Leadership is a full-contact sport. Getting hit is unavoidable. But how do you overcome the hits you take?
Pain can build you or destroy you. What makes the difference as to how it affects you?
Responded to productively, hits are part of a forging process. Forging is the process of compressing metal to shape and strengthen it.
Forging provides a degree of structural integrity that is unmatched by other metalworking processes. It eliminates internal voids and gas pockets that can weaken metal parts. By dispersing the alloys or nonmetallics, forging provides superior chemical uniformity. It aligns the grain structure of the metal with the metal’s shape resulting in improved strength and fatigue resistance.
The comparison with taking hits as a leader is almost exact. If metal has been forged, it has been compressed, it has been smashed repeatedly.
Strength and fatigue resistance are not automatic. You were not born with them.
If you look at the success and failure statistics of businesses, the causes of failure are normally connected to business structure (insufficient capital, ineffective marketing, inadequate customer service, problematic or poorly followed business plans).
What is seldom considered is what is internal to the leader or leadership team – the culture or character of how they respond to hits or setbacks.
You can divide hits into two categories: external hits and personal hits. External hits have to do with market downturns, business setbacks, product failure, etc. Personal hits are experiences that feel like direct attacks on you as a person – political sabotage, infighting, et tu Brute backstabbing, heartless removal of support, bureaucratic opposition.
Hits are always painful. Personal hits are uniquely penetrating.
What do you do with them?
If you remove yourself from the forging process, you cannot ultimately achieve the necessary strength and fatigue resistance. Significant impact is impossible without these.
How do you know if you are removing yourself from or embracing the forging process?
To be concise, the first group are symptoms that you are jettisoning the forging process.
- Blame
Blame is an easy out that avoids the potential pain of conviction, that is, being convinced of my own responsibility. My responsibility may be as basic as I or we need to structure to prepare for or avoid this potential hit in the future. As with each of the following, the fundamental issue is this response eliminates my ability to have an effective response – here, personal awareness of where I’m responsible. - Take Vengeance
Vengeance is retaliation instead of reconciliation. It is misplaced or polluted energy. I’m not dealing with the issues at stake. I’m not eliminating the weaknesses or vulnerabilities. I’m merely attempting to spread the pain. - Resent
If vengeance is misplaced energy, resentment is wasted or stagnant energy. Resentment is passive-aggressive vengeance. It is seeking vengeance in the confines of my own mind. - Acquiesce
Becoming servile, avoiding conflict at all costs, may appear like someone who is a team player, but it is avoiding necessary candor. Forgiving or releasing someone doesn’t equal ignoring. I don’t need to fight every issue, but continually going along to get along creates a demoralized culture. - React
Reaction masquerades as action. The challenge with reaction is a lack of thought and a tendency to be behind the eightball – somewhat of a day late and a dollar short. Reaction moves on without effectively processing.
So, what does it look like to embrace the forging process?
- Candor
Open, sincere, guileless communication that is pursuing improvement and effective solutions. Candor neither backs away from conflict nor worries about who ends up being proven right. If you are internally honest, this requires significant maturity. - Calling not Circumstances
Continually focusing back on my personal sense of calling and the corporate’s clarity of vision reorients my thinking back to what is productive. An odd value of hits is they often clarify weaknesses that can be shored up, areas where we can differentiate ourselves from others. My concern moves from the pain of the hit to the joy of the impact my calling and vision can achieve.I’m not ignoring the pain. I’m choosing to focus on the value of what we are pursuing.
- Solution
Don’t ignore issues. Get on the solution-side of them. - Embrace the Cost
Pain is the common price of admission to our next. - Maintain a North Star
Because my trust is in the God that I serve, my value and hope do not ultimately lie with people and circumstances. Time away with meditation, devotion, and rest reorient me. They reestablish my focus, confidence, and hope.
It is possible and intended to use hits as helps, means of discipline instead of destruction. As it is powerfully communicated in the book of Hebrews,
Endure [stick with] hardship as discipline… No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness [productive life] and peace for those who have been trained by it.
(Hebrews 12:7, 11)