Life and leadership outside your comfort zone 

First and foremost, you need to change your mindset about challenging situations. This means taking the time to recognize the potential that difficult and uncomfortable situations have to teach you about yourself, your areas of strength and areas where you could be stronger.

A key to changing your mindset is shifting how you regard criticisms. Reframe them from being negative to being constructive.

Earlier in this article, I intentionally used the term “criticism” for a purpose. Did you cringe when reading the word? Or were you thinking that you, as a leader, should not view criticism as negative but rather as useful feedback?

If you thought the latter, congratulations! This demonstrates a desirable level of leadership maturity.

If not, no worries. We’re all on the journey of developing our leadership maturity, and this is an indication you have more leadership power within you to unleash.  

Another step to building leadership maturity is to examine and find the value in earlier experiences.

Think about a leadership experience that involved stress, discomfort and adversity. For example, perhaps you had an important team conversation that went astray and produced undesirable consequences. Maybe you led an interdepartmental meeting that did not go the way you intended and left your team frustrated.

Using that scenario, follow these steps: Describe the situation in writing, using complete sentences. Be as specific and detailed as possible. Use the written description to answer these questions in this exact order. Keep the focus on yourself, not the other people involved.

1. What was the specific unintended result you got from that situation? For example, “My team walked away feeling resentful.”
2. What specific behavior did you engage in that contributed to that result? For example, “I got defensive in the meeting and said some things I now regret.”
3. What emotions were you experiencing that led to that behavior? For example, “I was feeling angry and frustrated.”
4. What is your belief that created those emotions? For example, “I believed my team was not accepting my great ideas.”
5. Focusing on the belief you had, what is at least one alternative belief that places the responsibility for what happened directly on you? For example, “My team had ideas of their own I didn’t fully listen to and consider.”
   This is one of the hardest and most uncomfortable parts of developing a high level of leadership maturity. Shifting the responsibility for negative outcomes from others to yourself is critical not only because your job, as a leader, is to create a positive outcome, but also because your actions are the only ones you can control.
6. By answering the above questions, what have you learned about yourself that can prevent you from being an effective leader? For example, “I don’t listen to others as well as I should. They also have great ideas.”
7. How could your leadership maturity (i.e., “how to be”) improve by adjusting this aspect of yourself? What could you change about yourself that would help you as a leader? For example, “Become a better listener so I hear ideas that are different from my own.”

After completing the last of the seven questions, reflect on and analyze your answers. Were you:

• Too assertive?
• Too accommodating?
• Too analytical? 

In the “for example” responses above, that leader was being too assertive in the situation she’s looking back on. By not listening to others’ ideas, she comes off as autocratic to her team, and they may often feel resentful toward her. 

Leaders may be too assertive in one challenging situation, too accommodating in another and too analytical in yet another. However, almost all leaders have at least one problematic tendency they exhibit frequently at times when they are pushed out of their comfort zones.

The irony is that when this happens, leaders can react in ways that sabotage their own efforts to be successful. Thus, I refer to them as self-sabotaging patterns.

Comparing the typical beliefs the patterns begin with, the emotions those beliefs evoke and the self-sabotaging behaviors those emotions cause is a way to recognize them in yourself. Just being aware of your self-sabotaging tendencies by determining your most probable pattern will help you reduce them.

For an even greater impact, you need to develop strategies for avoiding those self-sabotaging behaviors. As you do this, don’t expect your negative emotions to totally disappear. Rather, you’ll find yourself managing those uncomfortable emotions differently and using them as guideposts to better manage your actions as a leader.