For the past couple of days, we’ve had really strong winds in Southern England. As a runner, I have noticed.
As a population, we spend so much time in the protection of our offices, homes or cars, we aren’t always aware of the changes in weather. But in the past few days, we’ve had gusts strong enough to rattle the car when you’re driving on an exposed part of the motorway. Winds this strong are hard to miss, so you can imagine that running in them isn’t easy.
On the first day of this weather, I came back from a run exhausted and discouraged. I had gone out to run a 5K and had come back missing the mark by almost half a kilometer. I was so hard on myself. I gave myself no credit for the fact that the weather wasn’t cooperative. Instead, I assumed I was just more tired than normal or that I needed to be more fit.
Later that day, I was at a client meeting and a strong gust picked up an outdoor table and blew it over. I only then acknowledged that my difficult run wasn’t entirely my fault.
As leaders, we sometimes work on projects where we feel like we’re running in a headwind. Things just aren’t going smoothly, we are not on schedule, and people aren’t delivering. Our energy lags, and we get discouraged and down. It’s easy to project this onto everything else and decide we don’t like our jobs, we aren’t happy in our work, or we aren’t successful. Or we blame ourselves for not having the skills or the smarts for the job. In actual fact, a change of project or environment can bring us renewed energy and allow us to perform at our best.
What headwinds are you running in? How can you find ways to turn around?
