Last week’s blog post was a lot of fun, wasn’t it? I was pleased to find Oasis was available for sale on Steam, giving me a chance to own it again, for the third time. This week, we will return to “career stuff”. In at least two separate conversations this week, I observed the professional importance of being uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable generally means you are in a state of hard practice, which I think is necessary to grow. When I talk to people about taking on their first leadership opportunities, I tell them to be prepared to be in emotional freefall, because they will constantly be on the precipice of failure.
What I find interesting is that I get a large amount of “yeah yeah yeah” for about the first four months, followed by two to eight months of “holy shit, you are not kidding!”
This stuff is hard, kids, and largely because after spending years refining your expertise in one role, you are not quite prepared to change how you think about everything around you in your new role.
If you are being offered a leadership role, I want you to realize that for an indeterminate amount of time, you will be in a steady state of perpetual failure. You will not have enough information to make decisions. You will not have enough time to get everything done. You will not have enough resources for your projects to complete.
You will do one of a few things when you realize this is happening.
First, you might resort to your default tendency, which means doing IC (individual contributor) work alongside your team. This is not without consequences. It means you will spend less time looking at the overall big picture, and also, if you are really good at your job, you may discourage your team when they see how fast or efficiently you do their work. I have seen strong ICs in their first leadership roles blow up their team’s morale and desire to succeed by taking all their projects over the finish line.
Second, you might immediately go into reactive mode. This also hurts because if you spend all your time solving problems, you are abdicating your leadership. You are not setting your team’s direction or pace, and they will begin to resort to their default tendencies. If this happens long enough, your team will go off the rails.
Third, you might resort to extreme negativity. You will describe everything as a risk or a concern and spend so much time collecting all of the “whaddabouts” that you will go into analysis paralysis and render yourself and your team useless.
So what should you do?
First thing, you should take a deep breath. I spend a decent amount of time telling people they should remember to breathe. You cannot let it all overwhelm you.
Second, you should ask, “What is important?” Do you have a list of everything sorted by priority? You should take a look at the most important things first. Once you have a sense of what it would take to get your organization’s most important tasks done, you can pick up the most important thing that has to get done, and make sure it is underway.
Next, ask, “Do we have any easy wins?” If you have a gigantic slog through the mud for your most important task, is it worthwhile to do a small project to give everyone an easy win and a well-deserved victory lap? I generally tell people that doing large projects can feel like trying to eat a thousand pounds of cardboard—the only way you can do it is one mouthful at a time. Sometimes, it is important to break up that cardboard-chewing to boost team morale.
Finally, you should also make sure you are communicating your concerns to the organization. I remember the first time I had to get on the phone with an executive to discuss a multi-million-dollar production problem. I was terrified of what the reaction would be. When I made the call, I was rewarded with a grateful-sounding “Thank you for letting me know!” The leadership team immediately went into problem-solving mode. I assure you that while you may be afraid of making the call to communicate a problem, it is much worse to be radio silent and for executive leadership to learn about problems from somewhere else! I spend a lot of time trying to instill in people the importance of early communication about issues. The more time you have to think about a problem, the more likely you will have an intelligent solution.
When leveling up into a leadership role, you need to develop new habits and ways of thinking. Make sure you give yourself enough time to develop these behaviors. Reflecting on week-over-week performance and feeling discouraged is easy because nothing feels different in the near term. Most people taking on leadership roles have been getting frequent feedback up to this point. You will need to get accustomed to getting less and less direct feedback the higher you go professionally.
Thank you for reading along! If you are looking for a good read, I am going to attempt to squeeze some nickels out of Jeff Bezos, trying to sell you a copy of my favorite book on habits: The Power of Habit. Of course, you are habitual non-clickers on my Amazon Affiliate links. I will start dropping vapid top-ten links soon since my refined attempts to instill great purchasing habits have failed.
I shall return next week, zero billion dollars richer.
