On Friday, I had a conversation with a good friend who’s going to retire soon.
She’s waiting, but not in the way you might expect.
I’m curious how you’d answer this question:
Do good leaders wait?
My friend is.
But she’s not waiting like some people do when they’re near that retirement date they’ve been working toward and eagerly anticipating for years or even decades.
She’s waiting like a leader waits.
Here’s why her example was encouraging to me, and I hope to you as well.
My Waiting
My life seems to be filled and overflowing with waiting.
In my coaching business, I’m waiting on several things:
- The next conversation with the founders of a mission-driven business doing incredibly meaningful work that’s impacting thousands of lives across the region. The opportunity to get started supporting them can’t come soon enough.
- Filling the remaining few spots for my next Clarity Accelerator Group Coaching Program™ cohort. I’m eager to discover who’s the right fit and ready to get started.
- A change in attitude from a leader’s boss. This leader was just about to schedule me to do a Leadership Team Clarity Intensive™ with his team when his supervisor told him to wait because the timing wasn’t right.
So, I’m waiting.
Kiersten and I are waiting on several things in our Pemberley Woolworks business and our personal life too.
We’re waiting on:
- Upcoming homeschool conventions where we’ll be selling our Beast to Blanket curriculum to educators who want a meaningful, fun, transformative Fiber Arts course for their kids.
- Lucy, our very pregnant Babydoll sheep, to finally have her lamb (or lambs?). Much of this waiting has occurred in the wee hours of the morning sitting in the lambing jug of the barn. Kiersten and I are ready to sleep in our bed again!
- Our house in Wichita to sell so we can complete the transition back to the tiny southeastern Kansas town I grew up in.
More waiting for me.
How about you?
What are you waiting on in your business and your life?
Perhaps you’re waiting on:
- Your promising team member to develop. You know she can do so much more than she’s demonstrated so far and you can’t wait for her to show others, and herself, what you’re convinced she can do.
- Your special project to finally be finished. You and your team have been pouring yourself into this effort for months and you’re not quite to the finish line.
- That new role you’ve applied for. You interviewed last week and you still haven’t heard back from the recruiter.
So, like me, you wait.
And, as you’re waiting, you may be struggling.
Because you’ve been taught that good leaders don’t wait.
They act.
I disagree. Sort of.
How The Best Leaders Wait
I agree that leaders shouldn’t just wait in a passive sort of way.
We shouldn’t sit and do nothing.
The best leaders know how to actively wait.
They don’t act when it’s not beneficial.
They don’t succumb to the temptation to generate activity that doesn’t lead to progress but makes them feel better about themselves.
They fight the inner voice that says, “Do something! Anything!” because they feel like being still and waiting is what lazy people do.
If this hits home with you, I want to encourage you to consider how waiting is the mark not of a lazy, overly passive person, but of a great leader.
Waiting Isn’t Always Comfortable
My thoughts about this have been ruminating for several weeks.
I’m thinking about this partially because of all the circumstances I described earlier. But a couple of other events nudged me to reconsider how I was viewing myself during this particular phase of life and leadership in general.
To be honest, I’m not very comfortable when I’m waiting.
I almost always feel like I need to take more action.
I need to change the situation. Control the outcome. Get results. Sooner instead of later. As in RIGHT NOW!
So, the message from our pastor a few weeks ago got my attention.
He was preaching from chapter 49 in the book of Isaiah and he summarized his message with this point:
“Faith waits.”
That message was clear and direct for me.
I wrote that down.
Fast forward back to my conversation this week with my soon-to-be-retiring friend.
How One Great Leader is Waiting
My friend who’s waiting for her retirement isn’t passively waiting.
While she can tell you the exact number of days until she takes her already stellar golf game to the next level, she’s not just putting in her time.
For you to better understand why her example is so influential to me, and I trust to you, let me tell you a bit more about her.
- She’s led multiple billion-dollar businesses.
- She’s built teams that perform well while deeply caring about one another.
- She’s universally respected in the manufacturing industry as a person and a leader.
And she’s one of the most humble, down-to-earth people you’ll ever meet.
I’ve had the privilege to work with and for her and have seen her consistently apply her leadership approach of “humility and humanity” in some terribly difficult situations.
In other words, my friend is a great leader.
So how is she waiting for her retirement?
I asked her what her most important goal was now and here’s what she told me.
She’s helping her boss and the rest of the organization prepare for her departure.
She’s actively waiting by:
- Partnering with the Chief Human Resources Officer to start recruiting.
- Writing the job description that will be used to hire her replacement.
- Keeping her supervisor on track so he’s prepared for her last day.
We talked about many other activities she’s involved in and different types of work she’s doing too.
This woman is busy, investing her time and energy strategically while she waits.
As I reflected on our conversation, I thought of several lessons I can learn from what my friend is doing as she waits.
3 Lessons on Waiting Like a Leader
Here are a few that came to my mind.
1. The best leaders recognize and embrace this reality: We can’t control everything.
So we need to clearly identify those things so we don’t get frustrated and invest effort to change what isn’t under our control.
My friend’s specific retirement date was based on factors outside of her control. She wasn’t letting this reality frustrate her.
For me, I can’t force Lucy to have her lambs when I want her to have them. Or cause the right buyer to make us an offer on our house.
What things are outside of your control in the situations in which you find yourself waiting?
2. The best leaders are active, not passive when we wait.
As my friend exemplified, waiting does not mean doing nothing.
My friend was fully aware of what she couldn’t influence. But she was also clear about what she could impact.
“Control what you can control.” is a phrase every leader should lock into our mind.
There is almost always some action we can take to drive progress even when we’re waiting.
While you’re waiting for your direct report with so much potential to mature and develop, what steps might you take to accelerate her progress?
You can’t compress your supplier’s delivery time for the equipment that’s the long lead time item on your project’s critical path. You know because you’ve asked multiple times! But, how might you help your team be better prepared to act when the machine finally does arrive in your facility?
You can’t make the recruiter call you but would it be appropriate to call them again to check on the status of the hiring process?
3. The best leaders look for ways to serve others, even when we’re waiting.
My friend was investing her time to make her coworkers’ jobs and lives easier. Both while she was with the company and after she’s gone.
I’m continuing to look for ways I can support the leader who wanted to hire me now to help him “work on his leadership” but instead has to wait for his boss’s approval. I want to find ways to support him as we wait together.
As you’re waiting, what opportunities do you have to serve your supervisor, your peers, and those who report to you?
An Encouragement if You’re Waiting
I’ll close with what I hope is an encouragement to you.
If you’re a leader and you find yourself waiting, you’re not doing something wrong.
And you’re not alone.
My friend who I consider to be a great leader is waiting.
I’m waiting.
Like you.
Leaders wait.
Helping you lead with clarity and confidence,
Greg
P.S. Do you find yourself waiting? If so, I’d be glad to help you think it through.
I offer a 45-minute Clarity Coaching conversation at no cost where we can talk about what you’re facing and identify your next step.
If that would be helpful, you can schedule a time here.
If you’d like to see any of my previous newsletter issues, you can find them here along with other articles. And, if you’re not getting my weekly newsletter and would like to, just enter your info here.
Greg Harrod
Greg Harrod is a Business Coach and Strategic Communications Partner. Follow GregHarrod.com to learn how you can build clear communication, aligned teams, and simple rhythms so your business runs smoothly. Greg will help you learn how to go from daily firefighting to calm, confident leadership by sharing his 30+ years of experience leading teams and businesses.
A quick note about affiliates
Some of the pages on my website contain affiliate links to products, apps, and services. If you click through and purchase, I may receive a commission on the sale and you pay no more. My policy is to only affiliate with products and services that I believe will provide value to you.