There are going to be times when things aren’t going your way. You may get a string of complaints lodged by various people in your organization. You may have a series of failed tasks or false starts. Your star employee decides to leave, someone messes up on a key project, a vendor fails to meet obligations, or a client calls to yell because they are unhappy. Or maybe you’re just having a hard time finding your own spark of joy in what you’re doing. How do you become more tenacious?
Ok, deep breath. We’re going to start with the most obvious, but sometimes most overlooked, thing about dealing with hard times as a leader.
Everyone goes through it.
I know, you just exhaled sharply and are now looking side-eyed at this page. That is the big revelation?
No, not a big revelation. But it is an important reminder for yourself, and for others. During a session with one of my mentees, they began to talk to me about the myriad of issues going on. They had lost their spark – at least momentarily – and they were questioning what they had really accomplished. So I let them in on the big, bad secret… it happens to everybody. And then I opened my business journal and pointed out how some weeks my notes to myself were celebratory, and others were so negative you would have thought they were written by a 14-year-old girl in the throes of adolescent angst. Ok, I’m exaggerating… but only a little.
The manager was astounded. From the outside, they had assumed that I was always calm, collected, and unflappable (see our article on some of the downfalls of leading by example). They felt that all upper management always knew what they were doing and didn’t let things get to them. It had never occurred to them that these same fears of failure could happen to someone with a more advanced title. And then they were profoundly grateful to find that other managers were just human after all.
So when we talk about tenacity, I want you to first remember that hard times and doubt come to everyone. And the next time you start to kick yourself when you’re down, or someone comes to you as a bundle of stress, stating that they are ill-equipped, you were wrong to hire them, and they are over their heads… you can offer the same statement and get the same off-kilter response. Sometimes you have to just interrupt the negative train of thought, then you can move on and try again.
Where does tenacity come from?
Tenacity is not an overnight trait. It’s something that gets built up. You try, you fail, you dust yourself off, you try again. Think of learning to ride a bike. A kid falls over and skins their knees. (Or if it’s me, they fall over again and again and again until gravel is practically embedded in their knees.) Does the kid kick the bike, say it’s a stupid mode of transportation, and then never get on it again? No, they get back on and try again. Maybe training wheels get put on. Maybe they go ride in the grass. They find a different way and they keep at it until they figure it out. That is tenacity.
As a leader, not every thought is going to be a flash of brilliance. If you’re lucky, the poor ideas will start to pass when you start discussing them with someone else. If you’re very lucky, you’ll realize the idea won’t work while you’re standing in the shower – long before you ever let anyone else into the crazy inside your head. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. But a lot of times, you don’t realize that something isn’t going to be as easy or as efficient or as effective as you initially thought it would. No flash of brilliance, just hard work and some errors along the way.
You observe, you learn, and you try to ride the bike again.
How do you know when you’re being tenacious, or just a glutton for punishment?
I strongly recommend journaling. While I now often take two minutes at the end of my workday to jot a couple of notes to myself about what I accomplished, this isn’t where I started. It doesn’t have to be a daily thing, and it doesn’t have to take up much time. What I advocate for people is just a weekly wrap-up. I personally keep mine in a word file on my computer. At the end of each week, set aside 10-15 minutes and write down the key things on your mind. Keep it short – just a few sentences or bullet points will do. If you want to write War and Peace, have fun. But you’ll end up reading it later, and what is easier to read when you’re in the dumps or needing to write your annual review? (And yes, I really use my weekly journal to help with writing reviews. I even do quarterly / yearly wrap-ups for myself to summarize how things have been going. I’m weird like that.)
So make it short, just a couple of sentences. Did something go really well? Maybe you closed a deal, you finished an intense project, you had a good meeting for your very first interaction with the executive staff, one of your team members gave an amazing compliment, or maybe you just even finished writing that review you’ve been procrastinating. Or maybe you had a rough week. Maybe a client was unhappy over a product that was not delivered as promised. Maybe your department had an HR complaint, you didn’t meet your financial targets, or you are just really stressed trying to determine how to fit in the requested workload with your current team size. Take a quick note for that week. How were you feeling?
When you start to question what the heck you’re doing, and whether you are a fit for your job, take a look through your prior entries. (Or you can try a Point in Time Review.) You may find that things aren’t as bad as they feel in the heat of the moment, and you recover some joy in reliving past accomplishments. But if there is more bad than good in your notes, or you find that your 14-year-old angsty self wrote most of the entries, it might be time to consider doing something different. Try a different solution to the problem at hand, go talk things over with your boss, go tackle a different problem for a while. You know, try a different way to learn to ride the bicycle. Sometimes the solution is in a simple change.
