“My People Make Me SO Mad Sometimes!”

I chatted with a coaching client the other day and she was angry! She had a staff member that didn’t follow through on her promises and put their grant in jeopardy. This is a BIG deal with many people affected. As I listened to her tell me all about the facts of the situation, I was reminded of a quote I read recently by James Allen,

“Working steam is not heard. It’s the escaping steam within which makes a great noise.”

Working steam is contained, captured, and used to power something forward.

Escaping steam does damage! Much like the anger of a leader. So what can we do with that anger so we don’t hurt our people AND move things forward?

• First of all, acknowledge the anger! Many people try to deny that feeling and that’s how you can explode. One day the anger just boils to the surface and you hurt yourself and others. Acknowledge the validity of your feeling.
• You need to find a safety valve! Anyone who’s ever cooked with a pressure cooker understands the value of the safety valve. Without a small amount of steam being emptied, the pressure can become so great the cooker explodes. Find a way to let off a little bit of steam before moving on, such as sharing your thoughts with a trusted advisor or taking a walk to collect your thoughts.
• Transform this energy into something good. This client needed to share with me what happened and THEN solve the real problems. The immediate problem of grant items to be completed and the long-term problem of leadership skills so it wouldn’t happen again.

We talked about the lessons she learned from this event and she came up with two.

• “I didn’t empower her throughout the process. I came in a little too hot and heavy and used my authority to throw my weight around. I could have asked more questions and invited her to share more throughout the process.”
• “How I, as the leader, handle failures is important. It communicates out to my team how they should handle failures. I’m so glad I came to talk to you right away before I fired her and damaged my team.”

Her next question was, “Michelle, thank you so much for the second lesson but when are we going to talk more about how I can empower others more?” See, she is a member of our Empowered Leaders Group and we talking about relationship building, getting stuff done, building your team, and empowering each other. This goes a LONG way towards helping a leader deal with sometimes frustratingly mad situations.

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