What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?
You’re always going to have issues. The best leadership teams in the world have issues. The difference between the great teams and the average ones? Courage. Great leadership teams have the courage to face and solve their issues.
Most leaders know exactly what issue is holding back their company. Maybe it’s the highest grossing salesperson who’s destroying the culture. Maybe it’s your partner who hasn’t pulled her weight in years. Maybe it’s a loyal employee who has been with the business since the beginning, but the job outgrew him. You just don’t want to deal with it. You don’t want to risk losing a high-performing team member, hurting someone, or having that tough conversation.
So, you wait. Maybe you try a temporary solution. You wrap duct tape and twine around the problem. But it doesn’t go away. Instead, the issue grows. Good people get frustrated and leave. Trust erodes. And the culture suffers.
I had a client whose top salesperson was a rock star but terrible for the culture. She was very negative, fiercely competitive in all the wrong ways, and she refused to help anybody. A classic wrong person, right seat situation.
The CEO knew it, but he couldn’t bring himself to act. He was afraid he’d never find someone who could sell like her. So, he waited. And while he waited, he lost three other salespeople who were tired of the drama.
He finally realized that no one person is worth the entire team and found the courage to act. When he let her go, almost everyone said: “What took you so long?” A year later, no single person matched her individual numbers. But as a team, overall sales grew 30%.
If You’re Serious About Results
Great leaders care deeply and act courageously. Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s the ability to take action in spite of it.
EOS offers the Ten Commandments to help leaders solve issues. The second commandment is “Thou Shalt Not Be a Weenie.” The solution to most issues is simple. It’s just not easy. It requires a strong will, a firm resolve, and the willingness to make the tough decision even when everything in you wants to wait a little longer. In other words, it requires courage.
The eighth commandment is “Thou Shalt Choose Short-Term Pain and Suffering.” There is no pain-free option, but long-term pain is always worse.
My client avoided one difficult decision and lost three salespeople. Issues are like mushrooms. If you ignore them, they multiply and grow.
One leader recently told me that he was avoiding a very difficult issue because he didn’t want to be perceived as being like the mean boss his father had always complained about. I jokingly called him a weenie. That really got him thinking. He realized dealing with the issue wasn’t being a mean boss. It was being a true leader.
EOS offers two tools to help teams solve issues. First: the Issues List, a simple tool that creates the discipline and safety for people to get issues out in the open where they can be solved.
Next, we teach teams how to solve issues using a process called IDS: Identify, Discuss, Solve.
Identify is the crucial first step. When facing an issue, most teams move right to Discuss. They don’t Identify the root cause, and the issue keeps coming back. It’s like weeds in your garden. You can mow them down every Sunday morning. But they keep coming back because you’re cutting the tops off, not pulling them out by the root.
Albert Einstein said: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about the solutions.”
Once the real issue is identified, Discuss it honestly. Then you Solve it with a clear decision and a person who is accountable to execute.
In Short
Every issue you are not solving is growing. It is stopping you and your team from reaching your potential. The longer you wait, the bigger the issue gets and the more it costs you. In time, in money, in energy, in good people, and in missed opportunity.
As Gino Wickman says: “Your ability to succeed is in direct proportion to your ability to solve your problems.”
So, what is the big issue you’ve been avoiding? And what would you do if you weren’t afraid?
___________
Most leaders already know the answer. The hard part isn’t figuring out what needs to change. It’s finding the courage and a system that will support you. That’s exactly what EOS is built for. And it’s the work I do with leadership teams every day.
Ready to solve your issues and break through to the next level?
Reach out directly at amy.holtz@eosworldwide.com