Discernment in Conviction

“It’s like I’ve lost my mojo. Every day I’m questioning my decision to take this position, whether it’s right for me.”

Although not the first client to express a lack of motivation and self-doubt, I was surprised to hear it coming from Dan. Just two months prior, after much careful thought and deliberation, he’d stepped in to a new role which had all the hallmarks of being his dream job.

Over the course of our coaching session, it became apparent that much of the honeymoon shine had worn off his new role and the now-unvarnished reality was looking far less appealing than what he’d envisioned.

Raking his fingers through his hair he demanded, “How could I have been so wrong?”

But was this really a case of having made the wrong decision or was there something else at play? 

Dan found himself caught up in the classic conundrum popularized by The Clash in the ‘80s:  Should I stay, or should I go?  Torn between staying the course and getting out of a bad situation, he wasn’t sure how to discern the truth of his circumstances to guide his choices. 

The Resilient Leadership principle of Staying Convicted means maintaining confidence in your choices and beliefs even when circumstances become difficult, however, doing this proves challenging when facing uncertainty, fear, and doubt – or doubt from others.

Winston Churchill also espoused steadfast leadership, famously saying:  “Never give in. Never, never, never, never – in nothing great or small, large or petty.”  But his critical final line, often overlooked, adds an essential condition:  “Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”

So how does this wisdom apply to Dan’s dilemma?

Discovering What Lies Beneath

As we explored the specifics of the situation, Dan shared feeling overwhelmed both by his new team’s resistance to the changes he was committed to implement and their constant complaints. The real breakthrough came with his realization that most of the complaints were unproductive – variations of “this will never work” with nothing tangibly actionable. These “reactive” complaints were signaling organizational anxiety.  Dan’s arrival as a new leader with an agenda of sweeping change had created systemic uncertainty, and his team members were reacting to that discomfort.

New in his own leadership role, Dan admitted that he, too, was experiencing a high level of anxiety particularly as he tried to find ways to respond to all the issues raised by his team. The pattern was becoming clearer:  Resilient Leadership teaches us to: “Recognize when anxiety – in yourself or in the system – makes it more challenging to lead with conviction.”

Having identified anxiety as an underlying factor, we now needed to determine what to do about it.

The Power of Choice

Sometimes when we are in the throes of anxiety, we can become immersed in it, losing sight our power to choose our perspective. In Dan’s case, he decided to take a cue from the Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius who wrote:

“Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions – not outside.”

[Remarkably, these words from Meditations originated in the midst of a plague – a good reminder that we can choose calm even amid widespread anxiety.]

To better manage his own feelings of anxiety and overwhelm, Dan committed to prioritizing his energy by focusing on what was within his control and letting go of his worry about what wasn’t.  As a leader, he recognized that by lowering his own anxiety, he could act as a “step down transformer,” decreasing the level of organizational anxiety.

He also chose to adopt a strategy of clear communication to address his team’s feelings of uncertainty by being transparent about what he knew and didn’t know, increasing the frequency of his communications, and creating more opportunities for feedback and input from this team.

Revision or Recommitment

Staying convicted doesn’t mean never doubting or never having to adapt. In the face of uncertainty and change, as Dan discovered, it can be all too easy to mistake anxiety for insight or reactivity for reality.  Rather than second-guessing our choices, when we encounter resistance, a good first step is to zoom out to identify and address what anxiety might be underneath it.  Only then can we determine whether we need to revise our convictions or whether we need to recommit to them.