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Weekly UpdatesWe each have an "emotional house" that consists of several necessary elements:
* The soil upon which the house is built: courage
* The foundation: confidence
* Four walls: communication, confrontation, choice, and change
* The roof: control
All these elements have to be firmly in place for an emotional house to be stable.
What do you do if there is a weakness in one of the elements of this structure? Rebuild it. And that takes courage. Once you begin rebuilding, you will firm up the foundation--confidence. And you do this by paying heed to the other four elements: communication, confrontation, choice, and change. When you finish rebuilding, your roof--control--will be in place to keep the whole structure together.
By understanding your emotional house, you will be able to weather the stress of being a leader.
An interview with Brown University President Ruth Simmons was published in the Providence Sunday Journal recently. In it, she reflected on a talk she had with the Student Council president, who was despondent about undergraduate apathy toward student government. And there had been a negative article about the Student Council in the student newspaper.
Simmons said she hears similar concerns every spring from whoever serves as Student Council president. "It looks very glamorous," being president of an organization, "because you get to do things and you get a lot of attention. But what you are doing is subjecting yourself to other people's judgment on a day to-day basis. You are saying, 'I am going to assert that I have a better idea. That I can get from here to there. That I can represent you.' So you can't be disappointed when people judge you. Because that's what you're inviting them to do in a leadership role. If you're doing something significant with your life, you have to be attacked. It's required," she said.
It takes courage to be a leader. If you don't have that quality, you will do things to please others at the expense of what you believe to be right. Will you always make the correct decision? Probably not, but the nature of good leadership is to make an informed decision based on some of the elements of your emotional house: communication, confrontation, and choice.
In gathering the data required to make a choice, you need to sift and filter the ideas presented to you and decide what to do. Will you please everyone? Of course not. Think about all the opinions you gathered. Some people are going to be upset and some will be pleased. But it's your function as a leader to make decisions no matter how unpopular or onerous the consequences may be. If you make a decision based on your understanding of the situation and you feel it will benefit the organization, then you will have fulfilled your role.
Good people skills--the art of listening and the ability to confront issues--are important qualities in a leader.
You also need to understand the consequences of your decisions and prepare for them. For example, if you need to cut down the size of the staff, you must decide how to manage the company with fewer people and decide what to do about those people who are going to be cut. You have to be concerned about the morale of the company as a result of your decision since that will affect productivity.
As a leader, you have to prepare to do as much damage control as you can in the light of an unpopular decision.
Good leaders don't run away from the problems that may arise as a result of their decisions. They prepare for them by involving the staff in ways that help the company and the people affected move forward. A good leader is not afraid to meet with people and does not hide behind a desk--unavailable both physically and emotionally.
Although you must reach out to your staff in a caring way, you can't be dragged down by negativity. As Simmons said, "Forget about pleasing everybody. You start down that path and you cannot be a leader."
Eileen Berman, Ed.D., is a practicing psychologist and consultant in Rhode Island. She is also the author of two books, Pealing Effectively with Job Loss and Building Productivity E-mail her at e.berman@cox.net with comments or suggestions.
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