Creating the Climate

In my experience, leaders spend a lot of time thinking about what they believe are the “important” moments when they need communicate a critical message. An important meeting. A presentation to a key stakeholder. They spend time thinking about what they’re going to say and how they’re going to say it. They create an accompanying Powerpoint that “whooshes” and spins when the slides appear on the screen, as if they truly believe that this animation and whooshing is going to make the critical difference. Much time, effort and energy are put into these occasions to make them “land.”

And yet. In the regular day to day of life these same leaders forget that they are influencing – positively and negatively – every moment of the day and not just in what they perceive as the “important” occasions. Minimal time, effort and energy is given to considering how the climate is being set for others to operate at their best. From the minute they start work every day, leaders are setting the tone for how the rest of the day will unfold. Their emails, their phone calls, their texts, how they respond to situations arising….all of these moments are witnessed by many, many people around them and yet barely a moment’s thought is given to considering whether the climate they are setting is one where people can thrive. For many workers these days, they don’t even see their direct leader face to face as they are in different locations, so all they have to go on is what they see in these written responses. Given this, Goethe’s quote, seen in the image above, is incredibly powerful and relevant. Leaders have tremendous power to make or break a day, a situation, a person. I wonder how many of us really acknowledge this?

Encouraging Reflection

• If someone were to shadow you for a day and watch all that you did, said and wrote, would that influence them to be the best they could be?
• What can you personally commit to doing, that would, in Goethe’s words, “create the climate”?

Be encouraged; lead well.