It’s Friday afternoon. You started early so you could finish up those last few MUST DOs for the week. There’s a bounce in your step and a smile on your face. You light-heartedly chat with the people you pass. In your mind you’re already fishing out your keys as you walk across the parking lot. It looks to be the perfect ending to a busy week.
Suddenly, that face appears. You know the face. It doesn’t matter who brings the bad news, their face is always the same. Some approach shaking their head. Others arrive with bowed shoulders and defeated eyes. They all have a slight grimace – these bearers of bad news.
- Something broke.
- Something ran out.
- Something didn’t turn out right, but in a really bad way.
- Something ran out.
You fear the worst as soon as you see that face. Your hopes of a peaceful evening are dashed to pieces and you imagine yourself still here, hours later, running on vending machine junk and the slimmest hope of a resolution.
Leadership is a never-ending rollercoaster of challenges. The Stoics developed practical principles for facing the inevitable challenges of life and these can be applied to the practice of leadership.
Below are three Stoic principles that will help you to maintain composure, develop resilience, and overcome whatever challenge rears its ugly head.
Principle #1 – Change is inevitable
“The Universe is change”
(Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Bk IV.3)
Sometimes you want to have a picnic and it rains. That’s nature. It just is. The Stoics expand this concept to anything out of their control. A customer changes their mind at the last minute. A consistent supplier suddenly doesn’t deliver. A high performer gives notice. Equipment that runs like a top suddenly breaks down. Just like rain on your picnic, these too are all part of the game.
An organization is a complex, multi-dimensional organism. It’s affected by countless internal and external factors. Things change unexpectedly and quickly.
This Stoic principle advises us to manage expectations. Things happen. Expect the unexpected. When it happens, accept it. You have encountered an obstacle. It is what it is.
This brings me to the next principle.
Principle #2 – Reserve judgment
“It isn’t things themselves that disturb people, but the judgments they form about them.”
(Epictetus, Handbook, 2.5)
So, here you are, that unexpected and undesirable something happened. As soon as you’re told, you feel those negative emotions begin to rise – anger, frustration, and despair. Your mind may go blank. You may react harshly.
But negative emotions are not helpful in this situation. The obstacle you are facing requires calm, clarity, and decisiveness.
We tend to think there is a direct cause to effect relationship between an event and negative emotions. Someone made me mad. Something happens and I feel defeated. We think a negative event happened and this event directly caused negative emotions.
The Stoics showed there is a middle step to consider. That middle step is our opinion or judgment about the event.
Let’s say you have a hot order that needs to get loaded on the truck. All of a sudden, one of your employees tells you the forklift broke down and there’s no backup to load the truck.
You feel your blood pressure begin to rise and frustration flood your mind – a typical fight or flight response.
Notified forklift is broken –> Frustration
The Stoics would say there’s a step missing from this equation – your opinion.
Notified forklift is broken –> Opinion “This is terrible” –> Frustration
Now, you may be thinking. “The forklift’s broken. The order can’t get out. This IS terrible! I should feel frustrated!”
I’m not saying it’s not undermining your productivity – but the negative emotions associated with the thought aren’t going to help you solve the problem.
The Stoics recommend preventing the opinion. Rather than something happened AND it’s bad. Stop at something happened. Instead of “the forklift broke down and this is bad” stop at “the forklift broke down”. Stick with the facts. Leave out the judgment that will stir up those negative emotions.
This is something you can control. And focusing on what you can control – your opinion – allows you to cut out the emotional response and take rational, appropriate action.
This doesn’t mean the Stoics are passive. On the contrary, they taught that actions are more effective from clear thinking.
And now the third Stoic principle.
Principle #3 – The obstacle becomes the way
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
(Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Bk V.20)
Have you ever run a team obstacle course? It’s both fun and challenging. You team is running along and out of nowhere this obstacle appears right in your path. You can’t go around it. The only way forward is to work together to figure out how to navigate it and then exert the effort necessary to do so.
Overcoming obstacles at work is similar.
Here you are on Friday afternoon and something happens – an obstacle blocked your way. It’s unexpected, but you’ve prepared yourself to expect the unexpected. That face that delivers the news is covered with negative emotions, but you maintain your composure because you stick to the facts – an obstacle has been placed in your path.
The obstacle now becomes the way.
What’s really happened is your process revealed a weak spot. Is that bad? Only if you thought your process was perfect, which I hope you didn’t. Your process has given you information that you need to make it better. Maybe the timing is inconvenient, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Take lemons and make lemonade. You now have an opportunity to dig into your process, find a root cause, and make improvements.
With clarity of mind, you set to work mulling over the problem and your calm and resilience are a rock of support to those around you. That’s leadership. Now you can work as a team to overcome this problem and get things back on track.
There, refinement at its best. What were you going to do on a Friday night anyway, right?
Next time an undesirable event happens in your business, keep in mind these three Stoic principles.
- Change is inevitable
- Reserve judgment
- The obstacle becomes the way
Implementing these principles will keep your stress level down, provide clarity of thought, and help you to improve your process.
