Fear, anger, pain. In certain cases, they can start an action. Yet, you need to leave them behind as soon as your action crystallizes and takes a concrete shape.
If you fail to do it, you’ll soon find yourself projecting that initial, important emotion on every body and every thing around you. You will burn down bridges, forgo opportunities, isolate in your own narrative.
Remember fear, anger and pain, but leave them behind as soon as you can.
The change you are seeking demands it.
To be a leader, in life and at work, you need to let go.
Let go of schedules and outcomes, experience and opinions, details and plans. Let go of control. Let go of yourself. Let go of your definition of reality. Let go of your certainties.
If you cling to any of these, being a leader is going to be much more difficult. And eventually you will be the one regretting it the most.
When somebody attacks you on some of the features that define you (your work, your values, your reputation), all you can do is continue nurturing those very same features.
Going head-to-head can be fascinating in a sense. Demolishing the attacker’s argument, pointing out all the good that you have done, bringing people onboard to testify on that goodness, providing evidence that what you say is correct. Fascinating, and costly. And eventually it will most likely play in the hands of your opposer.
You are in it for the long term, not for the next news cycle. Work, values, reputation are built over time. Let others craft and enjoy the hourly commentary, the back-and-forth, the speculation, as it will be soon gone.
You, on the other hand, are here to stay.
As it often happens with complex issues, even the discourse around the current pandemic has been shrinked to a binary matter: economy vs (public) health.
And of course, as with any complex issue, there is much more to take into consideration. There is the problem of parents who are taking care of their kids full-time while also working. There is the problem of foreign students who can’t support themselves for the lack of part-time and seasonal jobs. There is the effect of high level of stress and anxiety on the general well-being, that clearly mostly affects those who already face difficulties in a normal situation (and not only in the US).
If we want to move past (and forward) this serious situation, picking a side is probably not the wisest thing to do right now. Let’s stay in the middle instead, let’s listen to and appreciate the various stories that are emerging, and let’s together envision a future where greys are not squeezed for the sake of polarization.
Companies are about to send a signal to Facebook. But a signal, as strong as it can be, is stuck in a single moment in time. What about when July is over? Losing 1% of ad revenue for one month is not going to change the way Facebook carries out its business.
So, what is next?
You've got this 