How Does a CEO Create Positive, Purposeful Discomfort?
In my last post, I talked about mindset, growing through discomfort and the effort effect. Leadership is about influence. Leadership is about growing others. How do you do that?
Make sure you focus on creating positive, useful discomfort for someone else.
According to Bill Treasurer, author of Leaders Open Doors, “positive, purposeful discomfort” is about:
- Having your employees’ backs by walking with them.
- Temporary. Permanent discomfort demotivates.
- Making sure that the benefits are obvious.
“It may surprise you that your job as an open-door leader is to make people uncomfortable, but good opportunities create discomfort. The idea is not to get people to do wildly uncomfortable things, just willfully uncomfortable things,” says Treasurer.
Seek discomfort like Treasurer did:
Throughout my career, I’ve always been willing to take jobs that were outside of my skill set. Some people think that’s crazy, but I’m telling you that I wouldn’t be sitting here as president (of a large communication company) if I had done it any other way. It’s dangerous to be safe.
Like Dan Rockwell–that leadership freak–says: Growth hurts: [so] create positive discomfort.
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