Stop… Staying Calm

…Staying Calm. Staying Calm. Too many of us try to keep it all together and our leadership winds up limited by our careful, cool, and controlled demeanors. I’m not saying you should collapse in sobs or fly off the handle—that kind of emotional meltdown rarely helps a situation or your leadership,– but showing genuine emotion is a hallmark of exceptional leaders. Being calm and unaffected feels safe, controlled and leaderly, but it can also convey a sense of disconnection and aloofness to your followers, and they need to know you care and connect before they will.

People are creatures of conviction; they long to give themselves to causes that really matter and leaders that have genuine passion for the purpose. If you don’t let your feelings show in your leadership, you rob them of the fuel they need most. On the other hand, showing your feelings can affirm, encourage, and embolden people when your well-chosen words fall flat.

Emotions convey connection. When a person is upset or agitated, they need to know you appreciate their estimation of the situation before they can listen to yours. They’ve clearly decided the situation merits an emotional response so if you don’t show one when they share it with you, they figure you don’t “get” it, and they’ll up the ante until you do. If you want to deescalate the situation or speak to their concerns, you’ve got to show some emotion first. Get a little upset on their behalf or show some similar emotion. It alone acknowledges their feelings and creates the connection you need to move forward.

Emotions convey importance. When something matters, it moves us. As a result, your followers calibrate their sense of what you value by your emotion more than by your words . Leaders that present emotional “flat lines” fail to communicate vital information about the relative importance of organizational values and initiatives. In the wash of so many genuinely important things, people need a sense of what is most important if they are going to make the hard decisions about where to put their best energy and commitment. Your emotion distinguishes values and elevates some matters above others. It defines what is truly non-negotiable. Even anger has a place in your repertoire when a core value has been betrayed or a moral breech has occurred.

Emotions convey commitment. You’re not “all in” if you’re not moved emotionally, and your people need to know you’re “all in” before they’ll risk themselves. The hallmark of this kind of commitment is passion, and unfortunately passion is something you show rather than tell. It feels vulnerable to be so transparent, but there’s no substitute or shortcut if you want your followers to truly give their best. It takes passion to transcend compliance and persist when things are hard, and your followers’ passion can only be awakened by your own.

Stuff Leaders Should Stop is sponsored by spray Stoppit

Stop… Trying to Be Right.

…trying so hard to be right. Of course, being right isn’t a bad thing in itself— knowing stuff and having correct answers can distinguish you and win you the opportunity to lead— but fixating on being right can distinguish you too and lose the very credibility you were desperately seeking in the first place.

There’s no denying that it feels good to be right, and it’s easier to lead when you are. It feels lofty, leaderly, like you have a clear mandate to command. It’s intoxicating. No wonder so many of us start thinking it’s something to be maintained at all cost. But be assured, none of us is actually right all the time, and trying to look like it comes at a high price indeed. Leaders who fear being wrong…

…have fragile and one-directional relationships because they never apologize and meaningful reciprocity disappears. They perpetually reframe and reinterpret reality instead of simply acknowledging their missteps. This might keep their personal record clean, but at the expense of the vulnerability and interpersonal connection that fosters genuine trust.

…don’t take risks or innovate because it’s more important to them to prove their infallibility than to go boldly where none have gone before. They need to know that the journey will ultimately affirm their choices before they will take the first step.

…keep everyone else small because smarter or more capable people threaten them. They wnat to know that relationships and interactions will prove their prowess even if that confidence is purchased at the expense of the greater synergy and capacity of engaging the best and brightest.

…are brittle and break when leadership matters most. The resilience and personal efficacy we need most in trying times is borne in our acceptance of our imperfection rather than our absolute or unrealistic expectations of ourselves.

It’s awfully easy to think that your leadership depends on your perfection, but this is a dangerous delusion. People choose to follow you for many reasons, but not usually because they think you’re perfect. When you try too hard to look like it, you’re not fooling anyone but yourself and they get irritated, suspicious or disillusioned and decide it would be safer and more meaningful to give their allegiance to someone else. So stop trying so hard not to be wrong, and make the most of it when you are.

Stop… Fixating On the Plan

…fixating on the plan. It’s rare that I meet a leader who can’t plan– some are better at it than others, but being able to chart a course from Here to There is sort of a deal-breaker in attaining or maintaining a leadership role. But I often meet leaders whose success is challenged by their inability to let go of their plans. Sticking to a plan makes a leader feel leaderly and displays the “full steam ahead” tenacity that makes for corporate legends and good movies, but it also causes leaders to lose their agility and take their eye off what they planned to achieve, in favor of simply how they planned to achieve it. In the tumultuous world of real leadership this can derail or defeat even the most determined leader.

Planning relies on your ability to anticipate the future and control variables to make the most of it. It’s the due diligence and “advance work” you do to position yourself and your team to deliver the best results or reap the greatest rewards and it’s essential, but it’s also insufficient, because the future has an annoying tendency to stray from the script. When this happens, it’s not your ability to stick to your preconceptions that matters as much as your ability to adapt to what you’re actually experiencing. It’s not your ability to implement the plan “As Is” that promises the greatest gain as much as it is your ability to flex it, revise it, or even discard to serve the opportunities and challenges of the moment.

There is a time for planning and a time for simply Making Things Work. If you’re too focused on the plan when its time to make things work, you’ll miss the promising but unanticipated opportunities that came up while you were busily trying to make everything conform to your plan. Or worse, you’ll get run down or ruined by challenges that weren’t covered in your contingencies. When it’s time to implement, Making Things Work matters. Get your head up and out of the plan so that you can see when it’s ill-suited to your goals. After all, the plan serves you, not the other way around.

In the end, a leader is distinguished more by the results she achieves than by how perfectly she stuck to a plan. (I squirm just imagining this report to the board or stakeholders: “Well, we failed completely, but I’m happy to report that we stuck to the plan to the bitter end!”) Make a plan, and make a good one, but hold it loosely as you step into it.  If Shakespeare was right and “all the world is a stage”, then leaders need more than a good script to play upon it well; they need the inclination to improvise when an Oscar-worthy performance depends upon it.

Stuff Leaders Should Stop is sponsored by spray Stoppit