How Great Leaders Deal with Stressful Situations

90% of life is generally routine, it’s average, you’re going from point to point to point, doing emails, cleaning your inbox, returning some phone calls, thinking about your grocery list, planning the weekends, doing the things you have to do. Most of life is in your control…

But there’s this 10% of life… that’s crazy, it’s insane, it’s intense, it’s stressful, it often feels out of control, it makes you feel like this!

While most people don’t like that, here’s why you actually want this: this intensity is mandatory for all humans or business, it’s the only place you grow!

It’s the only place that you really get the sole satisfaction that you did the job, or you met a quota this month and it was a tough month, or you got your kids through something tough, or your biggest competitor came out with a new product offering, and you still hit your number.

Where you might begin to say, “Well as long as it’s not a hurricane, as long as it’s not a bad storm, okay, I’ll think about owning the weather.”

To be the leader you wish to be, to be Great… you’ve got to own the weather “in the 10”. When the storms are the highest is when people are really desperately looking for leaders to rise up.

You don’t need to have all the answers. You don’t have to know everything. You don’t have to win every time. But when you stand up in that locker room and say, “All right everyone, it’s on me. I’m going to lead you there, follow me and we’ll get there. I’ll get you there. Maybe a little late, maybe not everything, maybe we’ll hit some bumps and bruises along the way, but follow me and we’re going to get there.”

That’s when people become inspired. That’s when people want to be more than they are. They will deliver for a leader who inspires them. “Managers” use IQ tools like spreadsheets, project reports, and red lights and yellow lights and green lights in a quality process. Those have their place and time.

However, if it is a storm, if people desperately want a leader, someone they will follow to the ends of the earth, you must own everything about their world. You cannot begin to inspire them until you own everything and you’re pushing “in the 10.”

Now, are you bold in how you push and inspire? If you’re pushing for average, or above average, you will not get the same level of growth as when you push in the 10, when the storm is raging, and you demand a 10 from them. That’s when Leaders really push into this margin of excellence. That’s when they lean so far over the edge that it’s almost insanity. That’s when leadership is working at its greatest level!

When you look at how you arrived at the leader you are today, to take it to the gold medal that you never got before, to take it to the championships stage, you have to practice and fall and fail and get up and push on and be bold, outrageous, and inspirational.

And you have to own everything that happens as a result, even the weather!