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| Pressure Is Part Of The Leadership Picture |
Owners somehow believe in fairy tales which they quietly convince themselves will not hurt the outcomes of their business results. So they cheat. They cheat to win. The fairy tales convince them that they can win by cheating and escape the consequences. They walk across the value lines and begin to perform the things that increase the pressure they feel from the business models they manage. Eventually, the owners are convinced that this is the only way success will appear. They look around at the competition and believe in the fairy tales that the victories landing on the porch of the competition are producing healthy results. Looks can be very deceiving. The real truth remains, your competition is suffering right along beside you. Quit teasing yourself.
Pressure is everywhere because integrity is missing. If Albert Einstein was to write on a chalk board the perfect equation for pressure he would coin this phrase, "Increased Cheating + Increased Lying x Denial = Increased Pressure."
Pressure will increase. Sometimes the owner is tougher than expected so the pressure will arrive much later, but it will come and it will increase once it arrives. This effect is not a fairy tale. It is real. It is certain. It is an absolute. If your business model is cheating, lying, deceiving, denying, manipulating, equivocating, prevaricating, compromising its values or practicing deception to find its victories; your model will bring home to you some very nice packages of increased pressure. They might not be on your front porch just yet, but they are coming. Get ready to open them and be prepared to deal with them when they arrive. You will not escape their delivery. The wrath of your works is certain to arrive. The guilty ones usually do not read this far. They have already jumped ship on this subject. Too bad for them. There are ways to correct this mess and re-direct their business models into something that produces better levels of magical success.
Success is a magical result. It comes to those who earn it. It comes to those who deliver the right stuff at the right time with the right approach. It comes in magical ways, too. It shows up in the "B" bank, not the "A" bank. We tend to design our business work to aim at receiving our victories in the "A" bank. We learn how to do the right stuff. We learn how to pay the right price. We learn how to endure the tough stuff. Then we hope to produce and receive the "A" results. We work hard on our business models to do the right things in the right ways trying to deliver this type of work as often as we can endure and afford. In doing so, we expect to receive our just rewards. We believe we have earned those just rewards. When those rewards are delayed well past when they should have arrived, we get discouraged. Once discouraged enough, we begin to alter how we do our work. We move and modify where the lines of integrity once stood. We justify cheating.
Let me define cheating. We feel increased pressure from the poor performance our business model has experienced during the past two years of operations. The pressure to manage in such a negative economic environment has caused us to lose some of the spirit we used to have in the better times. The lost spirit has eroded our sense of balance and we feel more discouraged about what we need to do next. As a result, we get overwhelmed with the pressure we must deal with and begin to cheat. We justify going home, away from our work, more earlier each day. Instead of working a full daily schedule like we used to do, we cut out early once in awhile to relieve the pressure we are feeling. We cheat and leave the pressure in the business to be managed by the employees we hired to handle them. We work harder to escape how that pressure makes us feel. We dislike it enough to make us cheat so we escape that responsibility and pass it on to someone less deserving. We escape by giving it away. The picture is wrong because we still expect an "A" bank result. Leaders, it does not work that way. Quit doing that silly move. It is a lie. It is a fairy tale. Success will not come to your business in this fashion. You need to buck up and learn how to continue to manage your business model right smack dab in the fire. Do not develop the habit of cutting out early because the pressure is getting to high. You are the leader, that is exactly what good leaders do well. They walk right into the fire to find out what they can do to put it out. Quit cheating yourself by escaping your leadership duties. Your business results are aware of this truth. The results know the truth. Lie all you want about this one, the truth still remains the same.
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| Pressure Will Squirt Out When It Gets Squeezed |
I have had times when my efforts were well above the required mark to produce a good level of success. Yet success results were not coming in like they should be arriving. It was frustrating to witness low results for such a great risk and effort. The work was clean, hard fought in the effort and well managed to produce something well above what finally came in. It can be very disappointing. I cannot tell you how many times this effect has come true in my business career. Get used to it. It is part of the battle. It is part of the price. Sometimes the applied effort outruns the "A" bank reward for that effort. Sometimes the reward does not come in the "A" bank form.
Just about the time I could not produce enough success results to gain what I thought was a worthwhile gain, a surprise college scholarship shows up for one of my daughters that none of us applied for and pays for one year of her scholastic efforts. A $10,000 obligation just magically disappeared from our life requirements. This is what I call a "B" bank reward. Maybe the revenues did not show up in the "A" bank as expected. Instead, the reward came home in the "B" bank form. It found its way in through the back door. We discovered later how a professor applied for that scholarship in her name because he felt she was the most deserving in his class. What a great surprise. What a great gift. What a timely reward. The "B" bank payments in life are real. They come because they have been earned. They also come because they were not expected. This is one of the great mysteries to success.
When we do our work looking for the "B" bank surprises, they never show up. They do not work that way. This is one of the great mysteries to success. Many owners do not understand this effect. They may also believe it is not true. Shame on them. They are dead wrong.
Pressure is part of what great leaders do. Great leaders manage pressure well. If they manage their pressure well enough, good results will eventually appear. It is part of the laws of compensation. Those laws work just like gravity. They are real and they are consistent. Those laws also deliver exactly what they promise. The delivery may come in the "B" bank instead of the "A" bank sometimes, but the just rewards will land as they are justly earned. Once a leader 'gets this' they can begin the work to manage the pressures they must endure.
No great leader performs their success tasks without the sidecar of pressure running near the path they manage. Pressure is part of the deal. It comes with the job of leadership. It is unavoidable. The trick is to learn how to mange the pressures that arrive. The best way to help someone to successfully manage pressure is to make sure they remain on the 'clean' side of the decision-making process. The cleaner the management, the lower the pressure. It is a simple law. If a leader wants to reduce pressure, they can do one of two things. They can get out of the leadership game or they can clean up the integrity of the decisions they are making. Those are the only two successful ways to reduce the pressures of the leadership game. I am sure nobody ever placed these two truths on the table this clearly. To reduce leadership pressure, get out or get clean. All else is futile.
One more thing about "B" bank payments of reward. They usually come in a form that is "non-taxed!" They usually come in ways that would require greater incomes to produce than what they delivered in reward. How much money would I need to earn to pay for $10,000 of college school expenses? I like "B" bank payments of success, they offer double rewards! They not only take care of something that needed capital to occur, but hey come in higher value than I would otherwise need to produce. The "B" bank rewards of life are double the reward. They come home with more value than I could have purchased. I like them better.
Once you determine you will operate cleanly, without fear of failure, with strong lines of integrity respected you have placed yourself on the path to success. If success does not arrive in the "A" bank, keep up the good work. Your "B" bank is storing up well, you just might not be able to see it yet. Stay the proper course. Rub against the urge to cheat a little bit. Every time you cheat, the "B" bank disappears. All you have remaining is the "A" bank and it will not always produce what you expect it to deliver. I prefer to reduce my leadership pressure by keeping the "B" bank alive and well. Sometimes it comes in handy!
Until next time...
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