Leaders Take Real Control & Watch the Change :: January 2007

By Andrew Burnham - January 04, 2007

Product Resouces

Awareness

Leaders lose the capacity for authentic, creative and measured responses by allowing their buttons to be pushed. By learning how to be in the moment, leaders and others take control and remain calm and centered in challenging situations and with difficult people.

What do we look for in leaders?

We admire and appreciate leaders who are calm and centred in difficult situations. We are more comfortable trusting and following people who stay focused on constructive action. This is true across cultures and times. We look to people who are not adversely affected amidst chaos and are able to make decisions.

How do we want to be as Leaders?

As leaders we are not satisfied with merely appearing calm in challenging situations and with difficult people, we want to be calm. We also want to be authentic, creative and action oriented. We cannot evidence these qualities consistently nor are we walking the talk of leadership when we our allowing our buttons to be pushed.

Making Wise Use of Limited Time

Can you afford the time it takes to become and stay agitated? Agitation has an uninspiring effect on others. When conditions are right agitation in the leader becomes productivity loss in the team and rising costs for the organization. As leaders we now have two problems and no solutions.

Buttons

When someone or something pushes our buttons we are having a negative reaction. A negative reaction is simply an automatic and uncontrolled way of processing what is happening. The "what happens out there" starts to negatively affect our "in here".

Where are our Buttons?

Start the process of reducing and eliminating your buttons by considering the following: If a golf ball hits you on the head is the pain in the golf ball or is the pain in you? "Of course, the pain is in me", you say. It’s easy to see that our reactions are not in the difficult people or challenging situations themselves. Our reactions are clearly in us so why not look for solutions where they really are and not where we are unlikely to find them?

Stick to the Facts

As far as being in the moment is concerned, we only deal with the facts. And all we know is what we experience. What the golf ball experiences and what is going on in the minds of the difficult people we encounter is unknown and inconsequential. Knowing what is going on in the minds of others doesn’t change the fact that we are still agitated and have buttons. For this reason, it’s far more useful to pay attention to what is going on in our own minds and leave the speculative thinking for later.