Andrew Yang recently said, “Overnight successes are generally years in the making. And most progress is made in isolation, far from the public eye.” This is true for most leaders I work with. Often leaders feel they’re making little to no progress and when they do others don’t recognize their accomplishments. It’s difficult to see our progress day by day, but when we look back over a longer period, our progress can surprise us.

In working with leaders, I’m often working with them on psychological safety. A key component is creating safety around failures and turning failures into opportunity. As I reflect on the clients I’ve worked with and my own experiences with failure, at times I’ve seen clients put greater effort to avoid failure than in seeking success and how that fear has held them back from their true potential.

You find yourself in an executive meeting and your peers are all in harmonious agreement about a decision, but there’s been little discussion. You feel strongly that the decision they’re about to make isn’t the best for the company, the community or the people involved. You feel that another direction is the best course of action. What do you do? Do you step into courage and speak up against the majority, but risk offending, alienating or appearing foolish? Or, do you go along to get along and step into harmonious agreement with your peers, but walk away with regret or resentment? So, then what do you do when you disagree with others’ management style or decision-making process?

My daughter headed off to school for Fall the last week of August and she brought two big bags of school supplies with her to ensure her success over the year. There was a range of supplies from dictionaries in English, French and Spanish to basics like binders, paper, and pencils. Just like students heading back to school, there are several tools that can ensure your success as a leader this fall.

Here are tools that will round out your leadership toolkit this fall…

Have you considered that if your organization needs you that you’re a business risk? The lack of ability to delegate to your team also means that when you’re suddenly not there, the company, your team and your clients and stakeholders will all suffer. Everyone needs to go on vacation and take sick or other leave. Everyone leaves their role eventually whether it is a promotion, finding an opportunity in another organization or retirement.

Chaos is a space of complete disorder and confusion. Leaders encounter chaos when things get hectic good or bad.  Chaos isn’t necessarily about crisis; it can happen anytime.  Chaos often happens when things are moving quickly or there are a lot of things happening all at once.  

What is a leader’s role in chaos?

Chaos triggers adrenaline and can keep you and your team from thinking clearly when your limbic brain takes over.  Create a vision and direction for others, help them see the other side of the chaos while also focusing your team on creating calm to allow you and your team to think clearly in decision making and executing the work to move forward.

Intellectually, we all know the benefits of vacation, and yet many leaders don’t take them or don’t take all of their vacation time.  Leaders need vacations to recharge and have new energy to bring back into the workplace.  I’ve worked with many leaders who feel a lack of passion and engagement in their work and can’t figure out why to then go on vacation and come back renewed with insight that they were feeling burned out before they went. Sometimes you’re so far in it, that you can’t see that you’re drained.

While team building has a history back to the 1920’s, many teams are still trying to figure out the best way to become a high performing team.  At its core, a high performing team feels safe and secure with all of the other team members and also feels a sense of clear expectations and accountability within the team.

There it is, the lineup outside one of your leader’s doors and you know there’s also a virtual line up in their email inbox of employees looking for answers. The lineup is a symbol that their team needs them too much and don’t have the critical thinking or knowledge of resources to solve their own issues. How do you help your leaders to develop critical thinking and independent problem solving in their team members? If they don’t, they could be a business risk as a leader if their team needs them too much and has become dependent on their leader.

Empathy is the ability to see something from another’s experience and perspective including how they feel. Why is this important as a leader? Empathy is deeply connected to building trust and in Lencioni’s model of the 5 Dysfunctions of a team, trust is the foundation for building highly effective teams and exceptional results.

Warren Bennis said: “The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.” 

I’ve been asked my take on whether leaders are born or made countless times along with many other myths about leadership.  Here are a few more that get in the way of good leaders becoming great leaders that I’d like to debunk

Helping your team work through change is challenging and it’s an important part of the role of a leader, but how often do you look at your own transition through difficult or unexpected change?  The challenge change poses for you as a leader can be compounded as you lead and support others through the very change that you’re finding difficult.   I’ve worked with most of my clients at some point during our coaching on supporting their teams through change and they often forget to explore the impact the change is having on themselves.  Some changes are positive and something people have been asking for but unexpectedly get hard after the honeymoon phase. Other changes result from tough business decisions you might need to make.  And some others may be the result of change decisions from above that you may not be fully informed about the rationale. Recognizing your own change curve is essential in effectively leading others through change and here are some areas to explore for maximum change leadership success

What leads to successful leadership transitions and evolution, here are the areas that I’ve personally experienced and seen with my clients that have been critical to their success.

It was December 2010 when I first watched the TED talk that has now gained over 36 million views.  The speaker was engaging.  There was something about her that was unapologetically human and compelling in her story telling.  That’s Brené Brown.  The talk was recommended to me by my own coach and as I watched I was intrigued but wasn’t sure where she was going with her story. Much like watching a mystery movie there were hints and clues along the way but without the full picture difficult to piece them all together.  And then there it was, vulnerability.  A word I had not considered and became immediately drawn to know more.  

I recently heard a story about two executive VP’s that had a screaming match with each other in the office. Next, one executive went as far as to invite team members from the other’s team into a meeting and gave them a dressing down in front of their VP. After that meeting, they had another screaming match all in the workplace. You might be aghast to hear of this story and assume it is a rarity - it is not.

When speaking with a University recently about a Coaching Conversations program, they asked me how I help leaders apply coaching skills when they’re struggling with seeing how they can integrate them into their real workplace.  Their question got me thinking about many of the leaders I’ve worked with over the years whether it be through one on one coaching or in workshops do exactly that.  Learning coaching skills isn’t useful if you’re not able to find a way to integrate them into your everyday work as a leader and it’s not about scheduling long coaching conversations with your team.

A client last week asked me if I garden and then proceeded to tell me this is where his best thinking comes to him.  It comes as he’s doing the mindless tasks of digging and weeding or mowing the lawn crisscrossing back and forth across the yard.  I also once had a client who did his best critical and strategic thinking on long motorcycle rides and another who did his best thinking on solo cross-country skiing days in the mountains.  Wait what?

Last week, I attended my fifth “In The Lead” graduation for the Calgary Youth Justice Society where the speeches reminded me that focusing on our strengths is our clearest path to development.  It's hard to resist focusing on our weaknesses, especially when they are painful gaps and even more painful when pointed out by others in feedback, a 360 result or an inappropriate comment from someone in the ‘cheap seats’.

We walked into the conference space and were greeted with couches, beanbag chairs and small table groupings, not the typical rows of chairs I expected for a business conference.  The day started with circus performers at the opening and following the performers our first keynote speaker, Everest Explorer Jamie Clarke. At one point he was laying on the couch on stage as he took us on a journey alongside him.  Later that day, all 1500 of us found ourselves singing at the top of our lungs with Our Lady Peace lead singer Raine Maida for the purpose of stepping outside our comfort zone.  Why on earth would a business conference take this approach? For the sake of taking risks to spark creativity and innovation. This was the ONWARD conference on innovation with the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.  

I’ve found myself talking with a number of leaders over the last month about the loneliness of leadership.  For some, it has been gradual as they moved into more senior leadership roles in their organization and for others almost immediate as they launched a company and found themselves in a much larger leadership role than they ever imagined. 

Leadership requires us to step into uncertainty, ambiguity, risk, and exposure again and again while helping others do the same.  We can’t do it alone yet so many leaders find themselves in a lonely place with only a few people around them or for some, no one to talk to at all.  I’ve written before about the importance of a sounding board otherwise your spouse becomes this sounding board for you and it can adversely impact your relationship and your ability to recharge with them.  So what can a leader do?