Life is throwing new challenges at us almost all the time. As Leaders feeling challenged is something all of us face. We are continuously tasked to come up with solutions to complex problems, often while no obvious best approach is known to us (or anyone in our team). That can makes us feel inadequate or like a fraud in our role. Our own expectation of ourselves as a leader can act as our worst inner critic here. We would love to never feel overwhelmed, to always stay calm and composed in any situation and ideally always able to perform our role with competence, skill and charm. Unfortunately and especially the higher we get promoted in an organization, the problems landing on our desks are getting harder to solve and the amount of uncertainty is rising. In short: plenty of opportunity to feel challenged and uncomfortable.
Typical situations that may challenge us in our day could be:
- We’re asked to come up with a strategy (and don’t know which one of the suggested possibilities might be the most successful to pursue, and we don’t have the resources to try all of them)
- We need to lay off a percentage of our staff and don’t know how to approach the selection
- Our sales strategy used to work up until a month ago and now we face a sudden inexplicable drop in sales, our investors pressure us to find a new source of revenue, but we don’t have a solution ready
- The pandemic is upsetting all our normal ways of working and we face completely new leadership challenges in a remote team context
- Somebody in our team shows a sudden change in performance or behavior and it has negative effects on our entire team, it is our job to address this
- We have to have a challenging conversation addressing a peer whose behaviors make it impossible for our team to succeed
- Our manager is getting deeply involved in operational details of our team. Robbing them of their autonomy and making us feel like we are not trusted
- We are asked to speak and present in front of a large audience, but are afraid of public speaking
Why do these challenges feel so uncomfortable?
What most of us experience when we are facing any of these challenges is a certain level of discomfort because there is a perceived risk of failure or our perception of risking to damage a social connection. That can lead us to procrastinate, or simply avoiding the solution altogether. It takes courage to come up with that strategy suggestion that might fail (especially in a culture that blames and punishes failures), dealing with the mental health impacts of team members who are feeling isolated and alone when they first start working remotely can feel completely out of your wheelhouse, having a difficult conversation addressing performance issues can feel like a daunting task because we fear the result can mean being less likeable as a human being and public speaking may simply terrify us.
How might we build more courage?
So at some point I got curious about how to build more courage around these very typical challenges anyone faces as a leader. Not addressing the challenge leads to bad outcomes, continuous pain around the unaddressed issue, or increasing pressure to come up with solutions (especially if there is no visible attempt at any proposed path forward). So I turned to what psychology has to say about this topic and found a few strategies that worked for me:
- Name it to normalize it:
One very easy thing to do is to simply state how a certain situation makes you feel. This is a very vulnerable thing to do and it may feel even more risky than avoiding the situation altogether, but it is also surprisingly effective to open a difficult conversation with: “I’m feeling really nervous and uncomfortable bringing this up with you today. Please bear with me and listen, I’m looking to find the best possible solution for both of us here.” - Being aware how defensiveness and stress reactions work:
Let’s say the first reaction somebody shows after you gave them some tough (but hopefully constructively delivered) feedback is denial, anger or silence. These are completely normal reactions somebody may go to who perceives the conversation you are having as threatening or stressful. People often react to stress with fight, flight, freeze or appease reactions (Mallika Dutt has an excellent piece about this if you want to read more). And if somebody goes into a pattern of defensiveness, in that moment it is almost impossible to keep having a constructive conversation. What to do instead could be to suggest a break in the conversation, give each other a bit of space, and then pick up the conversation again once everybody’s emotional first reaction has calmed down a bit. Simply knowing about this prepares you better for the stress you may feel yourself when your conversation partner gets upset by your conversation. - Mentally prepare with some breath work
One of the most surprisingly simple things we can do to be more relaxed and less anxious in stressful situations is to slowly and consciously breathe. This has been a pillar of many eastern practices in yoga and meditation, but western science has found ample evidence that slow breathing has effects on your parasympathetic nervous system. It slows down your heart rate (which might be racing when you experience something stressful), it lowers your blood pressure, it promotes a healthy digestion and it leads to a state of relaxation and decreased anxiety. So simply taking a minute to close your eyes and consciously breathe before a challenging conversation can turn into one of your secret super powers. Maybe closing your eyes is not the best course of action in the middle of a heated conversation, but again: ask for a five minute break to calm your mind, take a few deep breaths and continue your conversation then. This little time out can work wonders to de-escalate a challenging and stressful situation. - Practice being uncomfortable in some safe context
In German we have a saying “Übung macht den Meister”, it means “Practice leads to mastery”. So how might we safely practice getting a bit more comfortable with challenging situations. This could mean consciously putting yourself in a situation that you know does not come natural to you and then walk out of it feeling like you just accomplished something.
To me this was daring to show up to that yoga class offered at work despite me feeling deeply ashamed of how inflexible my body was. Obviously this gets better over time practicing more yoga. And to this day I feel challenged and physically uncomfortable in almost every yoga class. But I also always feel really calm and happy at the end of the class when I accomplished being there despite dreading the challenge this might be.
You could also try doing something that pushes you out of your normal context of behaviors or actions: Like hugging a tree and actually staying open and curious to the experience (even though you may have always thought of people who are hugging trees as somewhat strange). You may discover a deeper connection with nature as a result (or not), but the point is to try it and simply curiously observe what it does. You don’t actually know what something feels like that you have never attempted to do before. You are building a courage muscle this way. You’ll experience that your idea of how uncomfortable or embarrassing something might be and how stressful it really was don’t usually match. And you’ll also experience that you will be totally fine despite the fact that you challenged yourself with something outside your comfort zone. Next time you’re ready to dare something a bit more challenging. - Find an accountability buddy or role play buddy
Sometimes it is easiest to speak with a peer about the challenge you are facing and potentially role play a hard conversation with them before you step into the real one. This does two things: that person can give you some safe feedback on your delivery, which may prevent you from inadvertently saying something you could simply polish a bit more. And even more importantly: this person now knows that you are about to have that challenging conversation. This makes it harder for you to avoid having the conversation, because they will surely ask you how it went. If you are lucky and you get to work with a coach, they are perfect bouncing boards for these practice rounds. Finding a trusted leader outside your organization can feel safer than sharing with somebody in your organization. While having a peer inside the organization means they know your context better.
And finally I think it is important to acknowledge, that dealing with uncertainty and being uncomfortable as a result is part of what makes leadership hard. You are going to face challenges for sure and the fewer tools you have at your disposal to be ok in uncomfortable and challenging situations, the more stress you will experience in your role. So take time for breaks, take time to go for a walk in nature, hug a friend, cuddle your pet, do whatever works for you to be kind to yourself along the way of this. You’ll certainly fail at times, it will certainly not feel good, but maybe one day you can re-frame all those challenges into the golden learning opportunities that made you an overall stronger and better leader.
Photo Credit: Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash
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