Action Cures...

Originally shared in A Daily Dose Of Leadership on July 15, 2020.

More often than not, I’ve heard folks say that Action cures FEAR… I’m not about to argue with that; I truly believe that the majority of folks spend more time worrying about all the things that could possibly go wrong from taking action on something than it would likely take them to just do it, make some mistakes along the way and learn from them, then do it better the next time. And even when that entire cycle requires more time, it isn’t likely to require much more energy! Worrying is hard work!

While taking action really can cure fear, that’s not what I was referencing with Action Cures… in the subject line!

Action can cure quite a bit more than just fear… I believe action can go a long way toward curing poverty. I also believe taking action plays a significant role in curing a ton of health issues that bog so many people down. And just as importantly, action can help cure a poor self image – which often has a lot to do with the Love Thy Neighbor issues I referenced recently…

But with all the things that action can cure, we need to be a bit more intentional about the action we take when we’re in a leadership role. As I’ve suggested over and over, nearly everyone I’ve seen grow within an organization over the last two decades have been extremely strong individual contributors; they’ve had no issue at all with taking action! Quite honestly, that’s typically one of the biggest reasons they’re even considered for promotions – they got things done…

That same drive to take action and produce results can at times be counter-productive though as we accept more and more leadership responsibility. For me, the desire to push a team member aside (not always literally) and complete the task myself may have gotten the immediate result faster than allowing them to work through the process themselves and learn along the way, but doing that over and over can cripple individual development on our teams as well as killing the chance to build a better culture.

As we look back at Simon Sinek’s quote I shared in the last blog, “Leaders are not responsible for results. Leaders are responsible for people who are responsible for results.”, I’m going to challenge you to think about the specific actions you need to take as a leader in your organization to be more responsible for your people rather than just accomplishing a single result. I’m also going to challenge you to think about what actions you may need to tone down a notch in order to become more effective at empowering the people on your team to achieve the results you need from them.

I’ve experienced this myself (far more times than I care to admit) and I’ve seen it play out with dozens of great foremen, supervisors, and managers. While we may be able to get that immediate task done more quickly ourselves, there’s just no way to get all the tasks done as quickly every day without intentionally building the people around us. And that requires an entirely different kind of action.

It also requires us to be intentional about developing a process to sustain it, and we’ll look at that in the next message.