Tag Archive for: #leadershipezra

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. When we see or hear or experience something from which we can learn, it is that example and experience that often helps us remember the lesson. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. And so I am sharing examples of circumstances and stories that I have experienced in my everyday life that illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those stories, and it points out that there are often unexpected things that slow us down. 

I was out running an errand on a weekday afternoon, and by the time I was done, people were beginning to head home from work, so I knew that there would be a little more traffic. But that is all that I expected – a little more traffic. What was unexpected was that on the route home, there were two different areas of construction traffic, and at each one, multiple lanes were narrowed down to one, which slowed the traffic to a crawl for a couple of miles each time. When we finally got through those and off the highway, and into our small town, we then got stopped by a train at the railroad tracks and had to sit and wait for another five minutes until the train passed. Eventually, we did get home, but it was a good bit later than we had expected. 

As the Scottish poet Robert Burns said in 1735 in his poem “To a Mouse”, in a line that John Steinbeck made famous, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.“ So, like my drive home showed me, it doesn’t matter how much you plan and prepare; often, there are unexpected things that get in the way or slow you down. Sometimes those are things caused by circumstances over which you have no control, sometimes they are caused by other people (whether they did it intentionally or not), and sometimes it’s a result of a mistake that you made. Regardless, you weren’t planning on it, and it slowed you down or messed up your plans.

But that just happens. It’s normal. And because it is normal, and often unavoidable, the solution is not to keep it from happening, but, rather, to learn how to handle it. And that requires you to be able to do (or be!)a few things: 

1. Be positive. As frustrating as it may be, you get to choose how you respond. You can choose to be angry, bitter, or critical; or you can choose to be positive and joyful in spite of any circumstances. (This was the subject of an article here on LeadershipEzra.com a few weeks ago.)
2. Be flexible. You must be willing and able to let things be different. That may mean giving up some control over circumstances and events, so that you can accept and allow things to progress in a different way than you initially planned. You must be flexible enough to be willing and able to let go, either in part or in whole.
3. Be adaptable. Learn to modify and adapt your plans based on the circumstances. In my first senior leadership role, I recall saying frequently, “If that doesn’t work, we will do something different.“ We need to be willing and able to adapt our plans when unexpected things get away.

That’s the lesson on leadership from this little thing in life, from a trio of things that slowed me down when I was trying to get home. You will experience unexpected delays and obstacles. Certainly, you can put safeguards in place to avoid them as much as possible, but you will not be able to prevent them completely. Since that is the case, it is necessary that you cultivate the soft skills and abilities to handle those unexpected things well. You need to be positive, you need to be flexible, you need to be adaptable. Because something unexpected is likely to slow you down.

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. When we see or hear or experience something from which we can learn, it is that example and experience that often helps us remember the lesson. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. And so I am sharing examples of circumstances and stories that I have experienced in my everyday life, which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those stories, and it’s a great reminder that everyone has a filter through which they see things. 

I often share stories and comments from my grandchildren, because their words and actions tend to be unfiltered and innocent, and so they provide a great perspective on a view of the world through their innocent eyes. This is another one of those examples. My daughter had been playing in her bedroom, and when she came out of the room after a while, she warned us not to take too long to start playing when the little one asked us to play. She proceeded to tell us that she while she was in the room, she did not respond quickly enough to an invitation to play with a particular toy. My granddaughter then stated dejectedly, but quietly,  in her self-talk voice, “My momma doesn’t like me.” 

Now, of course, her mama does love her and like her, but in that moment, a little girl had a lens that was affecting her perception of the circumstances. Her three-year-old mind was equating playing together with a belief about someone’s care. Therefore, through that lens, she was interpreting a slow response to play as an indication of how much her mom liked her. Of course, a few minutes later, that was all forgotten as they played with a different toy, but it still provides a great illustration for you and me.

People all have their own lenses. As adults, those are lenses that have been formed over time based on past experiences and interactions. As those lenses are shaped, they then affect perceptions of present experiences and interactions. In the process, new interactions and experiences either affirm, modify, or disprove that perception. Knowing that this is true should make you consider three important things:

1. You have a lens. You have a filter through which you perceive, understand, and interpret things. It stands to reason, then, that how you perceive, understand, and interpret things is affected by your particular filter. You need to be aware of that. You need to be able to recognize the lens that you have and how it got there, so that you have a better understanding of how and why you are viewing things the way that you are.
2. Everybody else has a lens. For the same reason and in the same way as you, they have a filter, but theirs will be different than yours, because they have had different experiences and formation. It may be a vastly different lens, it may be very similar, or it may be somewhere in between, but it will be different. 
3. Therefore, you cannot necessarily expect others to see things the same way as you, especially if there is a lack of communication and dialogue. This underscores the necessity of actively listening to understand someone else’s lens and clearly communicating in a way that helps to minimize misunderstandings and conflicts that come from having different lenses.

That’s the lesson on leadership from this little thing in life, from my granddaughter making a comment of whether or not someone liked her based on how quickly they responded to her invitation to play. We all have a lens, a filter, behind how we see and interpret the world around us. But so does everybody else. We need to recognize that we have that filter, and we need to accept that everyone else does as well. Then we need to learn how to build cooperation and understanding in spite of it. Because everybody has a lens.