I Want It Yesterday!

I asked more than 6,000 professionals in the Leadership, IT, Publishing, Recruiting, Entrepreneurial and other related LinkedIn interest groups, “What’s Your Biggest Leadership Pain?” I even gave them a few prompts: Managing performance? Dealing with conflict? Giving feedback? Receiving feedback? Confronting issues? Other?

Their responses were all across the board with an emphasis on poor communication, lack of listening, lack of imagination and futuristic thinking, and negativity. So much for my suggestions. The most common pain, but not by a huge margin, had to do with patience.

Let me give you a few verbatims:

• Realization that “Rome was not conquered in a day”
• Some are in a hurry to advance at the cost of others by hook or crook
• Time for people to grow and get the job done as fast as you can

So what do you do when the people you report to demand results yesterday?

It would be wonderful if we could all work at the pace we prefer, but time is money and money talks. Your competition is out to outperform you. The starting gun has fired. The race is on! But the sound of the gun doesn’t always mean run!

In the long run, it’s the team that plans better and follows its plan that wins. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, someone who was no stranger to pressing deadlines and outrageous demands, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening my axe.”

In addition to an enlightening video on the incredible importance of delaying gratification, I’ve outlined 4 ways to do just that. 4 Steps to Greater Leadership Patience.

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