Leadership is hard work. Developing your own brand of leadership courage, and psychological safety with your most critical colleagues will provide more ease and effectiveness in your life and life’s work.
There are reasons why effective authority with a group – whether it’s a workplace or family group – takes more expertise than ever.
People are over-whelmed. There’s a cost to the pings, texts, notifications, emails, calls, noise and requests. Research at UC Irvine suggests that interruptions cost us 23 minutes per refocus. So, we run out of time and energy.
Perhaps most difficult, there’s a lot to learn. Getting things done takes time and requires continuous learning and persistent effort. Of course, we run out of bandwidth.
Finally, there’s a lot to be concerned about. Maybe the increased cultural anxiety is due to the fact that we receive global information rapidly and simultaneously. The list of perils and adverse events is long, and there’s no need to list them here.
It’s not surprising that people are fearful. Cultural and organizational change expert, Edgar Schein, asserted long ago that people become more resistant to change and less able to learn as their survival anxiety increases. Then, when change requires too much new learning, people respond with resistance, and seek safety.
Training to increase tolerance for our fears while also working to create psychological safety for the groups that we are committed to is good science. Dr. Paul Slovic, University of Oregon psychologist and expert in risk psychology, asserts that we typically over-estimate or under-estimate risk, because “our feelings don’t do arithmetic very well.” Dr. Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, agrees asserting that our risk assessments are distorted by the prevalence and emotional intensity of messages.
Following are some personal management ideas that can keep you courageous and energetic and able to lead effectively.
Managing yourself.
1. Pay attention to the messages of your own physiology. Notice physical and emotional signals. Commit to practices that stimulate endorphins, dopamine, flexibility and circulation. Participate in exercise and mindfulness practices.
Read the research: The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds
2. Figure out how you get in your own way, and how to get out of your own way. Clue: What did you do at age 10 in response to challenge and chaos? (Forty to eighty percent of our responses are automatic and are a part of our archive of most repeated responses.) It may have been a good response. If so, repeat. If not, reject that automatic response and name and practice alternatives.
3. Take some time to get clear about your most important strengths, values and habits. Write them down. Reread.
4. Develop friendships and collegial relationships where you can be yourself and feel no sense of interpersonal risk. As a leader, it is your ultimate responsibility to create climates of psychological safety for others in order for your team to perform at the highest levels. Develop a group of trusted advisors.
Preparing to Manage Resistance.
1. Manage your brain networks. We have two dominant networks in the brain, the default network which monitors and promotes social and emotional responses, and the task positive network which engages us in focused logical problem-solving and reasoning. These networks do not operate simultaneously but we can switch between them – even rapidly with practice. Sometimes, we get stuck in one or the other and the wrong approach for the immediate situation is offered.
Read the research on antagonistic neural networks.
2. Prime yourself with memories that support you. Avoid rehearsing fears and failures. Positive psychology suggests that it is energizing to recall the moments when someone gave you the gift of expert guidance, expressed confidence in you and showed that they care. That’s emotional currency. Use it.
3. Know you best habits and repeat them or they will disappear from neglect. Basic learning theory teaches this. Unrewarded responses become extinct.
4. Be wary of exposing yourself to too much dissonance and conflict. We have powerful brain changes in response to each other.
5. Learn about the rewards of leading to create psychological safety in your group. Read Dr. Amy Edmondson’s work on the subject: The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley, 2019.
