Learning from the Storm
Leading in Times of Stress
This is an article I recently wrote for CBMC on the topic of Leadership Development. Enjoy!
Development is a vital part of leadership. In order to lead effectively, one must be devoted to continuous self-improvement. Stagnant leaders put their organizations in peril, blinded to the possibility that their business’s problems persist because in choosing to limit their own learning, they hamper the growth of their team. Conversely, a leader who engages in ongoing learning both hones his/her leadership ability and sends a clear message throughout the organization that everyone must grow to maximize productivity.
While business problems arise from external forces, such as the economy or competition, many of the issues leaders face are of their own making, often unnoticed because of the leader’s “learning horizon”. Peter Senge, in his landmark book The 5th Discipline, describes the learning horizon as the “ breadth of vision in time and space within which we assess our effectiveness. When our actions have consequence beyond our learning horizon, it becomes impossible to learn from direct experience”. Because of the time lag between our actions and the ensuing result, it’s difficult to observe how our behaviors influence our business culture, individual empowerment and initiative, collective problem solving and innovation. What we need then is a sort of crucible, to both heighten the tension and shorten the timeframe, creating observable actions that are inextricably tied to results.
Leadership expert John Maxwell says, “I have observed that people change when the pain is too great to continue on the present course…” Times of crisis create learning opportunities. In effect, trials and difficulties can shorten the time between the action and feedback, creating both the desire to learn (how do I get out of this mess and never get into it again?) and immediate feedback from the environment (our partners, employees and family) regarding the effectiveness of the changes we are making as a result of our learning. But few of us eagerly embrace trials as an opportunity for learning.
My son Benjamin, at the early age of 10, bemoaned his latest trial with “Character…I’m tired of building character!” Many leaders through the ages have undoubtedly spoken these words!
Did Life hear his complaint and offer Benjamin a free pass? Hardly. At 22, en route to Argentina to complete an International Business degree, Benjamin headed out on an adventure that he would remember forever! He and a friend had decided to make the journey by car, foot, bus and boat; a five-month Pan-American road trip.
Half way into his journey we got our much-anticipated bi-weekly progress report, this time a phone call. Good news! He had found a deal and was about to board a sailboat from Puerto Lindo in northern Panama across the Caribbean to Cartagena, Columbia.
As he unveiled his plans with the enthusiasm of a Scotsman who had just negotiated a discount, he did not ask for advice, and I did my best to hold my tongue and allowed him to fully experience his adventure. Should he have asked me I might have delivered a 3 point sermon (with an extra point for good measure) – four good points warning him about my gut instinct that foreshadowed his immediate future.
First warning… “ Dad… I got a deal!“
Second warning … “It’s the captain’s first charter!”
Third warning… “ My friend and I are the only passengers – Cool! A private charter!”
Fourth and final warning… “The captain’s name is APE! Oh… Did I mention that he’s Dutch?”
His sail was supposed to be three days and two nights.
10 days later we received a phone call from our distraught but relieved son, who,15 lbs lighter due to stress and lack of food and water, had nearly lost his life.
It turned out that the Captain was a beer-by-day, and rum-by-night alcoholic, a chain smoking and drug addicted traveler who was posing as a competent sailor. Overly frugal, he had not taken care of the onboard diesel back up engine, and had refused advice from two other captains about his choice of route. When respectfully questioned about his decisions “he would go snap case” causing my son to feel he was “ literally being held against (his) will by a hostile entity.” Struggling to keep his composure under constant verbal abuse, Benjamin resorted to planning scenarios of how to mutiny should the situation become dire.
The 3-day holiday cruise became an 8-day (one hundred and ninety two hour) nightmare where food became scarce, fresh water slowed to a trickle, and the captain’s inane route proved futile in light of shifting seasonal winds. They had no autonomy, completely controlled by their over authoritative and ”expert” captain, or should I say, captor. Trapped in what was a “near death sentence” by a leader unwilling to change course or learn from a situation that was rapidly deteriorating, Benjamin got out his Bible, read anything “weather related” that would encourage him and started praying hard.
Needless to say, God was faithful, as he always proves himself to be, and Benjamin had another adventure that he describes as “with out a doubt the worst time I have experienced in my life”!
(You can read the whole unedited story on his blog…. At greatpanamericanroadtrip.blogspot.com Called “Nightmare on the High Seas”)
Like the trust my son initially placed in his captain, those we employ place the same trust in us. During the interview both the candidate and the employer put on the best face… and often the real goods aren’t experienced until well into the journey, when it’s often too late to turn around.
Sometimes we can fool ourselves, and, fixated on winning at all costs, lose sight of the needs of our team. Like Captain Jack Aubrey in the epic movie “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” put our ship and our crew in extreme peril. We give ourselves special permission to be above our own rules, creating “golden handcuffs” to chain our best leaders to our ships, hanging on to the specter of control, in the high winds of change, our sails tattered on the splintered masts of our threatened egos. Like Jonah, who had his own nightmare on the high seas, we finally understand that our God-given role is best exercised as a servant. Yet like Benjamin at 10, we can sometimes find ourselves silently grumbling because we are still in the crucible… still developing character!
During times of stress (and what business leader hasn’t experienced a little stress in the last year?) we use up more energy and if we are not careful to replenish it while learning from our errors, we run out of wind, and can find ourselves captaining our own ships in ways we may not want to be written about.
The stress we experience in trying situations often severely hampers our ability to learn. Stress behaviors cloud the issue. David Davenport, former president of Pepperdine University and co-author of Shepherd Leadership writes of his experience in using the psychological profiling tool know as the Birkman method: “(it)…shows in several categories how people act in their normal everyday strengths; what needs they have; and how they respond if their needs are not met. When your needs are met, you are strong and able to perform at a top level. When they are not, you go into stress, exhibiting behaviors you can come to recognize. The goal, of course, is to minimize the stress and to operate from your strengths as much as possible, which is all a function of making sure your needs are met.”
We can be in stress for so long that we begin to believe the stress behavior is actually our real self. While it is an extension of our personality, stress behavior only shows up when a need is not met for an extended period of time. Leaders are much more able to learn from their personal trials if they first understand what needs they have that are going unmet, and restructure their environment in order to meet those needs. Real learning occurs from strength, and expands on skills and abilities that already exist, eclipsing the false promise that driving forward blindly in stress will produce positive results.
Leadership skills are very difficult to learn because the impact of leadership is often observed months or years in the future. We need help associating the consequences of our actions with the behavior itself. This takes humility and willingness to receive feedback and input from others. A respected peer, coach or mentor can bring perspective to help draw a connection between the event and the potential learning, between the behavioral choice and the impact of that behavior.
Developing leadership skills, like character building, is a life-long process. As we continue to face challenges with a learner’s heart, we model and help create a learning organization that will grow, change and do more than survive… it will thrive.
Footnotes:
Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline (Doubleday, 1990)
David Davenport, Blaine McCormick, Shepherd Leadership (Jossey-Bass 2003)
