How do Leaders Live With This? Challenge #75)

The great thing about summer for many library and educational leaders is that we finally have some time to think.

That’s also the worst thing about Summer. We finally have some time to think.

Time to think about being overworked and underpaid.

Time to think about the petty office dramas that take way too much energy relative to their importance. 

Time to think about the bosses and board members and politicians who are making our jobs harder or using our teams as target practice.

Time to think about how tired we are of all the nonsense that comes with being a leader in 2023.

And time to ask ourselves the question that haunts the quiet moments of our days and creeps in as we drift off to sleep:

How do I Live with this? And if that’s what it takes, do I even still want to?

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Welcome to the Kind Leadership Challenge, the podcast that empowers leaders to heal their organizations in ten minutes! I’m Dr. Sarah Clark, founder of the Kind Leadership Guild, where I use my PhD in Higher ed leadership and nearly 2 decades of experience in academic libraries to coach a community of educational and library leaders who are working to build a better world without burning out. 

In our unique and imperfect ways, kind leaders make tough decisions without becoming jerks. We create impactful and burnout-proof systems for our organizations. And we know that once we stop controlling and start collaborating, even the most ambitious vision can become effortless. Kind Leadership’s pretty simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. So if you’re up for a challenge, stick around as I teach you how to create a resilient, thriving legacy that will strengthen your community long after you’re gone.

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There are several reasons I talk about the goal of kind leadership as a shift from controlling to healing. But the most obvious reason is the one most of us hate to admit. We as leaders, have way less control than we’d like. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that all we can ever truly control is our response to a situation, and even that little bit of power is shaky some days when you’re fighting a powerful urge to throw stuff against the wall and tell someone exactly what you think of their nonsense. 

The vast majority of problems I hear kind leaders discuss in my 1:1 coaching sessions or in the Kind Leadership Guild meetings come back to other people, who are exhibiting behaviors we wish would change. However, whether it’s resistance to change, temper issues, learned helplessness, or good old fashioned passive aggression, leaders can’t make people change. You can use coaching and consequences to potentially influence people who are behaving in a manner that’s an obstacle to your goals for yourself, your team, or your community. But you cannot actually make people do what you want or need them to do. So, how do we as leaders come to, as the serenity prayer says, accept the things—or in this case people—that we cannot control? Let’s look at the issue through the three skills of kind leadership—growing humanely, managing effectively, and creating collaboratively.

First things first, we grow humanely by processing our emotions about a problem, and identifying how that problem violates our own personal values. In so doing, you can clarify your ideal goal or solution for the problem. One of my personal pet peeves is when people complain about a situation but make no attempts to do the things that are in their control to change it. When I have to deal with people who are in that stuck headspace, I get a lot of emotions—anger, disgust, and frustration are common. SO I process those emotions by writing them out or venting to a trusted advisor, or maybe just finding a quiet spot for a good ol’ fashioned primal scream or three. Once I’ve done that, I can hone in on the personal value that is being threatened by this other person’s complaining, which for me is the belief that we have an obligation for taking responsibility for anything that is within our control, but to do that, we need to be as disciplined as possible about letting go of things that are beyond our control. And once I’m calm enough to think and clear enough on my values, the desired outcome is clear—to end the frustration around my complaining colleague, ideally by guiding them to take another path, but if necessary to set some boundaries lest I get caught in the same trap of endlessly complaining about THEM.    

So growing humanely helps me get clear on what I’m going to try to do. Managing effectively is about the how. The first order of business is to gather information about the situation, so I can check the unarguable facts about the situation against the story I’ve created to interpret those facts, to ensure that the problem exists and the solution matches it. Then, I get real honest about how much time, energy, and other resources I can devote to coaching this colleague, and where I have to draw the line. Once that’s all done, I can make a plan for influencing the things I can control. First, I will try to coach my colleague into shifting from comfort to solutions, and if that’s not possible, I will create more distance for my own good.

When shifting to the third kind leadership skill of creating collaboratively to find a solution to this complaining colleague, you might find yourself remembering Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke’s famous saying that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. That’s true in kind leadership too, though I would soften this truth to say that all plans evolve when you learn more about others perspectives. Because here is where you take a honest look at your workplace culture to see why your colleague’s complaining might be an understandable reaction to your situation, and to make any needed changes to that culture to make healthier reactions more possible. You will also talk to other trusted advisors about your plan, to make sure you’re on the right path. And then and only then will you talk to your colleague, compassionately get their side of the story, and move forward toward a vision of collaboration that works for both of you and for the community you serve.   

At least that’s the ideal way these things work. But there is always a possibility—and sometimes a probability—that you will do everything in your control to change a situation, and it won’t be enough. Or the person who is frustrating you doesn’t want to change their behavior. And that’s when you need to shift from asking the question how can I live with this, to, should I keep on living with this?

Because There is one final thing that you can always choose—to leave a work situation that is causing you more harm than good. I’ve done it a time or two, and I’ve seriously considered it even more times. Sometimes it takes planning, or time to resolve other challenges in your life to make it financially or logistically feasible, but nothing truly has to last forever. There is always an option to leave. And that decision to leave a toxic situation beyond your control can be tackled like any other leadership problem. Get clear on what you want, marshal your resources to make a plan, and connect with other people to make it a reality. 

So if you cannot live with your situation but feel as though you are supposed to stay, let me give you a permission slip. You are allowed to leave your job. You are allowed to leave leadership. You are even allowed to leave education or libraries completely. Those decisions do not make you a bad person or an unkind person. If you do not decide to do what you can to heal yourself, you are never going to attain your full potential to help others heal. As of now I have decided that the benefits of what I do in the world outweigh the drawbacks.  Will that change down the road? Who knows? But at least on my good days I do know my worth, and what I am and am not willing to put up with on the road to making the change in the world I’d like to create. 

And that’s my challenge for you this week. What’s an obstacle that stands between you and the better world you with to create? What ways to remove that obstacle are within your control, and what is not. And if the obstacle doesn’t change, when do you move on, and what might that moving on look like?

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Thanks as always for listening to the kind leadership challenge. Before you go, here’s a quick way you can spread the word of kind leadership. I’d like you to take a moment to think of one friend or colleague who could most benefit from this week’s challenge. Got their name in your head? Good. Open your app or head over to kindleadershipchallenge.com/75 and share this episode with them. Add a friendly note as well. Never doubt that day by day, you’re building a better world, even if you can't see it yet. So until next time, stay kind now.