Resuscitating Your Leadership

Flatline.

We’ve all been there. When the demands exceed our capacity. When the stretching leads to flat out ripping us in half. When bending ends up breaking. When we reach into our bag of tricks right when we need it most… and come up empty.

After wiping away tears, picking up our pride or cleaning up the mess (whatever the outcome), we find ourselves with that universal question: “What now?”

It’s time to bring our leadership back to life. And it’s funny how that process works. The process of resuscitating our leadership is eerily similar to the process of dealing with grief. Grief, a cause or occasion of extreme stress and sorrow, and the stages we walk through, interestingly enough provide us an inverted roadmap for resuscitating joy. Let me show you how it’s done by running the five stages in reverse…

The 5 Stages of Resuscitating Personal Leadership

Stage 1: Acceptance

Time to deal with the reality that parts of your leadership are dead. This first stage actually provides a certain amount of relief. Some of the burden is lifted by the ability to look into the eyes of those following and counting on us, or simply into the mirror, and recognize what’s not working.

Stage 2: Depression

Absorbing the pain of dead leadership is the next step in this journey toward revival. What has the impact been on you personally and those closest to you? What has it cost your company, your family, your relationships? Hold this pain close as it will become a driver to take you through the final stages.

Stage 3: Bargaining

Bargaining is all about counting the costs. This vital, middle stage will have you straddling the line. On one hand, you can remain dead, with the pains identified in the previous stage, which does have the benefit of familiarity. On the other, you can make an investment and sacrifice to stick with it. This is accompanied by the unknown and the costs of change and growth--investment in training, changing jobs, developing new habits, giving up coping mechanisms, etc. Either direction will cost something. It’s time to measure and analyze.

Stage 4: Anger

This is where you provide the motivation, desire and drive to pursue making your leadership come alive. Whatever vision, mission statement or picture of a preferred future is inspiring you, keep that close. Leadership is hard. Making complex decisions is difficult. Solving problems is challenging. Stir up this fire when the journey gets tough.

Stage 5: Denial

Party time! Celebrate that you have the opportunity to DENY the dead parts of your leadership. Whether it has been five months, five years or 50, you now get to reject the failures, incompetencies and insufficiencies that have ruled your reality. You have the privilege of laying those things aside and picking up a new leadership identity formed through the trial and fire of facing it head on. Celebrate that freedom with friends, family and those close to you. It’s a brand new day!

Now, hook up the paddles and get to work!