I’m a parent of three children. The oldest is just finishing Kindergarten.

One of the most-repeated lessons that we offer our children boils down to this: How do I relate to life and others when things feel bad?

It’s tough work helping my kiddos learn to deal with frustration, loss, disappointment, rejection, and pain.

They have a few common responses to unwelcome challenges:

• They quit trying.
• They get upset and get stuck in the emotion.
• The blame someone.
• They lash out in some way – with their words, fighting with someone or throwing something.
• Sometimes (and this is where I feel proud as a parent) I watch them manage their emotions, problem solve or get help, practice pushing through to a better solution.

I know, as a parent, that some of their most important lessons are learned during times of challenge. Not when everything works out.

Crucial life (and leadership) skills, such as delay of gratification, sharing, perseverance, working out conflicts, accepting disappointments or navigating friendships can only be learned in the context of a challenge.

As it turns out, I’m still somewhere on the learning curve of this lesson as well.

Many of their responses are uncomfortably familiar to my own.

Perhaps you identify?

Here’s the good news of challenges. And why I think leaders should be grateful for them.

Reflecting back on my journey as a non-profit leader, as an entrepreneur, and as a consultant: Challenges and difficult experiences were what catalyzed the greatest growth personally and professionally.

In fact, talk to any successful entrepreneur or leader who is actually leading growth or change, and you’ll discover someone who has endless stories of massive challenges, disappointments, and outright failures.

It’s the ability to push and learn through challenges and difficulties that make the difference between those who create, build and succeed and those who just get by.

Most people don’t understand this. Most people attempt to construct their lives to avoid challenge and mitigate discomfort. Getting by, keeping your head down, avoiding risk…these traits don’t add up to bad people.

But they don’t add up to people who are difference makers. People who are able to conquer whatever particular mountain happens to be in front of them.

Four Gifts That Unwanted Challenges Bring Us

1. Centering: Just like a storm can blow away whatever isn’t secured, challenges disrupt many of our understanding and beliefs about “how things work.”

Having our worldviews, or paradigms or even visions for the future challenges is deeply uncomfortable and difficult.

However, those who make it to the other side usually find that they have a clearer sense of who they are, their core values and what “really works.”

2. New Strength: Experienced athletes learn that strength is at least as much mental as it is physical. Research shows us that our brains have “governors” in them that tell us, “Oh, that’s enough. You can’t run faster, push harder, or lift more than this.”

Our brains are sandbaggers.

When an athlete learns to challenge herself to the end range of her ability, she’ll find that there was more there. Once she starts to train at that end range – two things begin to happen:

• Her brain begins to realize that she is capable of even more and recalibrates to a higher level of potential.
• Her body begins to adapt to a higher level of stress and becomes stronger, more athletic and more responsive.

It’s the same for leadership. When we push through conflict to a resolution. When we face and overcome a plummeting economy. When we turn around an organizational culture. When we learn to face our own fears or frustrations and deal with them productively:

• We learn that we can. The next time we face the challenge it isn’t as challenging.
• We grow and adapt. We become better at addressing that challenge well.

3. We Build Perseverance: Thomas Edison, famously, made thousands of attempts (a.k.a. failures) to create a lightbulb. He knew he was pursuing something possible and persevered until he learned enough to be successful.

Michael Jordan attributes his superstar athletic success to, “failing over and over again…” but not quitting.

Amelia Earhart said, “The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do.”

Perseverance, tenacity, grit…whatever you want to call it. It is one of the most critical differentiators between those who are able to succeed in building the lives they want and those who don’t.

It only exists and can only be built in the context of the challenge. Facing small challenges well is what prepares us to tackle larger challenges.

4. Anticipatory Leadership: I once was in a coffee shop when an older woman, sitting next to me, looked at the floor between her feet and said, “An earthquake is coming.”

I didn’t feel anything.

And then a massive earthquake struck. As the earth rolled and shook, she started to talk about living through the Good Friday Earthquake, in Alaska, when she was younger. This was the second most powerful earthquake on record.

Her experience built some kind of sensitivity that allowed her to anticipate an earthquake today.

The experience of overcoming challenges gives us the ability to anticipate new ones in the future. This is true of reconciling a team conflict, experiencing a financial reversal, dealing with a lawsuit or a natural disaster.

The experience gives us the ability to forecast, to prepare ourselves and others. This increases our ability to address and deal with the challenge effectively.

Five Tips for Overcoming Challenges Well

• Be Open – Let Others In: As leaders, it’s difficult to face challenges alone. Yet, we tend to isolate.

Our perspective is usually limited and maybe even distorted. Our resources may be sapped. Our emotional margins may be depleted.

We aren’t the only one who has been through something similar. Actively building and maintaining relationships with peers whom you can trust, a mentor, advisor or coach who can encourage and support you, is absolutely key.

The very best and most successful athletes train with others and have coaches. The very best coaches and consultants I know, find ways to build peer relationships and all have coaches.

The most successful leaders actively build the kind of relationships where they can be open and be supported. This allows them to receive assistance, perspective, and input when it is needed. Not after.

• Identify What You Can’t Control: Some issues or aspects of our challenges are just beyond our control.

In spite of this, many leaders will wrestle with the uncontrollable anyways. They’ll attempt to fight unwinnable battles.

Or they’ll misspend emotional and relational energy venting and fixating on what “others” are doing that makes their life hard now.

When we clearly identify what we can’t control, we can shift our energy away from unproductive efforts.

• Identify and Prioritize What We Can Control: This is one of the “habits of highly effective people” as identified by Stephen Covey.

When facing a challenge, when we focus our efforts on what we can learn, what we can do, on impacts we can make – we are able to gain traction and move ahead.

Leaders who focus externally: On the economy, on competition, on regulations…their energy and attention gain them no ground.

Whenever you are facing a challenge, identify what you can do and impact. Even if this is just about managing your attitude.

Focusing here is where you’ll find the greatest gains.

• Act: Too many leaders, when facing a challenge, stop. They freeze. They give up. They avoid. They succumb to “analysis paralysis.”

Default to action. Default to taking the next step.

Following the tips above, not isolating, getting support, focusing on what you can do – and then doing it.

Some of the biggest challenges require step-by-step efforts. They are rarely solved by absolutely perfect and precise choices.

Just try to make good choices – and then act.

Leaders only lead through movement.

• Being Grateful: Something that has also been helpful to me, when facing a challenge, is to remember to stay grateful. I have a practice of writing down three things that I’m grateful for each day. It’s been an easy and powerful discipline in my life.

When I’m faced with a challenge, I’ve often found it helpful to come up with a list of 10 things I’m grateful for. Maybe not about the challenge. But maybe including the challenge as well.

Gratefulness is a trait and perspective that automatically cultivates optimism and an ability to see good. Those two things create hope.

Successful Leaders Believe These Three Things

“I’ve successfully faced challenges in the past.”

“I can successfully face the challenge in front of my now.”

“I will successfully face challenges in the future.”

Take good care,

Christian

I work with people 1-on-1. If you interested in learning more and would like to schedule a quick call: click here. During this call, we’ll clarify what you hope to accomplish, where you are right now and identify one or two key strategies for moving ahead. We’ll also be able to decide if it makes sense, to both of us, to work together. There is no obligation. To schedule a quick call, click here.