Even the most dedicated and experienced of leaders will admit that there are more than a few days when they wonder whether it might not be a lot less stressful to hang up their leadership cleats in favor of an individual contributor role.
Like marriage, not every day as a leader is filled with wine and roses. There are many days when you will drive home from work wondering whether you truly accomplished anything, and others when you will feel like you just took a few steps in the wrong direction.
Consider These Less Than Joyous Leadership Occasions:
- One of your top players and someone that you’ve invested a great deal of time mentoring announces that she is resigning.
- You just spent most of your day justifying your team’s existence to upper management.
- In spite of knowing better, you lost it and snapped at someone that truly didn’t deserve that reaction. (No one deserves that reaction.)
- You spent the day deciding who gets laid off and who doesn’t.
- One of your team’s major projects blew up and you spent the day as a human shield while your group took shots from everywhere in the organization.
- Your 360-degree feedback suggested that you have more than a few opportunities to improve.
- Speaking of feedback, you managed to end up with two people crying in your office today. You thought about it yourself.
- At 8:00 a.m., you saw the competitor’s announcement of the game-changing new product. Your deodorant failed by 11:00 a.m. when you were explaining to the executives yet again why you didn’t have a good response to the competitor.
A Few Not So Serious Suggestions for Surviving the Toughest Leadership Days:
- Start by reminding yourself of two key points: 1. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and 2. Cannibalism is outlawed in most countries, so it is unlikely that you will be roasted and consumed. Since it cannot get much worse than that, consider yourself lucky and keep moving forward.
- If points 1 and 2 above fail to assuage your anxiety, throw in the clincher of, “This too shall pass,” and get back to work.
- Take solace in the fact that someday you will be upper management and then people will see what it’s really like to walk on hot coals.
7 Slightly Serious Ideas for Surviving the Toughest Leadership Days:
- Every problem or crisis is an opportunity to build your leadership skills along with your confidence and credibility.
- Problems create teachable opportunities. Don’t waste these opportunities.
- It’s the challenges that you and your team conquered that you will remember. Make some memories!
- Remember that you don’t have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. If you’ve done your job and earned respect, your team members are there to help ease the burden. Ask for help.
- People aren’t programmed to act and respond in ways that always fit your plans. Losing a great employee is painful, but if it has to happen, ensure that the relationship transitions to one of valued and always welcome alum.
- Be thankful for feedback that says that you can improve. At least someone cares.
- Leaders earn dividends over the long term. Your payoff comes a decade from now when the people that you are leading today are rising to new heights in their careers. They did the work but perhaps you played a small role along the way. Take pride in their accomplishments.
The Bottom–Line for Now:
There are no silver bullets for the bad days. They are inevitable and the best thing that you can do is stand strong against the fury and live to work and fix and build another day. The bad days remind you that you are human and not invincible, and they help balance out the days when you mistakenly start believing that as a leader you can do no wrong. Enjoy them all, for days, good or bad, are all that we have.
Art, I like your blend of humor and reality. And the title grabbed my attention since those are two of my favorite words, and I’ve never seen them in the same phrase before (Leadership Coffee would have worked well, too).
You allude to it in #4, but it’s really important for people to have a support system. Someone who can encourage them when they have to deal with the types of challenges on your list, to provide a balanced perspective and remind them of other occasions when they’ve faced adversity and prevailed.
We recently experienced #5 (lost a very valuable employee) in our own company, moved instantly to acceptance and “find a new person” mode and ended up hiring someone who brings an even stronger skill set for what we need going forward. If I’d spent time wallowing in self-pity or feeling angry about the employee’s decision to leave, I’d have lost valuable time and energy. I think our egos can get wrapped around the investment we’ve made in helping develop an employee and we can feel betrayed, that they’re being disloyal. That attitude can set us up for a whole set of negative, unproductive feelings. Getting to acceptance quickly, whatever the reality we’re dealing with, is a key to moving towards a solution.
I really like the encouragement you give at the end of your post, and I’m certain it will give a shot of caffeine to someone who may have had a tough day as a leader. I appreciate your post.
Hi Meredith! Thanks for reading and for your extremely thoughtful comment. Love the support system perspective and I particularly love your take on coping with losing the valuable employee. It’s always painful and you are right…the best approach is to keep moving and get that next great talent on board.
Best, Art
Art, another great post!
I especially like how you tell the story: I was feeling bad for our “leader” (while thinking back to similar times), some comic relief, and then uplifting solutions that brought a wonderful smile to my face!
What you describe is what happens every day (maybe not on the same day!) and that keeping a positive and honest outlook will really show your true leadership. I was in a tough spot once, and a True Leader gave me this advice: “The world is still turning and we are still alive! How bad can this really be?” That was a valuable lesson in perspective.
Of course my favorite is #6: “Be thankful for feedback that says that you can improve. At least someone cares.” All feedback is valuable feedback as it helps propel us forward! It sometimes takes time to see its benefits but will be remembered if it’s effective.
Wonderful!
Sonia
Sonia, thanks as well for reading and commenting! I am hopeful that all of those things don’t occur every day, but I can recall a few that felt pretty similar. Love your “world is still turning advice.” How true. Thanks for sharing! -Art
Great post.
Someone mentioned blend of humour and reality….from my point of view, “real life is funnier than fiction” and “if you can’t laugh what can you do” are two important rules that explain why this post is so good!
Excellent work!
Art,
A nice post to read at the start of another day full of opportunities to work on our leadership skills. I am grateful for a colleague that shared with me a comment that I now repeat to myself when I’m having a bad day…”This too will pass.”
Perhaps as leaders we can work on our emotional intelligence to help us process and adjust our reactions to a challenging leadership situation. I just finished reading Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Bradberry and Greaves, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a fast read that comes with a simple on-line assessment and many practical insights and suggestions for improving your EI.
I think I will bookmark this article and read it when I am one of those days! Thanks!
Great tips Art, I like Kimba’s idea of bookmarking for just such a day.
One additional thought, if all else fails, I harken back to a saying my father-in-law taught me (when he was still an officer at GE) – “Temporary inconvenience”. Of course, he took me aside when our first child was born and clarified that this even was not, in fact, a “temporary” inconvenience, but the thought has been helpful on numerous other occasions.
Art,
Thanks for the nice article. Mostly I agree.
One aspect which affects me, and I see it affecting some in friends circle as well is this. A guilt feeling.
The result (negative) is something just not in your hands. Your customer is going through tough times and hence there is impact on your business; or something similar, which you have no control on and couldn’t have influenced. When these happen, although part of you knows you couldn’t have done any thing to avoid the situation, you still are left feeling hugely guilty. It is not so much about thinking of hanging up the boots, or self-pity either, but more a concern for the well-being of the organization, which makes you worry that you might be the reason, and a self-doubt whether you have lost your edge. You start wondering if someone else would have done better, and differently.
It isn’t easy to shrug off, it isn’t easy to say world and life goes on, because it all looks self-serving.
Best Regards
Steve, Deb, Kimba and Greg, thanks for reading and sharing!
Steve, I love the two additional “rules” for coping! -Thanks.
Deb, wise advice and thanks for the heads up on the always fascinating topic of Emotional Intelligence.
Kimba and Greg, thanks for finding a great use for the post. And Greg, I love the “temporary inconvenience” perspective from your father-in-law. Still chuckling over his qualification of that statement when his grandchild arrived on the scene.
Thanks to all! -Art
Sreenivas,
You raise a very compelling personal issue. If I distance myself from some of my attempts at light-hearted coping suggestions in the post, I certainly can relate to having feelings of consternation over things that have gone wrong…albeit things outside of my direct control. I’m not sure my feeling is one of “guilt” as much as frustration and a sense of helplessness, but I absolutely respect your use of the term. To me it shows your quality as a professional and a human. Thanks for the thought-provoking comment! -Art
Thanks for the great post and reminders! I smiled and teared up on a couple as I think of my past experiences even as recent as this past year when I had the task of making the dreaded list of folks I had to let go the next day. But months down the road most have found new and better opportunities and they asked for me to be a reference. It is all in how you handle yourself as a leader, I couldn’t agree more.
Art – This is great content – love the roll with the punches philosophy! Bookmarked!
Best
Dorothy
12/9/09: Midweek Look at the Independent Business Blogs…
Every week I select five excellent posts from this week’s independent business blogs. This week, I’m pointing you to posts on the evil dashboards do, bad leadership days, the “toddler” audit, a cowardly manager’s guide to acting cowardly, and job …
Congratulations! This post was selected as one of the five best independent business blog posts of the week in my Three Star Leadership Midweek Review of the Business Blogs.
http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2009/12/09/12909-midweek-look-at-the-independent-business-blogs.aspx
Wally Bock
[…] recently happened upon a post that brought back some memories I’d just as soon forget. In “Leadership Caffeine: A Mostly Thoughtful Guide to Surviving Bad Leadership Days,” consultant and writer Art Petty shines a rare but compassionate light on those in power: Consider […]