Dare to Lead

Daring is not saying “I’m willing to risk failure.” Daring is saying “I know I will eventually fail, and I’m still all in.” I’ve never met a brave person who hasn’t known disappointment, failure, even heartbreak.

Vulnerability is not winning or losing. It’s having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome.

“There’s probably not a single act at work that requires more vulnerability than holding people responsible for ethics and values, especially when you’re alone in it or there’s a lot of money, power, or influence at stake. People will put you down, question your intentions, hate you, and sometimes try to discredit you in the process of protecting themselves. So if you don’t ‘do’ vulnerability, and/or you have a culture that thinks vulnerability is weakness, then it’s no wonder that ethical decision making is a problem.”

It turns out that trust is in fact earned in the smallest of moments. It is earned not through heroic deeds, or even highly visible actions, but through paying attention, listening, and gestures of genuine care and connection.

In my research and in my life, I’ve found absolutely no benefit to pushing through a hard conversation unless there’s an urgent, time-sensitive issue at hand. I’ve never regretted taking a short break or circling back after a few hours of thinking time. I have, however, regretted many instances where I pushed through to get it over and done with. Those self-serving instincts end up costing way more time than a short break.

“This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Leaders must either invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings, or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behavior.

When people don’t understand where they’re strong and where they deliver value for the organization or even for a single effort, they hustle. And not the good kind of hustle. The kind that’s hard to be around because we are jumping in everywhere, including where we’re not strong or not needed, to prove we deserve a seat at the table.

TASC approach: the Accountability and Success Checklist: T—Who owns the task? A—Do they have the authority to be held accountable? S—Do we agree that they are set up for success (time, resources, clarity)? C—Do we have a checklist of what needs to happen to accomplish the task?

People often ask me how they can show empathy for someone who is going through something they’ve never experienced. Again, empathy is connecting to the feeling under the experience, not the experience itself. If you’ve ever felt grief, disappointment, shame, fear, loneliness, or anger, you’re qualified. Now you just need the courage to practice and build your empathy skills.

Engage, stay curious, stay connected. Let go of the fear of saying the wrong thing, the need to fix it, and the desire to offer the perfect response that cures everything (that’s not going to happen). You don’t have to do it perfectly. Just do it.

Ultimately, leadership is the ability to thrive in the ambiguity of paradoxes and opposites.”

When I asked him if he believed that people are doing the best they can with what they have, he said, “I don’t think you can ever know for certain. But I do know that my life is better when I work from the assumption that everyone is doing the best they can.”

Assuming positive intent does not mean that we stop helping people set goals or that we stop expecting people to grow and change. It’s a commitment to stop respecting and evaluating people based solely on what we think they should accomplish, and start respecting them for who they are and holding them accountable for what they’re actually doing. And when we’re overwhelmed and struggling, it also means turning those positive assumptions toward ourselves: I’m doing the very best I can right now.

Former Green Beret Mark Miller explains tactical breathing this way: Inhale deeply through your nose, expanding your stomach, for a count of four.5 Hold in that breath for a count of four. Slowly exhale all the air through your mouth, contracting your stomach, for a count of four. Hold the empty breath for a count of four.

Calm is equally contagious. Over the past twenty years, the most proficient practitioners of calm that I’ve interviewed all talked about the important (and weird) combination of breathing and curiosity. They talked about taking deep breaths before responding to questions or asking them; slowing down the pace of a frantic conversation by modeling slow speech, breathing, and fact finding; and even intentionally taking a few breaths before asking themselves a version of these two questions: Do I have enough information to freak out about this situation? If I do have enough data, will freaking out help?