Day 127 in MIT Sloan Fellows Class 2023, Choice point 5 "The secret sharer"
Main story
Here is a summary by ChatGPT.
"The Secret Sharer" is a short story written by Joseph Conrad, first published in 1910. The story is about a young sea captain who takes command of a ship and begins to feel isolated from his crew. One night, he discovers a naked man clinging to the side of the ship, and he decides to hide him in his cabin.
The captain and the stranger, who is a fugitive, develop a close relationship as they spend more time together. The captain becomes increasingly paranoid that his crew will discover the stranger's presence and turn against him. In the end, the captain helps the stranger escape to safety and is left with a newfound sense of confidence and connection to his crew.
The story explores themes of isolation, identity, trust, and the relationship between an individual and society.
Context
When you become a new leader in an existing team, you are super vulnerable. Everyone observes you and assesses your every step.
However, on the sea, you need to make a critical decision unless you are developing a relationship with others. The captain's word is final and everything. There is vast responsibility for clues' lives.
Such an extreme situation is the context behind this story.
Challenges being a new leader
We discuss the following challenges in class.
- Should we disclose your vulnerability?
- Easily losing being yourself
- Imposter syndrome
- dilemma between experiment and coordination
- Fear for failure
In the story, the captain quickly decided to hide a guy, but it is not a legitimate decision and he may have behad differently.
Why did he make such a poor decision?
This is from the strong pressure as an outsider and he prioritized his emotional decision over legitimate decision. After this decision, he easily lost himself and identified other clues and other ships' captains as an enemy.
Takeaways
How we should make a good decision in such an environment?
- Articulate values and missions
- Mutual understanding
- Quick wins
- Story-telling and communication
- Controlling emotions and feelings
- Embrace diversity to weaken pressure to outsiders.
Message from professor
Whether we read the Secret Sharer literally or metaphorically, what I take this story to be about is a young leader who feels divided by the “ideal self” he feels he must be in this position (i.e., someone confident, composed, and self-possessed, as he takes Leggatt to be) and the inner doubts he harbors about his fitness for this new role and his fear that that secret will somehow be exposed for all the world to see.
Indeed, he gets so consumed by these conflicting psychological impulses and feelings that the choices he makes are often more about managing those complicated feelings than about managing the situation he is in as responsibly and thoughtfully as we want him to. And it is in just that way that I think Conrad’s story raises important questions for us all to consider.
As we discussed, powerful emotions often arise when we step into new positions of responsibility that will test us in ways we've not before been tested. A lot of “unexpected selves” show up in these moments, demanding our attention. This story asks us to consider: What do we want to do when these feelings arrive uninvited? What risks might we run if we don’t find a way to acknowledge, accept, and process them?
As usual, I think the answers lie in the questions themselves. As trite as it may sound, simply taking a moment to pause and be inquisitive and reflective about what we are feeling and doing in a given moment can help steady us. Simply acknowledging to ourselves the complicated emotions we’re feeling and accepting that that is all part of the process loosens their hold over us—and this is important because we want to be the ones at the helm, not our self-doubts and insecurities and fears.
