Becoming a leader is a journey it is a process. There have been many who would say “Oh they were born a natural leader.” Some of us may have a tendency towards accessing our human response more readily, but leadership is a process, it is a collection of responses and human reactions. In the book Leadersmithing by Eve Poole the author lays out the essentials for leadership. These essentials are sourced from research surrounding leaders and our human response to experiences. One of the important pieces of developing as a leader is understanding your individual threshold for the fight or flight response. Poole notes that elite athletes harness this stress response to find their place of peak performance. It is also a key component to learning as we learn faster when in the fight response. As leaders learning under pressure helps us to “understanding our ‘stretch zone’ thresholds” (1)<\/p>\n
The Sports Annalogy<\/strong><\/p>\n As leaders who are both experienced and actively developing there can be feelings of inadequacy and even the threat of burnout from ever reaching for growth and perfection that seems just beyond reach. As the mother of a teen athlete burnout and feelings of inadequacy are so prevalent. His peers quit their sports from burnout and pressure. I have been asked the question “will you still be proud of me” I have seen the look in his eyes when facing loss or falling short of a goal. These are the moments that a teen has gone beyond their “stretch zone” threshold. This can happen to leaders too. These moments when leaders surpass their threshold is when we see burnout, inappropriate behaviors, unhealthy leadership styles, and epic moments of moral failure. So, what would have become of these teen athletes, this leaders if they had understood their “stretch zone thresholds” Would they have been able to learn and grow under pressure while still finding healthy practices of self-care?<\/p>\n Playing with Risk<\/strong><\/p>\n As active leaders the time for and value of self-care can take a backseat to all the pressures and responsibilities. So too can a leaders engagement with risk and understanding their fight or flight repose. The tendency is to become consumed with the task of leading and maintaining the organization or position that growth and development can be sidelined, thus leading to the burnout and failures that one is trying to avoid. It is when leaders engage in healthy, playful risk taking that they begin to understand themselves and their fight\/flight response more fully. Then in this understanding one can begin to find their “stretch zone threshold”, their healthy place of leading and learning under pressure. Not all pressure is bad and it can be beneficial. You know those peers who work best under pressure, they wait until the night before a deadline and hammer out all the work, and its actually good. For many of us this pressure could be crushing and we avoid it while others embrace it. Understanding these pressure points is important to an individual leader’s success. So finding ways to take playful risks and learn about one’s self can help a leader embrace the right pressure points for them.<\/p>\n Leadership Learning<\/strong><\/p>\n Learning is a key component of leadership. It is a piece that keeps leaders relevant and engaged, and it keeps leaders healthy. Friedman would argue that leaders don’t need anymore classes, books, training, they need to understand themselves.(2) I would say that Poole reminds us that our learning has to also be about ourself and the skills we possess and that the process of becoming a leader is developing ourselves through experiences. So as leaders let us take the time to learn about ourselves, engage in playful risk taking so that we can learn from these experiences the types of pressure that we are capable of leading through, so that we can be healthy, engaged, and experienced leaders.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Becoming a leader is a journey it is a process. There have been many who would say “Oh they were born a natural leader.” Some of us may have a tendency towards accessing our human response more readily, but leadership is a process, it is a collection of responses and human reactions. In the book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2458],"class_list":["post-29681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-poole-dlgp01","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29681"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29870,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29681\/revisions\/29870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n