Leadership Habit 42: Navigating Leadership Opportunity
One day you are rolling along and things seem to be going well, then you hit a roadblock. This is both the challenge and opportunity of leadership. How are you navigating leadership opportunity?
Change is a process. When we consider employees who are facing a change, that is the external event. How people transition through a change event is an internal process.
Is it possible that people and teams get stuck in the transition? Yes, they sometimes hit a wall or encounter a hurdle that appears too tall.
It may appear easier to just hunker down in place.
Stuck in Status Quo
In a very natural way people often try to protect the status quo. Their thought is, “Don’t change a thing, protect and defend, it took a lot of effort to get here, let’s keep it this way.”
This isn’t the challenge of leadership.
Getting stuck, or especially staying stuck, just doesn’t seem like leading.
In leadership seminars I sometimes witness the frustration of middle or front-line management team members feeling sandwiched. Stuck between process and policy.
They are often almost desperate to find a way to navigate the challenge of productivity while also staying in their lane and coloring inside the lines. In some ways they may feel hypocritical and forced to play politics.
Leading offers new opportunity.
Leadership Opportunity
An opportunity to lead, to find a way, create a path. Not a path of destruction but a path that leads out of stopped, stalled, or stuck.
When roadblocks, obstacles, or adverse conditions occur, this is the time for leadership.
It is easy to observe and say, “Yup, we’re stuck.” The challenge is navigating the situation differently to breakthrough or break free.
-DEG
Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.
