Most of my conversations with clients involve problems, difficulties, and things going wrong. That's the nature of coaching, but it's also the nature of senior leadership. And yet at regular intervals my clients find themselves in periods of unexpected calm, when there are no major problems or difficulties and everything's going well. This can actually be a very risky moment for a leader.
While my clients and I often discuss their feelings of stress, anxiety, frustration and overwhelm, it's also true that problems, difficulties, and things going wrong inevitably make a leader feel needed. And I'd suggest that feeling needed is one of the reasons why people pursue senior leadership roles in the first place. There are many other reasons, of course, but this one often goes unacknowledged and undiscussed--which can make it problematic.
Because in moments of calm, in the absence of all those woes and burdens, the leader often looks around and wonders, "Am I really needed? How do I add value when everything's going well?" This is when the leader may start actively looking for problems, instead of waiting for problems to come to them. They may inadvertently or unconsciously break things in order to fix them--in order to feel needed again. Or as one of my clients put it recently, "I'm like a bored firefighter playing with matches."
The thing to remember about leadership in times of crisis is that even in the midst of all the stress, anxiety, frustration, and overwhelm that it evokes, it's also a powerful source of affirmation for the leader. It feels good to be needed when the stakes are high, at least for the majority of people who seek out and hold onto senior leadership roles. As another client once put it, speaking not literally about combat but metaphorically about business, "Wartime is fun."
So what can a leader do about this? How can you avoid becoming a firefighter-turned-arsonist?
- It starts with self-awareness. As with so many issues in my practice, self-awareness isn't sufficient on its own, but it's the necessary first step. The complicated feelings that emerge when things are going well can easily lead to counter-productive behavior if they're not made visible. So write about it. And talk about it. And I'm biased, but consider working with a coach.
- Get your needs met. At some level, we all need to feel needed. But when we get this need met primarily through our work, we create a set of conditions in which we may be tempted to play with matches. Be sure to cultivate aspects of your identity in which you feel needed outside of work, and maintain relationships with people who need you not as their leader, but in some other capacity.
- Savor the moment. The world being what it is, things will not continue going well indefinitely, and you'll be needed again sooner than you think. This interval of calm will pass quickly, like life itself, and you have a choice: You can set aside your discontent and appreciate what is uniquely available to you at this moment, or you can let such feelings consume you while the time passes, until all your troubles have returned. And they will.
For Further Reading
How to Feed a Monster (Leading in Elite Organizations)
Photo by eXploration Etoile.
