market at the time—it was booming. They were fixated on how much money they were making, and talked about little else. They strongly encouraged me to participate, and although I knew nothing of the workings of the stock market—and they seemed unable to provide any pertinent details beyond “everyone is making money”—I invested as well.

Each week, we all bought more shares, and everything continued to go up and up—we never sold any of the stocks we’d purchased, and on paper the money we were making was unbelievable—astronomical. We kept looking at those numbers—the “money we were making”—or so we believed at the time—and it was dizzying. We invested every asset we had access to in order to “make more” of this money.

In this imaginary reality we had constructed, it seemed almost magical. To give a clear picture of the mindset we were in, I will tell you that after exhausting all of my family’s liquid assets, I mortgaged our home to invest more money in the market.

Of course you are smart—you can see exactly what is coming in this story—just as we who were actors in it could not. Within three months, the stock market crashed, and I had lost everything of material value my family had—the house, the cars, our daughters’ school tuition, and our savings, which had at that point been built up to a comfortable point. I relate this very personal story because it is a nearly perfect illustration of the concept of having and being.

We lost everything because it was never really ours. The lure of “making money”—when in fact we had “made” nothing of value to justify those rewards—became distracting and then intoxicating to us until we lost all ability to make prudent judgments. It is as Aristotle says of those unable to behave with moderation or temperance.

“For the longing for pleasure is insatiable and bombards from all sides someone who lacks sense; the activity of the desire increases the innate desire … and if the desires are great and intense, they drive out calculation.”

I tell this story now because since that moment in time—when we went back to nothing and literally started over—this concept has been burned into every fiber of my being. Because my focus was misplaced in this instance—because my primary objective was to make money, as its own end, and to “have more” without creating any sort of value or “becoming more” myself—any “gain” I thought I had seen was in fact never there in reality. And while this was an uncommonly dramatic illustration of the point, it remains my greatest life lesson, and one I know with certainty will never be repeated.

Since the time of this event, I have focused my thoughts and energies only on things of value—things of integrity—whether those things are in business, out in the world, or just interacting with one individual human being. And what has resulted from this focus on “being more”? I have been materially repaid in multiples—many times over. In seeking to become more, I have been granted more than I ever could have imagined.

 Practical Application for Ethical Leadership

Shattering the Material Illusion—Why Having More Depends on Being More

It must be said in this discussion of “having and being” that as leaders, we inhabit literal and metaphorical “spaces”—in our organizations, our communities, our homes, and perhaps even our individual relationships—that some cannot imagine and most will not experience in their lifetimes. This is not to call one reality better or worse than the other, but merely to note that simply by being—or aspiring to be—leaders, we are already breathing a sort of “rarefied air.”

The relevance of this reality should be clear to most who inhabit the space—by this point in our lives, there is much that a leader has accomplished, and even been recognized and rewarded for, that has become ours through some combination of talent, education, opportunity, marketing, grit, and (we must acknowledge, if we are honest) our certain conviction that we are right in situations in which others are equally convinced we are wrong.

As leaders, we have likely been risk takers willing to pay the price if we fail and simultaneously laborers who barely flinch at tasks so overwhelming whole teams would find them exhausting to even consider. These are but a few of the myriad characteristics that help explain why a leader’s influence can—in and of itself—be life changing, business changing, even world changing.

In our pursuit of ethical leadership, however, we must also assess our potential vulnerabilities and liabilities with brutal honesty. We are high-achieving individuals for whom much has come easily, much with great toil, with most arguments (literal or figurative) won on the basis of quick intellect, iron will, or sheer intensity (or some combination thereof).

We must, therefore, guard against an alluring, yet false, sense of entitlement or invincibility that can accompany what, by definition, is our own, unobjective assessment of ourselves.

In this case, we are specifically referring to the faulty perception that what “we have” is necessarily justified by who “we are,” and conversely, that “we are” in some sense what “we have.”

Let us be clear at the outset that we are neither suggesting that leaders should not enjoy the authentic, material fruits of their labor, nor do we believe that the “feeling” and inspiration we derive from exquisitely crafted “things” is not real, or that it should not be appreciated.

What we suggest here, rather, is that as ethical leaders, we guard against what can perhaps be best termed “materialistic hubris,” as well as any false sense of value or entitlement we assign to ourselves based on our own perceptions of “who we are” based solely on “what we have.”

Conversely, we must also guard against believing that anything we perceive that “we have” that derives from something of lesser value than what “we should be” is real.

Just as the false or “paper wealth” afforded by stock purchases and valuations unjustified by actual added value proved worthless, so too are any material (or “what we have”) gains we have received without the requisite addition of value in “who we are” and what, as a result, we have produced.

While the syntax may be confusing, the underlying truth should not be. We must remain diligent and honest with ourselves–even in the company of peers who may behave in complete contradiction to what we believe–in order to intentionally remind ourselves that authentic material or related gains in what “we have” come only through our efforts to advance who “we are.”

Anything of apparent value deriving from any other source is false, unreliable, and vaporous–unworthy of our thoughts and energies and unable to miraculously transform us somehow into better, more noble, or more impressive versions of “who we (actually) are.”