As a leader do you sometimes associate leadership with a struggle? You are not alone as Steven Snyder in Leadership and the Art of Struggle. How Great Leaders Grow Through Challenge and Adversity offers the following advice. As usual I have selected points to share with you and haven’t intended to do a complete book review. At least the book summary www.Summary.com is worth a read.
- Adversity is precisely what unlocks our greatest potential and it is ok to fear looking weak and seeming to lack confidence
- Struggle is not a four letter word but a natural part of leadership
- Instead of denying the struggles, or feeling some degree of shame, savvy leaders embrace struggle as an opportunity for growth and learning, as an art to be mastered
- See struggle as a universal rite of passage and don’t allow yourself to become mired in it.
- Navigating the struggle tensions involves first focusing on the situation by envisioning a pathway through your challenges by focusing on what is possible in the future. Think of it as expanding the menu of alternatives you have. Be sure you clear all the not important stuff off your plate so you have more time to deal with the really important issues. It is so easy to get buried in the day-to-day fires/crises that you never get to the strategic planning or to relationship building that are high leverage for your leadership effectiveness.
- Secondly navigate by focusing on yourself and figure out how you might be contributing to the struggle tension you feel. Questions to ask yourself include, Are my models and style of leadership working for me right now? What do I need to change about myself to better adapt to my current situation? Remember leadership growth often means shedding outdated approaches in exchange for newer, more adaptive ones. I had to learn to let go of being the perfectionist, risk adverse, waiting for orders pharmacist to be the leader willing to be proactive, calculated risk taker and learn from “less that desirable results” as an example.
- Struggle often results from being out of balance with your mind, body and spirit so you need to anchor yourself in these times of turbulence. Develop practices that keep you centered and grounded such as regular exercise, good nutrition, spending time in nature, having a hobby that you actually participate in regularly, deep breathing several times a day, sitting quietly and focusing on your breaths so you slow down your self-talk and allow your mind to generate solutions for you. Savor leadership as a marathon not a sprint which means you need to replenish yourself along the way and sustaining yourself through leadership difficulties
- The art of struggle lies not in achievement but how we have grown along the leadership journey, the lives we’ve touched, the kindness we’ve shown, the ways we have brought life to our most important values. It is the accumulation of all life’s choices, big and small, that creates our unique and personal gift to the world that we bestow to those that follow us.
Please share your thoughts.
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