Page 251 - How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

WHAT DELIGHTS ME? (CIVILITY AND HAPPINESS)

reflection. It requires working outside your comfort zone and
attempting things where you may not be qualified today. It
requires hard work and deep honesty. Most of all, it requires
us to learn to tolerate anxiety. Eric Maisel states:

While anxiety is the greatest impediment to aliveness, in order to cre-
ate you must invite anxieties into your life and live anxiously. . . . If
you are to create you must invite anxiety in. But then you must man-
age it. 3

Do you remember anyone in school or your early job
training teaching you about the anxiety that accompanies
honest, creative work? Do you remember anyone telling you
how to manage that anxiety, tame it, work despite it? Most
of us don’t. This is often the great leader’s job: to help peo-
ple tame and tolerate the anxiety inherent in the process of
doing good work, creative work, meaningful work. Leaders
can warn people about difficulties, stir up hope in the face
of obstacles, and hold open the space between a vision and
its realization to help people trust that it can happen. Great
leaders not only help shape that vision or identify those prob-
lems but also help people muster the stamina and courage to
keep trying, to keep staring down their self-doubts or fear or
boredom until they get somewhere new.
Questions for you:

• • Who are your most creative employees? What do they
need to work creatively? (More clarity about what is
needed or its parameters? More help? More experience?
More license? More encouragement? More protection
from criticism in the early stages? More realism?)

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