Is Effective Initiative and Leadership Influential?

We assume that a leader is someone who has an important role or a responsibility in an organisation. However, one of my favourite authors, John C Maxwell, wrote: ‘Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.’ Here’s my translation: leadership is simply: one human influencing another’s life.

And yet most of us won’t even be aware that these events are unfolding at the time. We’ll likely be leading, but who would use the term leadership for this? Perhaps it’s helping with some huge choice that a family member has to make in their life (the help itself might be all that’s needed); perhaps you’re a team captain leading the team out in a sporting competition; perhaps you’re the person who’s volunteering to organise this party or that event. And if these things occur, then they don’t occur otherwise. That is, they don’t occur if no everyday leader is involved in the process.

It’s not easy to please everyone

Does this sound familiar? You get an opportunity to start something, whether an activity or a project, and maybe you even have some enthusiastic, creative thoughts, and then you have a plague of negative, worried thoughts!” ‘I can do this.’ ‘I’m going to do this.’ ‘Everyone is going to think I’m wonderful.’ Then: ‘But could I do this?’ ‘Would my work be worthwhile?’ ‘Would people like it?’ ‘What will people say to me?’ ‘What will people think of me?

I worked in an organisation before, and a leader there said that if you do something, you don’t have to get everyone to say yes, and I was like: wow, people are learning not to do this anymore. So I was like, ‘Wow, I am so happy, and so confident, and I am going to add activities that I want to do.’ That’s how, little by little, I learned how to not be so worried about the negative comments or reactions. The best thing you can do when you’re responding to how people respond – whatever it is – is to know your original goal, and do each action how you planned to do it.

Not everything will go according to plan

How many times you have faced new experiences you don’t know what to do, in this point the choice is in your owns hand, you can give up, you can abandon the idea, or… You can give one step for face new challenges and get out of your comfort zone, for enter in your learning zone.

Often our resistance to taking the road less travelled stems from the irrational fear of making a mistake, or that we aren’t good enough to weather the storm that lies ahead. In truth, adversity presents nothing more than learning opportunities. By pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone we gain the skills and experience that will allow us to deal with future challenges.

The most important lesson I learnt was that the key to project success was getting the structure in place before you launched into the work or planning. Other than these two obvious basics, it was about having a positive, inclusive attitude towards change. For someone like me who likes to hold the reins of change, I quickly learnt that a great attitude was vital.

We should channel our energy, attention and resilience on those things you can control. And when something arises, as it naturally would, you can pivot to flex and identify solutions rather than dwell on the challenge (I resist using the word ‘problem’ and prefer to call them challenges instead).

Side note: that paragraph reminds me of this Mark Manson quote: The desire for a more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And if we acknowledge that not everything will be right or easy, and that we must even endure the negative aspects of our experiences, we are more likely to appreciate the rare and beautiful moments when our burdens are lighter. But, if we instead demand that life properly serve us, then not only do we miss out on the positive aspects of our experiences, we also tend to twist and contort ourselves in ways that actually lead to more suffering. If we accept and trust the process, then in our hearts we can transform even the most negative of experiences into something that is positive.

Giving and receiving feedback

Once, after an effort, I arranged a debrief to understand the lessons learned; this was a big effort with a lot of moving parts, and a lot of places any of them could have gone different. As a leader and team member, I also made an array of mistakes. I wanted participants and speakers all around the table. Because of my role, even huge – and in some ways the point of the exercise – I hope it replaces any ideas of my invulnerability, any efforts to ‘time out’ when the work gets harder, and my role as a community leader. Before this meeting, I asked one of the organisation’s leaders with the most exposure to the way I was looking to explore the ideas: What is one of the best traits a leader can have? His answer was simple: ‘One of the best attributes a leader can have is the humility to recognise his shortcomings.’

We fear making it seem as though our whiners have the upper hand, that we as captain have somehow demoted ourselves by failing to be right. But admitting failure is simply another way of being vulnerable: of letting the team know you’re fallible, that you don’t have it all figured out, that you’re willing to follow the course your team navigates together as a group.

You might also experience this in terms of a sense of weakness – even cowardice. Yet the price of our response being called forth is an exposure to vulnerability. The core skill of courage … is the willingness and ability to manage vulnerability … Our courage muscle will never be stronger than our vulnerability muscles.  Vulnerability gives us the courage to meet with whatever we need to deal with that can make or expose us to insecurity or vulnerability. At the same time, if we are not to allow our vulnerability to become transformed into victimhood, or even malignant manipulation, then exposure to vulnerability to others needs to be tempered by reasonable limits around role and relationship.

An ambience of trust and sensitivity permits people to offer feedback. A life full of mistakes is a well-lived life. Yet that’s not all one can do with a mistake: you can also absorb a mistake, send it away, and get better because of it. Admitting failure isn’t easy; but you can also patch error and resurrect the self. So offering feedback to others is among the kindest ways in which one can add value to the lives of others.

Teamwork

You must have heard this often: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I am sure you must have also felt like that at some point of your life: I can do this all by myself. And while you can do everything by yourself, allow me to share my experience: this is not the best strategy.

As your time and energy are limited, it’s imperative to prioritise your action items accordingly, depending on your role. This is only possible if you know the skills of your team. Indeed, one time, a leader asked me if I knew my team’s strengths. When I could not state them right away, he summed up: ‘A product team needs a leader who knows the members’ strengths.’

You have certain strengths and abilities, and so do they. If everyone can complement each other, this is a great way of optimising how the task can be implemented. If you know your people, and know your team, that is when you can delegate work, and the team can manage time better, and the whole system is beneficial.

The ability to take initiative is pointless without having fun

A given project or initiative has its own particular objective, dynamics, pitfalls, and intricacies: expectations that are too great or unexpected, division of labour between the members of the team, discouragement as one senses that ‘things aren’t going the right way’. Every time we are assailed by doubts – ‘I can’t’, ‘I won’t be able to go on’, ‘I won’t be able to do it’ – the salutary reaction is in each and every eventuality to get back up.

But being overwhelmed when adversity arrives at your doorstep is OK. Remember, this experience – feeling within yourself your imagined boundaries expanding and then, with that confidence, succeeding – is what the adventure is all about. Here is an incredible opportunity to be fully included and postured for engagement – to work with, not alongside an organisation that believes you are a person with a limitless set of accomplishments.

Without a doubt, work is more enjoyable when you do it with a team that supports you. Having fun really helps achieve a positive end result.