How to Choose Your “Hard” Wisely with 3 Steps

If you were in the United States last week, you were likely impacted by the winter storm that passed through the country.
Here in southcentral Kansas, we got a fair amount of snow and a whole lot of cold.

My wife, Kiersten, and I were already right in the middle of more than a few major life changes when the intense cold piled on some additional challenges.

We had some heating issues at our new (and very, very old) house.
And two dogs who were more than a little stir crazy without their normal walks.
Along with the extra work that goes with caring for sheep, donkeys, and chickens in the winter.

We had difficulty, struggle, and discomfort. And even a little conflict.

It wasn’t terrible compared to what many people go through.

But it was real and it was hard.

Leading People Can Be Hard

If you’re leading people, you’re going through challenges too.

They’re real and they’re hard.

You’re probably experiencing discomfort and maybe even conflict within yourself and with your team.

I want to share what I realized as I was sitting in my home office shivering in multiple layers of clothing and a stocking hat.

Because I think it may help you reframe your situation and adjust your mindset.

What I realized was this.

Kiersten and I had intentionally made decisions based on what we value most.
And those decisions have consequences, some of which are unpleasant.

For all of us, everything we do involves some level of “hard.”

So, we need to choose our “hard” wisely.

Choose Your Hard Wisely

This idea isn’t original to me, and I wish I could remember who I learned this phrase from so I could give them the credit.

I can’t, but whoever it was, their words stuck:

“Choose your hard wisely.”

But how do you go about doing this?

Here are three steps that I’ve found useful.

3 Steps to Choose Your Hard Wisely

Choosing the “hard” we are willing to endure requires us to do three things.

We need to:

1. Decide what we truly value
2. Think about what your “hard” is going to look like
3. Establish a foundation for communication with your team

Let’s work through each of these.

1. Decide what you truly value

When you’re going through hard things, you’re only going to be able to persevere if you know the outcome is worth it.
To you.

Not to someone else but to you.

Because you are the person who is going to be experiencing whatever makes this “hard” hard for you.
Not them.

Your discomfort (or pain depending on how hard your hard is) may be physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, or likely a combination of all these.

In his outstanding book, The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier calls this question, “The Foundation Question”:

“What do you want?”

If you take it seriously, this can be an extremely difficult question to answer .

In fact, I would modify the question slightly to make it even more powerful (and more difficult):

“What do you REALLY want?”

Down deep below the things you kind of want, what are you actually willing to suffer for.

Coming up with an answer you can stand behind requires you to do some deep thinking. It takes time to self-reflect and get clear on what you value.

It’s a very personal question. One that only you can answer for you.

Depending on how you’re wired and how you were raised, answering this question honestly might feel selfish.

But it’s important to be convinced, even convicted, of what you truly value when you’re choosing your “hard.”

Another phrase I use often without knowing the source is this one.

“Don’t doubt in the dark what you decided in the light.”

The “hard” you choose will inevitably involve some dark times. So, you want to make sure you value what you’re striving to achieve enough to go through the tough times to come.

The “deciding in the light” part of that quote leads us to the second step in choosing our “hard” wisely.

2. Think about what your “hard” is going to look like

While you can’t predict the future, you can apply your past experience and critical thinking to consider what the “hard” you are choosing is going to demand of you.

Based on my lessons learned the hard way, you’re going to want to do that at the very beginning.

I’m a planner and risk mitigator by nature and by training. So you’d think I’d never miss this step.

But that’s not always the case.

I’m often tempted to ignore the realities that are necessarily tied to the things I say I value.

And this temptation is the greatest when I’m most excited about what I value.

I don’t want to admit that achieving my goal is going to be difficult. So, I tell myself a story about the good parts. About how rewarding and fun it will be. While failing to acknowledge that other parts of the journey I’m about to embark on are going to downright suck.

I don’t want to bother myself with the realities of the situation and fog up my rose colored glasses.

But that’s not wise.

The person I consider to be the source of all wisdom, Jesus, was talking to a group of people who were following along with him.

In a way, he was encouraging them to choose their “hard” wisely and he said this,

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.”

As leaders, we’re smart to follow this guidance too.

For instance, if we decide we truly value helping our people develop and mature, it’s smart for us to think through what difficulties are going to come with that work.

People who haven’t fully developed and matured (in other words, all of us) are going to be messy and challenging. They are going to challenge our patience at times.

It’s wise for us to brace ourselves for that reality so we don’t let the difficulties people naturally bring with them as humans sneak up and us and smack us unexpectedly.

Counting the cost of achieving what we truly value will improve our chances of getting what we want the most.

These first two steps can be taken on our own. But the third step can’t be done solo.

You have to do this with your team.

3. Establish a foundation for communication with your team

As a leader, you’re always working with a team. This may be just your direct reports, or it may be your entire organization.

So even if your “hard” you’ve chosen and prepared for isn’t shared by your team, they’re going to be impacted by you.

I’m going to go back to the experience Kiersten and I had last week to explain what I mean.

We had agreed upon what we valued most.

My dad passed away last September. So, we decided to move back to my very small hometown of Howard, Kansas to spend more time with my family, live a more rural lifestyle, and be in a better position to support my mom. She’s in very good health but we want to make the most of every day we have with her because she’s an amazing woman.

Kiersten and I both decided that these were things we truly valued.

Along with the many blessings we knew we would be gaining, we counted the costs as best we could.

• Financial changes.
• A career change for me.
• Downsizing our living arrangements.
• Adjustments to our social and community relationships.

We took the first two steps of choosing our “hard”.

Thankfully, we also started the third step much earlier. It’s a good thing we did, because this step is typically a very long one.

We started establishing a foundation for communication in our pre-marital counseling.

And we’ve been working on strengthening this area of our marriage for over two years now.

When the hard things in the situation we had intentionally chosen began to appear, we relied upon communication to keep moving forward.

In our case, the cold was causing us physical stress.
Being cramped into the one small room we were trying to keep warm was creating friction.
Wondering if we were doing enough to keep the new sheep safe at the barn added extra emotional weight to both of us.

We both felt the impact of these things and it was hard.

Instead of woefully asking ourselves, “Is this all worth it?” (which I have to admit I have done in situations like this in the past), we reminded each other of what we value.

We openly talked about how we were feeling. We shared our frustrations and our fears.

The time we took to pause and communicate connected and grounded us and helped us persevere through a couple of difficult days that were a part of the “hard” we intentionally chose.

Now I recognize that the relationship you have with the people on your team is not the same as that between a husband and a wife.

But the principle still applies.

If you haven’t already started taking this step of building a strong foundation of communication with your team, I encourage you to get started as soon as you can.

When the challenges of the “hard” you’ve chosen emerge, you’ll be more prepared to support your team and let them support you.

This brings us to an important question.

What “Hard” Will You Choose?

We’re all faced with decision points in our lives. Those times when it’s obvious we have a choice in front of us.

We can either choose to stay on the easier, more comfortable path we’re already on.
(And, to those 80’s rock fans of my generation, just like you, I do hear the Rush lyrics in my head right now.)

Or, we can choose a “hard.”

Our “hard”.

Based on what we truly value and after carefully counting the cost.

If you’re facing a choice like this today, I hope you find these steps helpful.

And if you’d like a sounding board to help you think through your situation, let me know.

That’s a big part of what I do in my Complimentary Clarity Coaching Sessions and through my other coaching services.

Or shoot me a reply to this email. I read them all.

Helping you lead with clarity and confidence,

Greg

P.S. Last week on LinkedIn I talked about “word salad”, the leadership advice I got from an old horse rancher in Iowa, and the shocking customer service experience I had with my new internet provider. If we’re not already connected on LinkedIn, just reply to this email with the word “LinkedIn” and I’ll send you a connection request to save you some time.

P.P.S If you’re interested in seeing our sheep I mentioned, you can check out this article Kiersten wrote recently. You’ll see there’s more than a few leadership lessons I’m learning through our newbie farmer experiences with Mr. Bingley the ram and our baby doll ewes!

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