Welcome to Friday 411, issue #077. In 4 minutes, with 1 insight and 1 action, you’ll gain lessons to guide you through challenging seasons that will ultimately upgrade your leadership.
1 Insight
Leaders inevitably find themselves in unexpectedly difficult seasons. Whenever you experience new challenges, you will be forced to upgrade your leadership.
There is one guarantee in leadership: you will experience significant challenges, setbacks, and unwanted changes. In total candor, so far, 2024 has been one of those years for us.
Some of our discomfort has been self-inflicted. We rebranded the business, did a major overhaul on our website, and added new team members. Additionally, we’ve been working to launch The Unleashed Leadership Podcast, which has been delayed countless times.
On top of these extra efforts we planned, we’ve also had some unexpected painful personal challenges that have required an abundance of time, energy, attention, and emotion.
Maybe 2024 has been like that for you, too. If it hasn’t been, don’t worry. You will eventually experience challenges, setbacks, and changes that take a toll on you. (Insert maniacal villain laughter)
As a leader, when you experience significant challenges, upgrading your leadership will minimize the residual suffering of the people you lead.
This year, we’ve learned three lessons that will not only make you a better leader during challenging times but also make those seasons a little easier.
Lesson 1: Press into Your Life-Giving Habits
As we move through daily life, we each utilize life-giving habits that enhance our energy, health (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) and quality of life.
These habits aren’t necessarily easy or fun. But, when we do them, we are a better version of ourselves. For Garland, these habits include reading, exercise, eating healthy, writing, journaling, and planning tomorrow, to name a few. Dorothy also reads, exercises, eats healthy, and journals, but she also finds life in spending time out in nature and with friends.
Even if you’ve never purposefully identified them, you also have a set of life-giving habits. When you execute consistently on these practices, you:
- have more energy,
- treat others well,
- have enhanced clarity,
- experience greater productivity,
- and enjoy life more.
When you fail to practice your life-giving habits, your quality of life suffers, and you don’t lead as effectively.
Challenging seasons make it even more difficult than usual to practice life-giving habits. You have so many other demands that it feels exhausting, selfish, and foolish to prioritize these practices.
I (Garland) recently got back in the gym after neglecting my strength training for several weeks. Buried under the weight of added stress, I thought I would function better if I dropped this daily commitment. Instead, my ability to cope diminished along with my energy. After ten days of great workouts, it’s amazing how much more equipped I feel to carry on through the pressure.
Challenging seasons already drain the life and joy out of you. When you also subtract your life-giving habits, you compound the challenges of the season.
When you go into a challenging season, increase your resolve to prioritize your life-giving habits.
Lesson 2: Think I Choose vs. I Must
Two of our biggest projects this year have been rebranding and launching a new website. These initiatives took months of collaboration with a marketing agency, dozens of meetings, and a ridiculous number of hours.
During one stint, we paid a company to write the copy for our website. We waited several weeks in anticipation, looking forward to reading words that painted a vivid picture of AdVance Leadership.
But when we got the copy back, it was horrible. It read like a 5th grader used AI to write it and then failed to edit it. We provided feedback and waited another week for edits, but those came back with little improvement.
We decided that we needed to take on the task of writing the copy ourselves. This brought an unexpected amount of frustrating work. We begrudged the added responsibility that we had to do.
After several days of bad attitudes, I (Dorothy) challenged us to shift our mentality from I Must to I Choose.
Whenever you think you must or should do something, it creates guilt, shame, and pressure. It makes you feel like you have no freedom and no choice in the matter. Those feelings zap you of your drive and cause you to feel trapped.
Instead, replace must and should with the phrase, I Choose. This small change has three effects:
Thinking I Choose gives you freedom.
When you use the words I Choose instead of must or should, you increase your freedom. You acknowledge that the choice is yours.
We realized that no one was forcing us to edit the copy. We had the freedom to leave it as it was.
Thinking I Choose anchors your actions to a bigger purpose.
Acknowledging choice forces you to identify why you’re choosing to do something. It reminds you of the reason(s) your chosen action is important.
We knew that putting in the extra work on our website would reflect the quality of excellence we strive for in everything we do.
Thinking I Choose reconnects you to your desires.
Life feels easier when we live in our “want to’s” instead of our “have to’s.”
We chose to edit the copy because we wanted our messaging to be as clear and authentic as possible. We wanted to be proud of our business. We wanted our potential clients to make informed decisions on how we could help them. We didn’t have to do any of that. We wanted to.
Lesson 3: The Voice Inside Your Head is a Consultant, not a Boss
You — like every other person — have a voice inside your head. That voice flows with a steady stream of feedback. Unfortunately, the voice is usually critical. It tells you things like:
- you’re so stupid,
- no one likes you,
- you’re not doing enough.
While reading The Untethered Soul, I (Garland) discovered a huge lesson: That voice is not you. It’s your perception of you. It’s a voice that rambles constantly, providing unsolicited advice. But it’s not you.
In fact, if that voice became an actual person, you would never want to spend time with that person. That person would never stop talking, would criticize you incessantly, and would even give you bad advice. You would not want a relationship with that person. You would not choose them as a friend. You would not choose to work for them.
Therefore, treat the voice in your head like a consultant rather than a boss. If a boss tells you to do something, even if you know it’s a bad choice, you must do it or there will be consequences.
You usually treat the voice in the same manner, believing that you have to do what it tells you to do.
Instead, treat that voice like a consultant. If a consultant gives you advice, you have the freedom to choose whether to heed the advice, do something different, or ignore the advice altogether.
For example, every day my voice tells me that I’m not working hard enough. If I would just work a few more hours, I would feel satisfied with what I’ve accomplished. If I believe that voice to be a boss, then I’ll keep working or feel guilty if I don’t. If I treat that voice like a consultant, I can decide whether to heed his advice.
When you go through a challenging season, the voice in your head speaks to you more loudly, more frequently, and more cruelly. You get to choose whether or not you listen.
