One great quality of a highly-competent leader is their ability to turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones. It is not only necessary to learn from the adversity you face – it is essential that you make yourself a better leader ( and to do so, a better person) with what you learn.
These ten stumbling blocks are merely obstacles that serve as opportunities for you, provided you have a clear sense of whatever it is you are seeking to accomplish – for yourself as a leader and more importantly, for whatever great, worthy cause you are in service to. Each block represents a habit of thinking that will get in the way of your duty.
Leadership is serving those you must depend on in order to succeed in accomplishing whatever it is that the cause that binds you with the people you lead demands.
Lacking the raw, basic competencies, the knowledge, skills, talent and experience required to accomplish the tasks that your objectives make necessary is often a fatal flaw. It is unlikely to succeed in the face of any serious adversity without the means to go about your business with efficacy. Without the appropriate tools you are at an immediate disadvantage against those who are better provisioned and prepared. You may be able to drive a nail into the sand without a hammer, but you will bloody your hands attempting to thrust that nail into a piece of solid oak.
With resourceful thinking you might fashion an improvised tool that can get the job done, but more than likely you will be bested everytime by an adversary with proper tool for the job. This illustrates the pragmatic concerns of having the requisite competencies and resources versus having only the habits of thinking to solve the problems you encounter. In the ideal, having the tools outplays those with the wits. But when the tools fail, are lost, or taken away – succeeding in your objectives requires ingenuity and creativity. Having just the wits to outmaneuver your adversary is a romantic David versus Goliath notion that may be appealing on paper, and even instructive as to how to hone your thinking to outwit an otherwise insurmountable force, but is a poor strategy to go into battle with given the option of being fully prepared to match or ideally outmatch your opponent.
Pragmatically thinking, you must have both: the tools and wits to be fully prepared to address both what you want and what you do not want to happen.
Unfortunately the world does not wait around for us to get ready. Time is rarely a luxury you can afford in the face of anything urgent. In an emergency you must weigh the risks of haste against the costs of lacking sufficient urgency. In non-emergent conditions you have time to measure both your objectives and your options – and plan your attack or response accordingly. Acting with too much haste will increase the risk of failure – but so will lacking urgency. Striking this critical balance if a function of leadership.
The habits of thinking required of exceptional leadership serve to balance careful preparation with having the drive and sense of urgency needed to accomplish what others might stumble and fail at.
Leadership equips the cause with things required to support the efforts of the people who will carryout what needs to be done. Leadership is also responsible for ensuring that those people have the collective competencies to utilize those resources. Without the proper knowledge, skill and talent – no amount of resources are sufficient to secure success. But the most critical responsibility of a leader is to cause people to operate with competence. This means instilling a purpose that feeds the level of conscientiousness and leverages the grit necessary to make the best possible use of the resources and competencies that can be brought to bear on the efforts being undertaken.
These ten obstacles can all become stepping-stones your journey to exceptional leadership. Stumbling is an essential tool of learning. When you are fully curious you stumble upon things you might have missed if you were bent on being certain about the path you are on. And when you lose your footing and regain your balance – you tend to adjust your pace to the terrain you are navigating; more aware of your surroundings and the current limitations of your performance – and better equipped avoid the falls that might be fatal.
The Ten Stumbling Blocks To Overcome on the Journey to Exceptional Leadership
- Confusing learning with simply accumulating knowledge. The most potent tool for developing leadership competence is to remain in learning mode. Leadership requires creativity, agility, awareness and perspective – all of which are diminished when we allow ourselves to become complacent with what we know. Danger exists in both the tendency towards confirmation bias – and in becoming satiated with the knowledge that is so easily obtained today. Being guided by curiosity and managing your certainty is how this stumbling block becomes a stepping-stone.
- Choosing to be liked over being respected. Machiavelli is often cited when instructing leaders to choose being feared over being loved. In “The Prince” he warns that neither the leader nor the subjects benefit from the ambiguity caused by seeking adoration. The more practical application is not to seek to be feared, but to be deliberate in causing yourself to be respected. General George Patton noted that soldiers didn’t follow a leader into battle because they liked him. People trust those whom they respect. Aiming to be liked undermines your ability to inspire accountability. Exceptional leaders cultivate the performance of others by confronting incompetence and dysfunction and making it necessary and possible for people to become fully competent in whatever they do.Dedicating yourself to being competent and making others competent is how this stumbling block becomes a stepping-stone.
- Enabling incompetence by avoiding confrontation with poor performance. Dysfunction can either be the consequence of poor planning or poor execution. Both are the result of poor preparation. Exceptional leaders look for constant feedback in order to evaluate their own preparedness. This requires humility, self-awareness and a deep commitment to learning over knowing. Exceptional leaders see their own performance as dependent on what is accomplished by the people they are responsible for and responsible to. Effectively confronting poor performance is a function of elevating the performance of those who should be responsible for owning and solving the problems. Making it necessary and possible for people to solve the problems they ought to own is how this stumbling block becomes a stepping-stone.
- Accepting excuses. Excuses are the currency of dysfunction. Excuses are not just the avoidance of responsibility, they are what sustain incompetence. In a state of dysfunction, people actually become more incompetent – and less capable of learning to accomplish things. Allowing people to transact with excuses doesn’t just bring down the organization, it inflicts injury to those who tender excuses in place of the performance they are or ought to be capable of. You rob people of the satisfaction of their accomplishments when you accept their excuses. And without that sense of accomplishment, people are deprived of the single greatest opportunity for real joy in their lives. Refusing to accept (or offer) excuses, and instead insisting on explanations and solutions is how this stumbling block becomes a stepping-stone.
- Allowing yourself (and others) to be comfortable instead of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. All growth begins just outside the boundaries of our comfort zone. The pursuit of comfort is a manifestation of misguided human entitlement. It likely took root in the ways powerfully ruthless authoritarian rulers manipulated the people forced to serve them. Controlling basic needs, contrasting powerlessness with the appearances of great comfort and privilege by those in control, and rewarding compliance with some offer of creature comforts were highly effective means of maintaining power. In truth, the comfort of being in power was merely an illusion. With power not only comes enormous responsibility, but equally enormous risks. When we are lulled into a sense of comfort – we cease to learn and fail to grow. When you allow others to get comfortable you allow them to become trapped in a status quo of mediocrity and stagnation. Incompetence and dysfunction naturally ensues. Getting comfortable with the notion of being uncomfortable is how this stumbling block becomes a stepping-stone.
- Tolerating mediocrity. There is great gravity in the status quo. People do not fear change, they fear loss. Maintaining the status quo, at almost any cost, is a comfortable way to avoid losing what you have – even in pursuit of gaining something better. Human beings may be genetically disposed towards safety in our instincts for self-preservation. Yet mediocrity is the proverbial boiled frog. We continue to manage our discomfort – unaware that we are slowly being cooked. We normalize the chaos around us – fearful that confronting it might make things worse. Tolerating mediocrity may feel like self-preservation when we are slowly being cooked, but the reality is that the heat is coming from those who are driven to disrupt the status quo. Confronting the status-quo looks like chaos when you are betting on the status quo to win – which it always will when you tolerate mediocrity. Becoming a learning being, and leaning into the fears that constrain courageous behavior is how you beat back mediocrity and turn this stumbling block into a stepping stone.
- Believing that it is you that makes the organization successful – instead of the other way around. The virtues of leadership are not found in the spoils; they exist in the values that make leaders humble, selfless and driven by ruthlessly caring about the indelible purpose that guides them. It is easy to take credit for other’s achievements and then turn around and blame them for your failures. This is not leadership – it is fecklessness. Leadership is what causes others to become competent so they can accomplish the things that matter most. Leadership is the bridge between having the ability to accomplish something – and doing what it takes to actually make it happen. This is about causing people to become conscientious – aware that what they are doing serves a greater interest than their own personal needs, and this in turn fuels our grit – the choice to get comfortable being uncomfortable and stretching beyond the level of performance we might otherwise believe to be our capacity. When you believe you are responsible for the success of others – you are not simply lacking awareness or the level of emotional intelligence a competent leader requires, you are actually undermining your ability to perform the most rudimentary responsibilities required of your role – which is to cause others to elevate their performance to their potential – and accomplish what really matters. Checking your ego and focusing on the success of others is how you turn this stumbling block into a stepping-stone.
- Trying to do your best – without first figuring out how to be your best. Leadership is not defined by what you do – it is a measure of who you are. What you are capable of on matters to the extent you accomplish what is necessary. Competence does not exist in the absence of meaningful, significant and positive accomplishment. Nor is leadership a function of your station in the world. It is not a title or a position of authority that can be given or born-into. It is purely a privilege that you earn as a result of the consequences of your accomplishments. Instead of focusing on what you need to do, making yourself into the person you need to be — by adapting how you think so that you learn what you need to know (and otherwise do not) — is how you turn this stumbling block into a stepping stone.
- Choosing to manipulate rather than inspire people. We cannot manage people. We manage things and must lead people. Management is a function of being highly competent at manipulating tools and systems in order to effectively and efficiently get this done. When we attempt to manage people – we might be effective of manipulating some level of behavior – either through carrots or sticks – with some level of success. But it is a proven scientific fact that people never perform to their potential under duress. When people are driven by a noble sense of purpose – they elevate their performance by becoming inspired. If you try to manipulate or coerce a person to be conscientious – it is likely they will use their grit to thwart rather than assist you. People who have been subjected to torturous interrogation are typically unreliable sources of information. But people who are driven by a noble sense of purpose, who see their contributions as being valuable and necessary – are most likely to exceed their own expectations of themselves. You can turn this stumbling block into a stepping-stone by making yourself into an exemplar of inspired performance.
- Focusing on having the right answers – rather than the best questions. Questions are not just the genesis of learning – they are the product. Great questions give evidence of real understanding. When you ask, “what if?” “What next?” “What else?” and “why not?” – you have an opportunity to expand on what is already known and understood and challenge and disrupt the status quo. Questions not only speak to your own curiosity – they have the power to stir the curiosity of others. Answers often shut the door and block further inquiry – and when delivered with malice is designed to do just that. Parents often use answers as weapons to quell rambunctious behavior or thinking in their children. And leaders often feel compelled to provide proper guidance through the answers you provide. But questions are the most powerful tool any leader can learn to employ. Questions answered with provocative questions can stimulate the thinking and imagination of others. A simple response such as “I don’t know, what do you think?” is usually far more beneficial than providing the answer – even if your solution might ultimately be better. You can turn this stumbling block into a stepping-stone and help to develop yourself into an exceptional leader by mastering the art of asking provocative questions.
Changing you habits of thinking won’t guarantee that you will succeed as a leader, but ignoring these obstacles will not make the journey any easier. Those who would be – or need to be leaders are more apt to fail when you choose to believe that your success is dependent on what you do – and ignore becoming the person you need to be.
Your success as a leader is always determined by things outside of your control. Circumstances dictated by timing, nature and just plain luck – all impact your ability to accomplish your aims in life. While you cannot control the results of all your efforts, you can and must strive to do everything within your control to accomplish whatever you must – in order that the results you intend might come to be. This is a function of your habits of thinking – the stuff you are made of. When you choose to turn stumbling blocks into stepping-stones – you remove the obstacles that you place in your own way. It is only then, that you might succeed in accomplishing what matters most.
