An Inspirational Insight ! Why Inspiring Leaders Don't Sweat

 

Recently, as a series of small crises sent many of us at my organization scrambling to put out fires and plug holes. A manager who reports to me blurted out that she couldn't understand how I could remain so calm through such a stressful time.

Part of the explanation for my perceived coolness under fire is that I've been through enough of these sorts of crises to trust my team to handle them effectively, even if only after a certain amount of hysteria. But the truth is that I wasn't really as calm as most people here thought. I was, to some extent, faking it.

Leaders generally need to be honest and genuine, and risk losing trust and respect if they aren't. But you should also be prepared to make an exception when it comes to letting people see you freak out. That's because being seen losing your cool during a crisis is a good way to hurt your organization.

Stressing out degrades performance just when you need to be at your most effective. And, oddly enough, when you act calm, you feel calm. It's harder to lose it when you've taken pains to slow your breathing, lower your voice, maintain a relaxed pose, and smile beatifically.

Even more important, employees take their cues from leaders. Seeing you look stressed out will raise stress levels among your team, and ultimately among many of your employees, to the almost certain detriment of everyone's performance. Seeing a calm leader, on the other hand, has an immediately calming effect. Many a military leader has turned a chaotic retreat into an effective advance merely by striding coolly among the troops. The often used phrase, “a steady hand on the tiller” comes to mind.

Over time, a leader who frequently loses it can demoralize his or her team, and even engender an organization-wide culture of fear, overreaction and discouragement. People need to know in the tough times they're ultimately going to prevail; they need to see the light at the end of the tunnel reflected in your eyes, even when you're having trouble seeing it yourself.

Leaders have to learn what they can and can't get away with when it comes to losing their cool. Some leaders are ordinarily so high-energy and thin-skinned that their people learn that any mild outbursts are harmless and can be safely ignored. I myself am by nature more low-key, so if I screamed it would be so out of character I think some people here might pass out. (I can only remember one time when I truly openly lost it with employees. Never again.) On the other hand, people here have told me that I when get unusually quiet, they know I'm stressed--so sometimes I have to be careful not to get too quiet, unless I'm trying to make a point.

Steve Jobs famously threw tantrums, but the late Apple CEO was regarded as a temperamental genius, so people cut him some slack for it. He was one of a kind. Most leaders who find themselves flipping out when the going gets tough should ask themselves this question: Are you in the right job?