Storms on the Horizon

No matter where you live in the world, storms exist. They also have very different natures. I come from Canada and am used to snowstorms. Imagine my wonder at the sight of my first sandstorm in Kuwait...

Here’s the leadership point... the kinds of storms you will face on your leadership excursion vary as do weather patterns around the world. Our storms are rarely repeated. Have any of these “weather patterns” affected your leadership life?

· A vision that is getting swallowed up in a fog of daily reality

· Employees rising up in a storm of anger, protest, resistance

· Economic turmoil

· The ‘perfect storm’ of multiple challenges that threatens to take down your leadership or organization

· Being frozen out of influence and realizing you are being sidelined

· A weather front from your personal life rolls in to affect your leadership

· ...

There’s a disturbance on my horizon. I started out here in Kuwait with a clear plan and confidence. But a storm started to brew, and things happened that I did not anticipate. Tried to wrestle it down, find a solution, and make mid-course corrections. In the end (actually I am not yet at the end), tough decisions had to be made that were right, but not easy.

How do you handle the storms? As I write this, I am still in a life & leadership challenge, so the things I am writing about are current. The following steps are helping me; some are still in-process. Some I take by faith that they will lead me to clear skies. So, as many blogs go, this is a personal journal of what I have come to know over the years can help me ride out the storms and emerge into clear weather.

So, as the weather gets bad around your leadership, or your life as a leader, here are some process considerations to help navigate the storm successfully...

Reflect

The default for many leaders is “dive in and solve this”. You are much wiser to step back and simply start reflecting. Reflecting is at its simplest: “taking a look”. Don’t bother analyzing yet. Take a snapshot of the storm. You can do this by asking some simple questions like:

· What is actually happening right now?

· Who else is affected by this?

· How might others be viewing this? (How can I get their opinion?)

· To what extent am I committed to successfully getting through this?

Process

At this stage it’s time to ask: “So, what does this mean?”

You can do this yourself, but I strongly advise against that! Most of us in reality are like a horse with the blinders on. We see only so far and usually in a particular direction. Involving others helps us get a 360 view of not only our situation, but also our thinking about the context.

Indulge me and let’s do some thinking about our thinking. The prefrontal cortex is where our executive functions are located. The basic activity of this brain region is considered to be orchestration of thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals. This area of the brain takes up about only 7% of our brain, but it consumes a high amount of physical energy. That’s why learning takes so much work! It's like the RAM in your computer... fussy and an energy drain! So, what our brain does is ‘hardwire’ everything it can, sending it to the "Hard Disk" so that it can be retrieved later with a minimum amount of effort. Our brains are wired so that we default to the ways in which we have thought in the past. It takes less energy to access that information, so we usually tend to ‘go there’. That’s what I refer to as ‘default thinking’; it’s the first thing we think about because our brain can access that thought (or pattern of thinking) without taking up so much energy.

But, think about this – in a storm, can we always rely on old patterns of thinking and behaviour to serve us well? This is where your friends and peers come in to help you ‘think’ from a different angle. You may find a new perspective that will help you face your storm. You may need help to learn a new way of not only seeing something, but of thinking about it.

And, if you have a major decision to make, you want the best of your brain on your side, not just ‘what comes to mind’.

Wait

Before a decision, it’s a good thing to create space between the issue and your need to make a decision. Walk away from it for a while.

Have you ever noticed how often an “AHA” moment occurs at some point after you have been hard at work thinking through a problem? There’s brain science behind that phenomenon too, but I won’t go into that here. (see the book reference below)

Decide

You do have to make a decision. They say that ‘not to decide is to decide’. That’s a half-truth. Not to decide is to:

· perpetuate the current chaos, which will control you if you decide not to control it

· live with lack of clarity and conviction, which will undermine your self-confidence

· create a destructive pattern in your thinking

Rarely, if ever, do we have all the facts in front of us when it is decision-time. We each make our decisions based on our own sets of criteria, which usually are a mix of the logical and intuitive ‘gut’ or ‘heart’.

For a fascinating read on how our brains work in decision making, I highly recommend John Lehrer's book "The Decisive Moment".

Act

Execute. Jesus once said: "Let your yes be yes and your no be no" - in other words, be integral once you have committed yourself and carry through on it.

I have made a decision. It’s time to execute. I still will have some of the storm to get through as a result of that decision. But the one thing a decision does is set your course for the next phase of your leadership. You now know where you are going.

Press on!

Harv Matchullis – June, 2010