The Crisis You Shouldn't Resolve

There's a type of crisis you should leave to do its work.

Not the strategic initiative that isn't moving. That's your problem to solve, and fast.

The one to let stand: when your team is not meeting its own standards (beyond yours), and they know it.

The gap between where they are and where they believe they should be creates pressure. True for teams and individuals.

That pressure is doing something constructive, and it's called an action crisis.

It will eventually accumulate enough force to produce one of two transforming outcomes.

Either the team finds a way through because the force of the standards they are committed to raises their game.

Or the pressure eventually calls the standard into question, and they uncomfortably recalibrate.

In the latter case, the standard was wrong for now. The capability isn't there yet. What was true when they set it is no longer true. They update their position with new information.

Both are good. Both bring resolution. Both leave the team's agency intact.

What makes neither happen is a leader who relieves the pressure before the pressure can do its work.

How? You get involved and start to carry the tension, or find ways to relieve it for them without any real move on their part.

In other words, you protect them from a tension they need.

I wrote recently about the saving "hero leader". See this post if you want to explore the "nice" leader problem further.

The hero leader shock absorbs pressure on behalf of the team. This pattern costs the most when the leader interferes with the team's own performance tension.

The pressure you relieve is the pressure that was trying to change something. Relieve it, and the team can comfortably stay the course. Not improving. Not going through the difficulty of recalibration. Just continuing.

They stabilize beneath their potential, and stay there.

The discomfort that could have forced a change is gone.

That's a team that has stopped being bothered by falling short of its own standards.

Let the pressure do its work.

First, it's not yours to carry.

And second, you want the kind of team that is chasing its own higher standards for its own reasons.

— C

It's not always easy to figure out which tensions to resolve, and which to leave, especially in the top job. I work with groups of 7–12 CEOs, Founders and Owners who do it together. See my contact info if you're interested.