The Olympics were on TV this past August, and, true to form, I found myself watching more gymnastics in a single afternoon than I had over the past four years. I am always amazed at the sheer athleticism of gymnasts.

One of my favourite events to watch is the uneven bars. Gymnasts swing and jump between two bars and do all sorts of tricks that I could never dream of completing. This last Olympics, as I watched in amazement, I noticed something I hadn’t before: the coaches.

When gymnasts are about to do an especially difficult flip or transition on the uneven bars, their coach will step onto the mat below them and spot them. The coach is almost inconspicuous; he does not touch the gymnast, nor does he support her anyway, he is just there to catch her should she fall.

The coach’s position to catch the gymnast should she fall provides a sort of safety net. The gymnast can push herself beyond what may be comfortable with the knowledge that if she should fail, there is someone there to break her fall. This extra security allows the gymnast to push her boundaries.

This practice is based off of this theory:

If someone has a security net, they are more likely to take higher risks with greater rewards.

But here’s the thing: there is no safety net for life. Just like the uneven bars, there is no net waiting to catch us if we fall. Gymnasts have their coach standing by to help, but who do the rest of us have?

Leaders do not just lead others, they are the human safety net. A successful leader creates two different types of security nets: a security neat for their team, and a security net for themselves.

Security net for your team

You want your team to take risks. Risk-taking is an important part of growth. If your team does not take risks, they run the risk of growing stagnant and apathetic.

A leader needs to let their team know that it is okay to make mistakes.

If you allow your team to make mistakes, you have to create a safe environment for them to do so. For example, if a team member takes a new approach to a sale and loses the sale, your reaction to the loss of a sale will determine that team member’s future action. An angry response will make that team member more likely to stick to the script the next time and not take a chance; a compassionate response will make that team member more likely to take further risks, which could lead to a future breakthrough.

Most leaders are not at the top of the corporate ladder. If a team member takes a risk and makes a mistake, there could be repercussions from upper-level management. As a team leader, you have to make a decision if you are going to support your team or your managers.

If you want to build a safety net that promotes risk-taking, you have to support your team when things don’t go as planned. That will mean taking responsibility for your team’s mistakes (and giving credit to your team for their accomplishments) as well as supporting their actions to your own superiors.

There is a stark difference between supporting your team in their risks and dealing with misconduct. If a team member is consistently making mistakes, or their mistakes are due to carelessness rather than taking initiative, it may be time to reevaluate that person’s value to your team, or to consider some sort of punishment. A security net provides the foundation for your team to take risky initiatives, but it is not an excuse for poor behaviour.

Security net for you

Successful leaders take risks.

Whether you are a leader of a team or a leader among your peers, if you want to succeed, you need to be willing to take risks.

It is not easy to take risks; that’s why it’s called a risk. You need to be smart about your risk-taking, ensuring that you work with a high reward potential (more about his in another post).

When you have nothing to lose, taking a risk is not so hard; it is when you have everything to lose that risk-taking becomes difficult.

If you have children, you know that your life changes dramatically when you have another human being (or multiple human beings) who completely rely on you for their survival. If you don’t have kids, you’ll have to take my word for it. When my daughter was born, a sudden responsibility fell on my shoulders to provide for her. Such a responsibility can make risk-taking suddenly distasteful.

There are a lot of life changes, responsibilities, and other items that can scare you away from taking risks.

There is no perfect time to take a risk. There will always be something important at risk.

I talk a lot about vision on this blog, because I believe that vision is what sustains both a leader and a team. When it comes time to take a risk, your vision is what will propel you forward. If you do not have a strong vision, the risks will seem much more daunting than they actually are.

Even if you have the vision to pursue a dream and take a risk, you need to have a security net. I should be clear that I am not talking about planning to fail. Confidence is key when taking initiative in a risky business, and you should never enter into anything with the expectation of failure.

But let’s face it: if you take risks, eventually you will fail. It’s inevitable. Denzel Washington gave the graduation address at the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, and his entire speech was about failure and the importance of persistence. I am not suggesting that you have a fall-back plan; I’m suggesting that you have a safety net so that you can survive long enough to try again.

1. Save money. If you are taking risks that will put you in danger of not meeting your financial obligations, you need to make sure that you have money saved up. Dale Partridge of StartUpCamp.com writes an article about starting your own business. In it he says that you should have $1,000 saved for emergencies, plus a year’s worth of expenses already saved before you start a business. I don’t think that such a large amount of savings is feasible for most people, but financial security is important. If you are in a position where you can put money away into savings, do it.
2. Build a network. Life is hard enough without trying to do it alone. If you are in a leadership position that involves risk, you need to have a support network. This network can be friends, family, peers, colleagues, or mentors, but the point is that when things go wrong, you need to have someone(s) to go talk to. No, the team under your leadership does not count. You cannot go crying to your team; they are your team, not your peers. If you are a peer leader, find someone outside of your peer group. Find someone or some people who know you, respect you, and push you to be the best you can be.
3. Craft a vision. I’ve already touched on this. Your vision will drive you and carry you through the tough times. Craft a vision that is detailed and expansive. Dare to dream. I will be posting more about this in December.

Dynamic lessons

If you want someone to take risks, it is vital that you, as a leader, give them a security net. For your team, you need to allow them to make mistakes and foster an environment that does not punish failure and supports them in their initiative.

Successful leaders also take risks. In order to protect yourself from your risks, it is important that you create your own safety net. This net should include saving money for emergencies, building a network of people you can go to when you need help, and crafting a vision that will sustain you in the tough times.

Have you taken a risk and failed? What did you do to protect yourself? What do you wish you had done differently? As a leader, how do you provide a security net for your team?

Books that influenced this article:

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace

The post Risk and Empowerment: Lessons from a Safety Net appeared first on Great North Dynamics.

Leaders adapt to change.

We have all heard someone say that leaders adapt to change, but there is a huge disconnect between believing in adapting to change and actually going through with it. Adapting to change can be the hardest thing you have to deal with as a leader, especially if you have to lead other people through a change.

1. Don’t make it personal

When change happens, a good leader does not take it personally. Often, change is outside of our control. Something happened in the outside world that has affected the way you do your job. If the change is part of a bigger trend, either in your organization or in the larger world outside of your corporation, there is nothing you can do about it and you need to accept that the world is not out to get you.

In other circumstances, change might be completely within your control and you have had to make the choice to make a change in your organization or team. It might be a change to a structure or a process, but it heavily affects the way you do your job. Even if it is within your control, change can still be difficult. As a leader, even if it is a difficult choice, you still have to own it, but that does not mean you make it personal. If someone disagrees with your change, do not make it a personal vendetta. I will be talking more in a future post about how to win your team over on large-scale changes.

Sometimes change comes from someone in leadership over you. Whether a boss, manager, or Board of Directors, this leadership figure dictates a change that directly impacts you and your team. Regardless of whether this change has a positive or negative impact on you, remember again to not make it personal. Business decisions are rarely (and should never be) made based on personal feelings toward someone else. Your boss is not out to get you, so don’t think that he/she is.

In very rare instances, a change might be made that affects you that is, indeed, personal in nature. For example, you may get laid off simply because you have a personality clash with your supervisor, or you have an emotionally-unstable boss who has made a rash decision based on personal feelings rather than reason. This is so rare that if you think this has happened to, it probably hasn’t and you took a business decision far too personally. But, in the rare cases where this does happen, my advice is, again, don’t take it personally.

When you make change personal, you are building emotional walls and attachments that have no place in leadership. Emotional responses lead to people getting hurt. If you make a personal connection with changes occurring in your organization, not only do you risk hurting yourself, but you risk hurting your team. Yes, you should take ownership and buy into the mission and vision of your organization, but do not make changes personal.

2. Remember to breathe

Change often brings stress. After all, people are hard-wired to be cautious of change and to desire consistency and routine. There is security in familiarity, and when your security is threatened, you experience stress.

The most important thing you can do in a stressful situation is to take care of yourself.

Sometimes you just need to stop what you’re doing and focus on breathing. You need to deal with this stress before it burns you out. You have enough problems without adding mental health to the list.

I have written about mental health before and will continue to do so because your mental health is vitally important. You cannot be a leader if you cannot take care of yourself. Sometimes simple breathing exercises are enough to help you manage the stress. Sometimes you might need to seek professional help. The good news is that there are many options available to you in between breathing exercises and professional help.

3. Imagine the opportunities

It is easy to get stuck on the negatives when considering change. While this is a common conception, it is a narrow-minded view of change.

With change comes opportunity.

In a new environment, you will have new opportunities available to you. Consider the story of Andre De Grasse, Canadian Olympic sprinter and winner of two Olympic medals in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Before he became a world-class sprinter competing with the likes of Usain Bolt, De Grasse was a high school basketball guard in Markham, Ontario. In his final year of high school, his school was unable to put together a roster for a basketball team, so De Grasse’s senior basketball year vanished.

Without basketball, De Grasse ended up competing at a track meet, something he had never done before. He ran the 100 metre sprint in 10.90 seconds. His performance caught the attention of a professional sprint coach, and De Grasse’s whirlwind ride to the top of professional sprinting took off.

Change is inevitable. There will come a time in your career that something will happen that dramatically changes your situation, or even your career. Always remember that with change comes opportunity. Andre De Grasse would never have won two Olympic medals in 2016 if he had chosen to mope about his school’s lack of a basketball team. Instead he accepted the change and took advantage of a new opportunity. Today he is one of the world’s elite sprinters.

4. Maintain your vision

At the end of the day, your vision is what defines your success. Everything else can change, as long as your vision remains absolute.

The organization with which you work should have an overarching vision. Any changes made to organizational structure or processes should be made in order to better achieve the goals set out in the corporate vision. If you are bought into your organization’s vision, you need to frame these changes in a way that asks, “How will these changes help us achieve the goals set out in our vision?”

This can be a huge roadblock for some people. I have been in a situation where an organization I was working with went through a structural change that I did not support (this has happened to me several times, but I am thinking of one instance in particular). At the end of the day I had to get past my personal biases against the change and ask if these changes would help us better reach the goals we had set for ourselves. When I realized that the changes would have a positive impact on the vision, it was easier for me to accept and embrace the changes.

You should also have a personal vision for your own life, a place that you want to be with goals of how to get there. Ask yourself, “Will this new change have an effect on my personal vision?” If the change provides new opportunities, it may even help your personal vision.

There is still the possibility that this change will have a negative impact on either the corporate vision or your personal vision.

If the changes affecting your organization do not harmonize with the corporate vision, you should expect your organization to face an identity crisis in the near future.

This is an issue that needs to be addressed by the leadership, either in amending the corporate vision or removing the change. If you are not in a decision-making capacity, it is still your responsibility as a leader to express your concerns to someone who does have the authority to make these decisions.

If corporate leadership decides to not address the issue, your corporate identity and vision could be in jeopardy. At that point it is up to you to decide if you want to continue working with the organization.

In situations where your personal vision conflicts with the new corporate policies/environment, you face a similar crisis. It is up to you to decide if you want to compromise your vision, change your vision, or leave the organization.

There are times, too, when your vision must change. For Andre De Grasse, he had to change his vision from basketball to sprinting. Even Walt Disney changed his vision several times; he began with cartoon shorts, which evolved into cartoon feature films, which eventually evolved into designing and building his own theme parks.

As long as you remain true to yourself, your vision can change.

Just remember that changing your vision will take a lot of work and a lot of soul-searching.

If you are in charge of a corporate vision, then there may be certain situations where your corporate vision must be altered to accommodate a new situation. Once again, such a change should only take place if it is in the best interest of the organization and if it maintains the spirit of the corporate vision.

Dynamics Lessons

In conclusion, I presented four ways that strong leaders adapt to change:

1. Don’t make it personal. The world doesn’t have it out for you, so don’t act like a victim.
2. Remember to breathe. Take care of yourself and your mental health.
3. Imagine the opportunities. With changes come new opportunities. Don’t miss out on them just because you were focused on the changes.
4. Keep your eyes on the vision. At the end of the day, your vision is what sustains you. The changes you are facing could have a positive, neutral, or negative effect on your vision. If you have to change your vision, make sure that you remain true to yourself (or your organization).

Have you had to adapt to a massive shift in corporate culture, environment, or processes? How did you deal with it?

Books that influenced this article:

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell

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