Comfortable or Challenged?
By Steve Gahagen
One of Gallup’s Seven Demands of Leadership is called “Challenging Experience.” Leaders stimulate great achievement through “raising the bar” for themselves and their organizations. By continually creating new and greater challenges that are in alignment with the organization’s vision, mission, and values, they demonstrate belief in those they lead and in themselves. Leaders take their organizations to previously unimagined levels of success.
We live in a world that values safety and comfort. We may dream of zero gravity but we know it is not good for us. Astronauts have proven that without any resistance, they lose muscle mass and bone density, and they experience high pulse rates. The key to getting stronger physically is lifting more and more weight, not resting indefinitely. I know of one family that challenges each family member to take on something difficult every year.
When I was going through college and graduate school, on most days I preferred to be comfortable. But it was the challenging professors who stretched me and whom I most admire. In fact, the only professors I remember with clarity are those who challenged me to think at a different level. At first it was frustrating and at times they made me angry. But in the end, I became a different person because they were willing to challenge me to climb higher in thinking and learning than I thought possible.
Our current COVID-19 crisis has created challenges for almost every organization. Comfort is no longer an option. The good news is that many teams will overcome and be led through this challenge - a challenge no one has ever known, but a challenge that will create the opportunity to reach new levels of accomplishment.
Questions to Consider:
What are 2-3 wins you or your organization have accomplished that would have been unimaginable at some point?
What challenging things are you doing now in your personal life and organization?
How will you have to grow, what will you have to learn, or what risks must you be willing to take in order to lead your organization to scale mountain peeks you never imagined?