It was the act of imagining herself as she had once been that enriched her syntax and extended not only her images but the coherent flow of association that led directly into the task at hand.

The better the speaker imagined herself, the more vividly she brought the dead doctor to life. It was, after all, a baptism by fire that was being described. To see her ambitious young self burning to know what her mentor knew, we had to see the mentor as well: an agent of threat and promise: a figure of equal complexity.

That said, there are three prevalent sources of fuel for the inner fire across the vastly different lives in the study. In addition to love of the doing, the two others are:

Extend Out/Circle Back: This is a continuous dynamic process of extending yourself— growing, learning, experimenting, expanding capabilities, discovering new encodings— while simultaneously drawing upon encodings discovered and capabilities developed earlier in life.

Woodward later described this moment as like a shot of Adrenalin, showing her full support and resolve, but also making clear her standards: “Never” was unacceptable. “At that moment she achieved the perfect managerial pitch,” recalled Woodward. “She wasn’t going to meddle, try to edit or second guess, but she did, after all, want a better performance. Her skill was to raise the bar, gently but relentlessly.” Raising the bar, gently but relentlessly—now that is a powerful leadership encoding.

But as I got deeper into this research, observing the vast differences across the people in this study and how they flourished at their best when life lined up with their encodings and what fed their inner fire, I gradually began to change. Subtly at first, I began to shift away from trying to change people into what I wanted them to be. Simultaneously, I shifted toward finding or creating the best possible match between their encodings and their responsibilities. It didn’t happen overnight, it was more of a managerial form of simplex stepping. I’d sense something about a person’s encodings, and then I’d make a shift in their responsibilities to fir those encodings. Then I might observe something else about their encodings, discovering something wonderful about them when they thrived in a task, and I’d make another shift in responsibilities. Together, we essentially simplex stepped toward them coming into frame in a seat on the bus.

Part 3: Feeding the Inner Fire Long and Late

10. Extend Out/Circle Back

Consider this simple statistic: Streep earned more Oscar nominations after age 40 than any other actor in history (male or female) had achieved across the entirety of their careers.

In fact, Streep earned just as many Oscar nominations in her 60s as she did during her hyperproductive 30s. As of 2024, she’d earned 21 nominations, 75% more than any other actor in history, and I would not be surprised to see her land another one in her late 70s or even her 80s.

How did she work through the “witch offer” phase of her 40s, regain full stride in her 50s, and then accelerate? How did she keep the fire fully fed long and late.