Disrupt Your Reasonableness.

This week, I witnessed the unreasonable men and women in the room lead the way in creating the relationship and result breakthroughs.

They put aside diplomacy, sometimes tact, occasionally they were clumsy in their communication (aren’t we all), they spoke with emotion (heaven forfend), got a little animated (good grief) and put the project result above their own discomfort and short term discomfort of team.

You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. That’s how you know you are having the right fierce conversations.

At that stage, to pull back from the brink, to attempt to curtail or squash the conversation would be hugely disrespectful to the courageous men and women sticking their heads over the parapet. That’s why I let the conversation unfold as some in the room looked at me with the ‘when are you going to stop this look’.

Often people talk of Leadership in its sugar-coated glory. This was the leadership of discomfort, the messiness, an emotive melting pot of humanity, complexity and uniqueness of human relationships.

Reference Mr. Shaw’s points. To be reasonable in those conversations would have been the reasonable thing to do. To go with the herd, avoiding discomfort and vulnerability.

The V word. Vulnerability. An attribute of the bold –  vulnerability often means going it alone, peeking over the parapet.

Or my favourite quote…

“Behold the tortoise, to make progress it has to stick its neck out’.

The self-aware recognize that sometimes they must observe and catch their over reasonableness and disrupt it.

Disrupt your reasonableness.

Ask yourself ‘Am I more intent on being reasonable here, being liked, (all about me) or am I interested in the long-term welfare of the team and the project?’

‘Am I prepared to experience discomfort  – and can be with this discomfort of others as I disrupt the reasonableness with an honourable intent?’

Intent is everything here.

Being unreasonable to be bloody minded, an arse, to get back at others is low end.

Being unreasonable for the greater good and long term health of the other people is an intent with honour.

To confirm, the manager or leaders job is to create constructive, and eliminate debilitating conflict.