what I have learned from working with a LOT of business leaders is that like energy attracts like energy.
I know this sounds a little WOO WOO but
what I have learned from working with a LOT of business leaders is that like energy attracts like energy.
I guess you could say that feelings attract feelings or states attract states.
For example we don’t just see fear in someone we trust, and observe it objectively.
We buy into it
We adopt it
We don’t wait for a rational break down of its necessity, which makes sense evolutionarily speaking.
Better to take the fear and survive than wait to observe it’s rational sense and get eaten by a peckish sabre tooth tiger.
This is what happened to Simon
The CEO of Saas company he was operating from a sense of urgency
Superficially, urgency looks smart but when you break it down it takes little time to realise that it isn’t smart.
Prioritising yes, focus yes, process driven yes, removing distractions yes, clear deadlines yes.
Urgency though is never helpful. It’s operating in the future and stirs up panic in those around us.
But Simon was operating from urgency and the belief that it was required and warranted.
What happens in the brain 🧠 is that it starts to look for behaviours and evidence to support this state and it’s need.
Like anyone NOT seeming to be urgent.
• You start eating faster or on the go.
• You interrupt people or guess their point and start fixing what you believe they are trying to say, talking at 100mph and making everything seem like life or death.
• You start taking stimulants like sugar, cigarettes, coffee, watching thrillers, email, social media, slack.
• Then you start seeking individuals with a similar energy and getting frustrated by those without that same level of agitation.
People start to seem incompetent because your urgency is scaring them OUT OF THEIR MINDS!
Simon was here when we met
His business was doing some very cool things but he was a little too agitated and anxious to enjoy the ride.
We began by creating certainty in every area of life where that was posssible and a lot of certainty in himself.
His predictable and repeatable processes bought him back into the present and he was quickly able to stop using his phone, smoking, drinking so much coffee or using alcohol to bring himself down in the evening.
What was even more cool was that his loss of urgency gave him a whole new drive and enjoyment in leadership.
The business grew and his team were really given the chance to develop and without the sense of constant urgency they actually developed much faster.
Simon was a natural leader but now he could really see what was meant by the saying
“a leader is judge not by how many they lead but by how many leaders they create.”
Speed is a product of clarity and direction.
When he started to see this the way he operated transformed, he even started working 10-20 fewer hours per week.
Sometimes the hardest thing to believe is that our mode of operation is controlled by anything but necessity.
Until we start to question it, nothing gets better.