Page 97 - Fearless Leadership

84 FEARLESS LEADERSHIP

A leader or organization has requisite variety only when its responses
meet or exceed the stimuli encountered in the environment. When you
lose the ability to adapt and recover quickly, you lose power and the abil-
ity to influence change. The need to be right creates a rigid, inflexible
structure where adaptation is not possible.

Your need to be right exacts a high cost: your leadership effective-
ness and your future.

EVERYTHING STARTS WHEN YOU TURN
INSIGHT INTO ACTION
Personal transformation often occurs in times of crisis. Something happens
that makes you suddenly realize that the cost of holding on to your need
to be right has become too great. You pry your fingers off of your rigid view
for no other reason than you are losing everything with your intractable
position. This epiphany allows you to get outside of your point of view and
see the validity of other perspectives. In an instant, what appeared to be
an irreconcilable or hopeless situation suddenly shifts, and your mind is
flooded with new thinking and possibilities.
You do not need to wait for a crisis to transform your organization.
Fearless leadership provides you with the road map for gaining immedi-
ate access to transformation. When you can truly understand how others
experience your behavior, without defending or judging, you then have
the ability to produce a breakthrough in your leadership and team.
Everything starts with your self-awareness. You cannot take charge with-
out taking accountability, and you cannot take accountability without
understanding how you avoid it.
As a fearless leader, you must learn how to bring compassion and under-
standing when you and others are stuck in your point of view. We must
understand that the need to be right is automatic and learn how to
recover quickly when it occurs.
Bring compassion for yourself and others when people become posi-
tional, rigid, or fixed in their views. If you can see this as a natural occur-
rence, rather than judging yourself or others as being wrong or inadequate,
you can help people get out of the hole instead of pushing them further in.