In Leading from a Comfort Zone – A Leader’s Challenge, we spoke of how some leaders want to surround themselves with their own familiar and trusted people. If they move into a new organization, they scrap off old initiatives and make it more than obvious that they want their own people to fill the key slots. If they do hire new people into key slots, they rarely find a gem of a person for themselves who for them is the prized employee. This is like leading from a comfort zone and it does little to help the organization or the leader.
For starters, this article is not intended for leaders with a malevolent worldview. The ones who refuse to change their self serving mindset and see nothing wrong with leading from their self created comfort zones. This is intended for leaders who wish to expand their locus of influence and power by challenging their own assumptions, the ones who want to be trusted by people and the ones who see their insecurity as an area of improvement.
A leader who wishes to step outside of the comfort zone must introspect on these questions:
Do I have a hostile worldview?
Meaning, does the leader feel that the world is generally a place where you have to fight it out in order to get your way? Is it a jungle where you are thrown into the deep end and emerge a leader only by competing, negating and defeating others?
What if your ‘hostile universe’ one day decided to dethrone you from your little empire? Could you control the global recession from squeezing your firm into a pulp? Can you annihilate completely your competitors from the picture? Can you cover each and every one of your tracks so you can’t be followed? If you think you can, you’re living a life of consistent misery in trying to manage the affair.
In reality, the universe really is a friendly place. We ask participants in our workshops to think of the odds that they would die within the next minute? There are countless ways to exit unceremoniously. A car could hit you, your heart could stop beating, or a meteor could hit you! How much can you control the possibility of a sudden and unceremonious exit?
If you are at the top right now, there’s more generosity and collaboration accounting for it than selfishness and competition. Your material possessions and your immaterial wealth is the result of somebody else’s labor and experience benefitting you. Have you ever tried inverting the lens of your hostile worldview? If you have not, it is about time that you did.
Do I see abundance or do I see scarcity around me?
Several years ago, I had the fortune of interviewing the young Country Manager of a huge US based company that provides chemical solutions for the agricultural sector. One fine day, this man who was a chemical engineer by profession was asked to lead the company in spite of having no business education background. His track record of honesty recent successful experience of turning around the company’s manufacturing ability from zilch to surplus probably let to the international management to make this decision.
When he came into the scene, the atmosphere was rife with mistrust. The business managers at the top started looking around for jobs and many left immediately in resentment and with the fear that a chemist would be the cause of the company’s ultimate end. The company was operating in a saturated market which was increasingly losing out to cheap alternative products from China.
The new man in laid out some basic strategies. Fore mostly, he believed that he had to learn from the people out in the field so he spent 70 percent of his time learning the ropes from his sales staff that was scattered all over the country. Next he fervently believed that the company had been not been thinking out of the box in expanding the customer base.
The latter strategy showed his mindset was focused on abundance. He poured over territory maps, got agricultural land information from the government offices and thought and thought. Finally, he devised a new plan that brought solutions to vast areas that the company and its competitors had previously ignored for being infertile. He made new solutions for these areas and made a new brand mix for the existing markets, all the while expanding his scope of influence and tapping on enormous and overlooked abundance. His way of looking at things gave the company a 1000% increase to the existing business potential!
He brought in other radical changes which are beyond the scope of our discussion here. But suffice it to say, that his benign worldview and his focus on abundance made a phenomenal difference to the company’s profitability. Within six months of his new strategies being applied the company had achieved 100 percent of its ambitious annual profit targets! He had moved beyond his comfort zone, developed his existing teams and went ahead to lead while learning.
This is the impact of focusing on abundance.
Do I view my Past with Gratefulness?
The final question that a leader must introspect on, is whether the past was beneficial for his growth as a human being?
If you focus on the good that you derived from the apparently miserable and tragic in the past can fill you with gratitude. Gratitude enables Trust. Trust enables Courage. The courage to go ahead and make a difference.
If you continue to cherish bitter snapshots of bad experience with someone and project it on your present transactions with new people, you’re limiting the growth of your locus of influence. Know that there is always something useful to learn, even from the janitor who cleans your office. Provided that you are willing to step down your throne and gather the bricks from down below to build an eternal stairway to growth and success – one that benefits others beside you.
Comments
One response to “Moving beyond the Comfort Zone – Some Tips for Leading Diversity”
yes true only when one realizes that he has erred in the past and understands that that mistake was in the better run for him i.e.it enabled him to grow can one feel contented with his life. you should not judge people by their appearance and be confident that they are there to help you. do not act on impulse. think and then react.