Having Peace Through Trials and The Call to Leadership
This article was written by Jim Miley and published by Crossroads Professional Coaching.
There is a huge portfolio of skills to consider for effective leadership across roles and situations, but here I want to focus on two leadership fundamentals that are universal.
REMAINING CALM UNDER PRESSURE AND BEING WISE WITH YOUR DECISIONS.
It is nearly impossible to serve as an effective leader if you freak out when under stress or if you habitually make rash decisions. Mastering self-control over your stress management and decision methodology deserves constant attention for many leaders.
Remaining Calm Under Pressure
Why is it so common to let stress affect our leadership?
If you have found yourself in leadership of any sort, you have found yourself confronted with trials. There is no substantial leadership role void of challenges. So, assuming we all aspire to be good leaders, we must aspire to handle challenges well and learn to be calm in our thoughts and make wise decisions.
I’ve spent a lot of time with several of my young grandchildren over the summer. Spending time with kids, whom I love so much, reminded me of the useful joy that ignorance can bring. They don’t seem to have a clue what’s going on in the world, just what they want today or even this minute. Ignorance is bliss; or is it?
The ignorant are unencumbered by having to deal with the realities of their situation. There is no stress associated with consequences you don’t even know exist. The bliss of ignorance lasts all the way up to the moment the negative consequences actually occur.
Our family shares a now famous story of my two-year-old son laughing while he faked putting his hand on a hot stove burner. In spite of Dad telling him to stop and that he would be sorry if he disregarded my warnings, he did it. Ignorance is bliss until it isn’t.
Stress often rises as we become more aware of responsibilities and risks that exist in our circumstances.
“The simple inherit folly, but the prudent are crowned with knowledge.” Prov. 14:18
As leaders, we lose the luxury of ignorance, which means we must actively work to manage stress. For more on this, read our post on How To Manage Stress At Work? Where Does Your Anxiety Come From and How To Reduce It.
More mature adults can either let the knowledge of what needs to be done cause them distress or face the challenge and gain energy by overcoming the situational demands. You see it in your staff; some recognize situational demands and rise to meet them, while others seemingly live in a state of ignorance. “The simple” walk through minefields of problems without ever recognizing the risk until something blows up.
As you grow in responsibility, one of the biggest challenges is that you don’t have the protection of ignorance. A luxury of youth or less responsibility is that ignorance protects you from the stress of knowing what needs to be done. Leaders must embrace the knowledge of what needs to be done and face the challenge boldly. This is a crucial step towards finding Finding Peace As A Small Business Owner, even when trials arise.
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Matt. 6:34
This verse from Matthew 6 is powerful but often misunderstood, in my opinion. Work with me to apply this to your leadership role. Matthew 6:34 sounds overly simplistic when just taken at face value, but it can be profound in impact as you meditate and pray on its application. My business application is that you don’t control tomorrow; you control today. In sports circles, it would be “win the day.” Don’t worry over the upcoming game, focus on practice today.
As you become aware of situations that may cause stress, focus your energy upon the next step you should take. What do you need to do today to be in the best position possible under the circumstances?
The 80/20 rule applies. Occasionally, there will be really tough and complex issues that require more of you than taking the right next step; these are the 20% issues. But 80% of the stress risers you encounter will be handled effectively if you simply make good decisions each day. The vast majority of problems will be addressed well if you simply take care of business each and every day without worrying about tomorrow.
Avoid procrastination by doing what you know needs to be done and preventing a single gnat from becoming a swarm.
Having peace through trials at work means you need to recognize that 80% of your trials are not really trials at all. 80% of what you thought were trials are just the daily burdens of leadership. Handle these 80% issues each day as you go about your business and meet that demand willingly, as God has called you to.
What about the other 20%, the real problems?
Being Wise with Your Decisions
Wisdom in decision-making is a close cousin to remaining calm under pressure; hence, covering both in this one post. When you work to avoid spending emotional energy on tomorrow’s problems, you also avoid spending emotional energy guessing at what the future holds. You avoid trying to reconcile what you believe to be true today with what might not be true at some point in the future, including all the potential consequences. Just writing that sentence caused me a little rise in stress.
What is it about the future that causes many to experience anxiety? Uncertainty or the unknown.
What is the most common root cause of poor decisions? Inaccurate information or the unknown.
Having accurate information and facts to the extent practical is the most critical requirement for wise decision-making. Good leaders maintain the discipline of seeking good information. This discipline is key to Decision Making – Thriving in the Gray with Faith.
I believe so many of us struggle to have peace through the trials of leadership because we lack (1) the information that tells us whether this is an 80% daily issue or a 20% real problem and (2) the facts behind the situation.
It’s beyond the scope of this post to dig into how inaccurate people’s opinions are, but here I will just state boldly that when a leader is given verbal information from team members or customers, it is rarely based on facts and even more rarely the whole story.
If you want to be wise with your decisions, start with the facts. Gather all the facts you reasonably can from objective sources. The reasonable test is important, or you will easily pass the point of diminishing returns and face analysis paralysis.
There is magic in honing your discernment of fact versus fiction: the skill of asking specific questions about situations and recognizing where objective data resides, and hearing the difference between a simple statement of fact over an opinion or someone leading you to a conclusion.
The vast majority of people in your life will lead with opinions and hold back on facts while you’re struggling to assess the importance of a decision. Initially, you can’t figure out whether this is an 80 or a 20. Later, you’ve got a string of undesirable outcomes that you didn’t see coming and no peace.
Being wise with your decisions means you effectively parse fact from fiction and avoid excessive influence from opinion.
Having Peace Through Trials in Leadership
Having Peace Through Trials in Leadership means combining remaining calm through trials with being wise with your decisions. It’s not sufficient to just have ice water in your veins if you habitually make poor decisions. Conversely, it’s not good leadership to make good decisions if you’re a nervous wreck in front of your team every hour of the day.
In over 30 years of business leadership and business coaching, I’ve never seen a business that does not have regular challenges and trials confronting the leaders. There is no question of whether you will face trials, only how often and when. Developing Resilience in the Business World Is A Superpower that will serve you well.
- Gather facts surrounding decisions
- Recognize the 20% potential problems
- Don’t procrastinate on the 80% daily issues
- Make wise decisions because you have good information
- “Don’t be anxious about tomorrow…”
If you make a discipline of the steps above, you have done what you can do each day. You will be making the best decision available even under difficult circumstances, and your call to leadership, if you choose to accept it, is to remain steady through the storms of your life.