The greatest obstacle to launching isn’t the competition, lack of resources or strategy. The greatest obstacle to launching is you.
That’s the bad news. On the other hand, it’s good news: the greatest advantage to your launch can be you. The better you understand you the better you will launch, and sustain the launch.
Leaders who are more emotionally aware will always outpace those who aren’t. Every time a leader walks into the room they bring their leadership climate with them. Every leader (and every person) has an emotional climate. Just in the way that a weather climate dictates the forecast, a leader’s emotional climate dictates the their team’s forecast. As my friend Tim Elmore says, the leader is the thermostat, they set the temperature. And the team is the thermometer, they reflect the climate.
A pleasant and warm climate helps produce effective results while an icy climate produces cold, fragmented results.
Leaders bring their emotional climate into the office or team settings, but often they are the only ones who don’t feel it. This is why we all need to do the hard work of understanding and discovering what kind of leadership climate we have.
The single most effective way I have discovered in determining this is by asking this powerful, challenging and courageous question:
What’s it like to be on the other side of me?
This question requires courage because the answers will come in three areas:
- You will find some surprising information about you.
- You will find some encouraging information about you.
- And you will get your feelings hurt.
And yet, if you have the courage to pursue the answers it will help you work on your leadership climate. Your leadership climate dictates the forecast. To get a better forecast, you need to work on a better climate.