July 14, 2025 • 11 mins
Moses, a central figure in the Torah, exemplifies the impact of informal roles originating in childhood. His leadership was shaped by abandonment, evident in his introverted nature and communication struggles. Despite leading Israel from slavery, he failed to foster trust between Israel and God, illustrating the crucial need for self-awareness in leadership.
#Moses, #leadership, #selfawareness, #Torah, #communication, #trust, #Israel
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Coleg Experience Podcast. In today's episode, we're diving into bold
(00:09):
insights, experimentation and groundbreaking leadership strategies that challenge the status
quo. We'll explore how unresolved childhood experiences can shape leadership styles, using
the story of Moses as a powerful example of how personal history influences professional
impact. Get ready for an enlightening journey into understanding informal roles and making
(00:35):
conscious choices in leadership. Let's dive in.
We can say with considerable confidence that the uncontested hero of four out of five books
of the Torah is Moses, or by his full name, Moses our teacher. Moses' personal character
as a human being is fascinating and it integrates distinctly with his leadership, which invites
(00:59):
us to think about role analysis. Role analysis is a technique we love to use both in our
Coleg group sessions and in individual or group work with managers and leadership teams. The
idea behind this technique is to try to understand what our informal role is. The informal role
is our life mission. As its name suggests, it's informal, meaning it's not something
(01:24):
someone defined for us, and it's also not something we defined for ourselves. More than
that, we're usually completely unaware of this role, but it has a dramatic influence
on how we conduct ourselves in the world, generally and in our professional framework
particularly. Our informal role develops from our earliest childhood stages, from our first
(01:47):
organization, which is our family of origin, and it accompanies us in every human social
situation and of course in management and leadership roles. A very familiar psychological
phenomenon is the attempt to recreate painful wounds from childhood. When we have an unresolved
issue from our childhood that we haven't processed, we'll try to recreate it again and again
(02:11):
in our adult lives, driven by the fantasy that this time we'll fix the story and it
will end differently. This of course doesn't happen, so the recreation only deepens the
pain and creates a frustrating pattern of repeating past crises. The metaphor we like
to use to describe this phenomenon is that star we see in the sky, even though it no
(02:36):
longer exists in reality. Because of the great distance from the star, the light that
left it many many years ago reaches us now, but while the light was travelling, the star
stopped existing and what we see is a kind of illusion. In role analysis processes, childhood
stories emerge that testify to something that happened in our distant childhood and despite
(03:00):
the fact that it no longer exists for many years, it still illuminates and colours our
adult lives through our informal role that activates us again and again. The goal of the
process is to create the possibility of a different choice for us. A choice that doesn't
continue our automatic patterns, but allows us to choose a different pattern. Let us share
(03:23):
two brief examples from our consulting work that illustrate this dynamic. We worked with
a media agency director, who consistently found himself taking on impossible client
deadlines and burning out his team. Through role analysis, we discovered his informal
role as the family rescuer stemmed from childhood experiences where he felt responsible for
(03:46):
preventing his parents' arguments. He was unconsciously recreating this dynamic at work,
trying to rescue every difficult client situation. Once he became aware of this pattern, he
learned to set boundaries and delegate more effectively. Similarly, we worked with an
infrastructure project manager who struggled with delegation and insisted on personally
(04:08):
checking every detail. Her informal role as the guardian traced back to being the eldest
child who had to protect her siblings when their father left. In her professional life,
she was unconsciously trying to protect her projects and team from any possible failure,
which paradoxically created bottlenecks and team frustration. We won't elaborate now
(04:33):
on the role analysis technique itself. We'll just say that it's very simple and always
works in the sense of how simple yet wise it is.
Let's return to Moses. Moses isn't with us to tell us about his childhood and the
leadership dilemmas he faces, but the scripture provides us with abundant information so we
can raise hypotheses about the personal motives that shaped his leadership. The special story
(04:59):
of Moses' childhood allows us a glimpse into an experience that largely shaped his adult
life. Abandonment. His mother was forced to abandon him. Twice. The first time when
she was forced to place him in a basket in the river. The second time when he was weaned
from nursing after Pharaoh's daughter, who found him in the river, asked her to nurse
(05:23):
him for her. Later in his life, he grew up as a stranger in Pharaoh's house, a Hebrew
among Egyptians. It seems this experience shaped Moses' personality and made him a
person who naturally doesn't rush to feel closeness to people and has difficulty developing
trust and intimacy with those around him. He's a relatively introverted person, someone
(05:47):
who speaks little and focuses mainly on actions. How do we know this? Moses testifies about
himself. I am not a man of words, neither yesterday nor the day before, for I am heavy
of mouth and heavy of tongue. In addition, the first story the scripture tells us about
(06:07):
adult Moses is about how he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, and he rises up and kills
him. He doesn't speak but acts. This is an important point, we'll return to it later.
Later Moses leads Israel out of Egypt into the desert on their journey to the land of
Canaan. Beyond the technical need to lead the people in the desert, Moses' central mission
(06:32):
is to create the connection between Israel and God. To build trust between the sides,
Moses fails in this mission, time after time. Despite everything God does for them, the
children of Israel continue to complain about their situation. Again and again, they refuse
(06:53):
to believe that God will indeed lead them safely to the promised land, and they ask
to return to Egypt. One of the reasons for this is Moses himself, whose introverted personality
and difficulty communicating and creating empathy doesn't allow trust relationships
to develop. The language the scripture chooses to use to describe the relationship between
(07:18):
Moses and Israel throughout the years of wandering in the desert is very harsh and characterised
by quarrels, anger, disappointment and despair. We don't find in it an example of empathy
and love being revealed in Moses' relationships with Israel or at all. In parentheses, we
(07:39):
should say that even in Moses' adult life he experiences abandonment. His wife and two
children disappear from his life at an early stage of the story, and in the end God also
abandons him on the mountain before entering the land. We'll return to this shortly.
Most Parentheses One of the familiar stories about Moses is bringing
(08:03):
water out of the rock. Here's a summary of the events. The children of Israel arrive
at the wilderness of Zin and there's no water. Big surprise, it's a desert, why should there
be water in it? They complain and quarrel with Moses, again. Moses and Aaron are forced to
(08:24):
flee to the tent from the crowd. God comes down and instructs Moses to speak to the rock
to bring out water. Moses strikes the rock twice and water pours out like champagne.
Everyone is satisfied, everyone? Well, not quite, almost everyone. Except for God. He's
(08:45):
angry at Moses for striking the rock and not speaking to it as requested. Remember what
was the first thing Moses says to God? I am not a man of words, as we said, a gun that
was placed in the first act. Moses can't manage to speak even to a rock. He prefers
to strike it. This worked with the Egyptian when he needed to defend the lives of his
(09:08):
Hebrew brothers. It doesn't work when you need to build trust and connection. Following
this incident, Moses doesn't merit entering the land. He's abandoned once more, this
time by God. After leading Israel for decades from slavery to freedom, he dies alone and
disappointed, and his burial place is unknown. Moses, one of the greatest leaders who arose
(09:34):
for Israel, succeeded in bringing them out of Egypt and leading them for 40 years in
the desert, but failed in the mission of building the connection between Israel and God, a connection
that would contain trust and faith. In this sense, Moses received a mission that to succeed
in it, he would have needed to break out of the most basic patterns and perceptions of
(09:57):
his soul. Moses' leadership is of course more complex than the framework we've narrowed
it down to in our text. What can we do? These are the limitations of the format. But if
we focus on what we've brought, we can say that part of our development as leaders and
leadership needs to be awareness of our informal roles of the non-existent stars we still see,
(10:21):
and knowing how to create choices for ourselves in places where we operate on automatic.
We'll end with a verse from Canaan, the brilliant song by Shlomi Shaban, which describes a conversation
between M, Moses, J, Joshua, and C, Caleb's son of Jafuna. All that J basically says is
(10:42):
that a great leader needs to know how to give up, to step back in order to be remembered
as what all his life he would want to forget.
And that wraps up today's podcast. We explored how Moses' early experiences shaped his leadership
challenges and the importance of understanding one's informal roles for effective leadership.
(11:08):
Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this episode with your friends and colleagues,
so they can also stay updated on the latest news and gain powerful insights. Stay tuned
for more updates.
Welcome to the Coleg Experience Podcast. In today's episode, we're diving into bold
(00:09):
insights, experimentation and groundbreaking leadership strategies that challenge the status
quo. We'll explore how unresolved childhood experiences can shape leadership styles, using
the story of Moses as a powerful example of how personal history influences professional
impact. Get ready for an enlightening journey into understanding informal roles and making
(00:35):
conscious choices in leadership. Let's dive in.
We can say with considerable confidence that the uncontested hero of four out of five books
of the Torah is Moses, or by his full name, Moses our teacher. Moses' personal character
as a human being is fascinating and it integrates distinctly with his leadership, which invites
(00:59):
us to think about role analysis. Role analysis is a technique we love to use both in our
Coleg group sessions and in individual or group work with managers and leadership teams. The
idea behind this technique is to try to understand what our informal role is. The informal role
is our life mission. As its name suggests, it's informal, meaning it's not something
(01:24):
someone defined for us, and it's also not something we defined for ourselves. More than
that, we're usually completely unaware of this role, but it has a dramatic influence
on how we conduct ourselves in the world, generally and in our professional framework
particularly. Our informal role develops from our earliest childhood stages, from our first
(01:47):
organization, which is our family of origin, and it accompanies us in every human social
situation and of course in management and leadership roles. A very familiar psychological
phenomenon is the attempt to recreate painful wounds from childhood. When we have an unresolved
issue from our childhood that we haven't processed, we'll try to recreate it again and again
(02:11):
in our adult lives, driven by the fantasy that this time we'll fix the story and it
will end differently. This of course doesn't happen, so the recreation only deepens the
pain and creates a frustrating pattern of repeating past crises. The metaphor we like
to use to describe this phenomenon is that star we see in the sky, even though it no
(02:36):
longer exists in reality. Because of the great distance from the star, the light that
left it many many years ago reaches us now, but while the light was travelling, the star
stopped existing and what we see is a kind of illusion. In role analysis processes, childhood
stories emerge that testify to something that happened in our distant childhood and despite
(03:00):
the fact that it no longer exists for many years, it still illuminates and colours our
adult lives through our informal role that activates us again and again. The goal of the
process is to create the possibility of a different choice for us. A choice that doesn't
continue our automatic patterns, but allows us to choose a different pattern. Let us share
(03:23):
two brief examples from our consulting work that illustrate this dynamic. We worked with
a media agency director, who consistently found himself taking on impossible client
deadlines and burning out his team. Through role analysis, we discovered his informal
role as the family rescuer stemmed from childhood experiences where he felt responsible for
(03:46):
preventing his parents' arguments. He was unconsciously recreating this dynamic at work,
trying to rescue every difficult client situation. Once he became aware of this pattern, he
learned to set boundaries and delegate more effectively. Similarly, we worked with an
infrastructure project manager who struggled with delegation and insisted on personally
(04:08):
checking every detail. Her informal role as the guardian traced back to being the eldest
child who had to protect her siblings when their father left. In her professional life,
she was unconsciously trying to protect her projects and team from any possible failure,
which paradoxically created bottlenecks and team frustration. We won't elaborate now
(04:33):
on the role analysis technique itself. We'll just say that it's very simple and always
works in the sense of how simple yet wise it is.
Let's return to Moses. Moses isn't with us to tell us about his childhood and the
leadership dilemmas he faces, but the scripture provides us with abundant information so we
can raise hypotheses about the personal motives that shaped his leadership. The special story
(04:59):
of Moses' childhood allows us a glimpse into an experience that largely shaped his adult
life. Abandonment. His mother was forced to abandon him. Twice. The first time when
she was forced to place him in a basket in the river. The second time when he was weaned
from nursing after Pharaoh's daughter, who found him in the river, asked her to nurse
(05:23):
him for her. Later in his life, he grew up as a stranger in Pharaoh's house, a Hebrew
among Egyptians. It seems this experience shaped Moses' personality and made him a
person who naturally doesn't rush to feel closeness to people and has difficulty developing
trust and intimacy with those around him. He's a relatively introverted person, someone
(05:47):
who speaks little and focuses mainly on actions. How do we know this? Moses testifies about
himself. I am not a man of words, neither yesterday nor the day before, for I am heavy
of mouth and heavy of tongue. In addition, the first story the scripture tells us about
(06:07):
adult Moses is about how he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, and he rises up and kills
him. He doesn't speak but acts. This is an important point, we'll return to it later.
Later Moses leads Israel out of Egypt into the desert on their journey to the land of
Canaan. Beyond the technical need to lead the people in the desert, Moses' central mission
(06:32):
is to create the connection between Israel and God. To build trust between the sides,
Moses fails in this mission, time after time. Despite everything God does for them, the
children of Israel continue to complain about their situation. Again and again, they refuse
(06:53):
to believe that God will indeed lead them safely to the promised land, and they ask
to return to Egypt. One of the reasons for this is Moses himself, whose introverted personality
and difficulty communicating and creating empathy doesn't allow trust relationships
to develop. The language the scripture chooses to use to describe the relationship between
(07:18):
Moses and Israel throughout the years of wandering in the desert is very harsh and characterised
by quarrels, anger, disappointment and despair. We don't find in it an example of empathy
and love being revealed in Moses' relationships with Israel or at all. In parentheses, we
(07:39):
should say that even in Moses' adult life he experiences abandonment. His wife and two
children disappear from his life at an early stage of the story, and in the end God also
abandons him on the mountain before entering the land. We'll return to this shortly.
Most Parentheses One of the familiar stories about Moses is bringing
(08:03):
water out of the rock. Here's a summary of the events. The children of Israel arrive
at the wilderness of Zin and there's no water. Big surprise, it's a desert, why should there
be water in it? They complain and quarrel with Moses, again. Moses and Aaron are forced to
(08:24):
flee to the tent from the crowd. God comes down and instructs Moses to speak to the rock
to bring out water. Moses strikes the rock twice and water pours out like champagne.
Everyone is satisfied, everyone? Well, not quite, almost everyone. Except for God. He's
(08:45):
angry at Moses for striking the rock and not speaking to it as requested. Remember what
was the first thing Moses says to God? I am not a man of words, as we said, a gun that
was placed in the first act. Moses can't manage to speak even to a rock. He prefers
to strike it. This worked with the Egyptian when he needed to defend the lives of his
(09:08):
Hebrew brothers. It doesn't work when you need to build trust and connection. Following
this incident, Moses doesn't merit entering the land. He's abandoned once more, this
time by God. After leading Israel for decades from slavery to freedom, he dies alone and
disappointed, and his burial place is unknown. Moses, one of the greatest leaders who arose
(09:34):
for Israel, succeeded in bringing them out of Egypt and leading them for 40 years in
the desert, but failed in the mission of building the connection between Israel and God, a connection
that would contain trust and faith. In this sense, Moses received a mission that to succeed
in it, he would have needed to break out of the most basic patterns and perceptions of
(09:57):
his soul. Moses' leadership is of course more complex than the framework we've narrowed
it down to in our text. What can we do? These are the limitations of the format. But if
we focus on what we've brought, we can say that part of our development as leaders and
leadership needs to be awareness of our informal roles of the non-existent stars we still see,
(10:21):
and knowing how to create choices for ourselves in places where we operate on automatic.
We'll end with a verse from Canaan, the brilliant song by Shlomi Shaban, which describes a conversation
between M, Moses, J, Joshua, and C, Caleb's son of Jafuna. All that J basically says is
(10:42):
that a great leader needs to know how to give up, to step back in order to be remembered
as what all his life he would want to forget.
And that wraps up today's podcast. We explored how Moses' early experiences shaped his leadership
challenges and the importance of understanding one's informal roles for effective leadership.
(11:08):
Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this episode with your friends and colleagues,
so they can also stay updated on the latest news and gain powerful insights. Stay tuned
for more updates.
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