It's About Leadership: November 2020

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Moral Distress, Residue and the Price of Leadership

Today - November 25, 2020. As I write this, Alberta is coming off successive days of over 1,000 COVID cases and ICU capacity is reaching pre-determined threshold limits in the province. We have the dubious distinction of leading the country. For days, weeks, and even months, our provincial government has been admonishing citizens to exercise personal responsibility in how they work, play, live, and socialize in order to flatten the COVID curve.

The current conservative government has been loathe to impose (and enforce?) more significant restrictions up to and including a circuit-breaker lockdown of between two to four weeks long. This would harken back to earlier this year when businesses were shuttered and schools either effectively closed or moved to virtual reality through to the end of June. Similar efforts have been used to positive affect in other jurisdictions like Australia.

In April, daily cases reported numbers in the low hundreds. Today we are multiples beyond that and likely to hit new highs in the coming days. The Grinch is likely to steal Christmas this year.

The current choice provincial political leadership seems to believe it is faced with is one between economic disaster that would arise from a lockdown, the potential backlash from some who believe any form of restrictions is a violation of their individual rights, and a continuing - and accelerated - rate of infection, hospitalization, and death of Albertans. Livelihoods or lives.

Leadership is about hard choices. Compounding that reality is that those hard choices are fraught with imperfect information, particularly around decisions where there are conflicting opinions, motivations, and truly unknown future outcomes. Leaders rarely get clear and distinct choices between right and wrong, yes or no, black and white. Leadership is about the courage to function and excel in the shades of gray.

Those choices can result in pain and anguish when we struggle through what is the right thing to do or we may even be actively prevented from doing the right thing. There may also be times where we feel we are forced to do the wrong thing. We experience moral distress. I can only imagine the moral distress that our Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) faces each day as she watches the cases climb, contact tracing systems collapse under the volume of activity, citizens ignoring recommendations to promote their safety, and having to toe a political line relative to what should be done versus what will be allowed or tolerated.

Beyond the period of agonizing over that first big choice comes the consequence of having to now live with those choices. Moral residue follows moral distress - a feeling of having compromised ourselves, our ethics, our values, and ourselves when the anticipated and real consequences of our choices come home to roost. I believe the CMOH is trying to do the right thing. The question becomes is she being prevented from doing the right thing or is she even being forced to do the wrong thing.

The answers to whether our government is doing the right thing or the wrong thing will become much more abundantly clear in the next two to three weeks. In that time we will find out how much of a game of Russian roulette we have been playing. We will find out how many blanks or live ammo are in our collective gun. If we have guessed, hoped, or chosen wrong, we will put our healthcare system in another situation of moral distress. In fact, we already have. Elective and non-urgent surgeries have already been cancelled. Other appointments and diagnostic tests have been delayed or postponed. These consequences will pale in comparison to the choices we may be placing before our healthcare professionals in the weeks to come. We could be asking them to NOT put COVID patients on ventilators because we lack capacity. We may be asking them to CHOOSE between providing life-saving care for a 55-year-old father of three daughters, or the 80-year-old grandmother of six grandkids, or the 30-year-old just-married wife starting to really launch her career.

Moral distress. Moral residue. It's being writ large for all of us. Send our kids to school or not. Work from home or not. See our families or not. Support a lockdown or not.

This is the time for strong leadership. This is a time for courage. This is a time of commitment.

It's About Leadership. Period.

______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC

President & Founder - BreakPoint Solutions

gregh@breakpoint.solutions

www.breakpoint.solutions

780-250-2543

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.

Wednesday, November 4, 2020

Exorcising our Ghosts

Growing up I had my fair share of fears as I suspect most kids do. In particular, I somehow learned to fear the dark and more particularly all the evil creatures that might be lurking under the bed, in my closet or just outside the window. Every noise and small movement of shadow seemed to be amplified, the precursor to my impending doom. Several decades removed from those childish fears I still find myself somewhat anxious at the thought of a night out with my telescope observing the heavens.

The reality is, however, that in my youth those monsters were quite real. And in truth, it was only over time and not through any particular parental logic that they were overcome. I profess to still having some fear of the dark, but more often it is borne out of knowledge of what is really out there - farm dogs that might perceive me as a threat; skunks, coyotes or other wild animals; and other humans who might have less astronomical things on their minds. My fears are more grounded in reality these days (e.g., COVID impacts, US election results??), but they don't hold me back from pursuing one of my personal passions. So what gets me out there in the middle of the night regardless of perceived or real ghosts? In this case, it is the opportunity to gaze upon celestial wonders of far flung galaxies, nebulae, and the rings of Saturn. In some bizarre and metaphorical sense, I am driven to face my fears by a higher purpose.

As an executive coach - and a leader/entrepreneur in my own right - I experience and realize that I can be subject to a number of different fears. Most of these come down to self-doubt and the courage to take on new and different challenges in my career and business. And I see similar behavior in many of the clients I work with. The mythical monsters that have lived in the closets or just outside our windows in our youth now stalk the halls and alleys of our hearts, minds and souls. These monsters and ghosts are some of the most insidious we will ever face. They know us well and play on and magnify our weaknesses, insecurities, and doubts. Left unfaced, they grow in strength and hold us paralyzed with fear striving to ensure we never take that next step forward.

These ghosts don't operate purely or even mostly on horror and shock value. Rather, they are more cunning and possessed of a powerful voice, constantly talking us out of taking that next bold step into the future. They are the voice that suggests we really aren't qualified to apply for a new position. They help us procrastinate and rationalize to the point where even if we were to apply and get an interview we would show up with the belief we don't belong. We display our anxiety to the point that those who would make the selection decision recognize our lack of confidence and make the non-selection decision we have been expecting all along. We become our own self-fulfilling prophecy.

But like conquering our own childhood fears, success in facing our more mature fears is possible. My success and the successes of my coaching clients are proof of that. In my first year away from an executive role and into my new venture, I probably had more sleepless nights - and self-talk - than I'd had in the previous 10 years. What made this the right move? Was my business plan just wishful thinking? What made me think that my marketing efforts were the right ones? And so on and so forth. I could say it was the powerful vision of my ultimate success that kept me going, but that would be too easy a way to rewrite history. Truth be told, I was probably just too proud and stubborn to give in. But I did ultimately face and conquer (most of) my fears. I often did so with the encouragement, support, inspiration, and examples of others.

In similar fashion, I have been inspired by the courage that many of my coaching clients have ultimately demonstrated as they struggled with realizing their potential, seeking out new opportunities, and taking on new challenges. We have helped them face their fears, challenge their self-limiting beliefs and powerfully own their strengths. A quote from one of my coaching colleagues comes to mind in this regard: "Your mind is a dangerous neighborhood to go into alone." So together, we have walked the dark halls and alleys of their mind, challenging assumptions, taking small steps, all in service of a grander vision of what is possible for them, to realize their potential and open up new vistas they had not even imagined.

The fears and doubts never truly go away. I still fear the dark, I still fear swimming in open water, and I still fear that success enjoyed today is fleeting. Even as my clients enjoy their current success (e.g., new job, award, raise, promotion), they still wonder how they will maintain or build on that success. Our fears and doubts won't go quietly into the night, but perhaps rather than paralyzing us, they can serve a more useful function of keeping us sharp and helping us prepare for potential (and reality-based) setbacks.

Keeping a higher purpose and vision in front of us - the celestial heavens, the triathlon finish line, a successful and fulfilling career - is a foundation by which we can keep moving one step ahead, developing our own level of reassurance that our fears are often overblown. We can choose to live in fear or live in purpose. We can look back on our past successes as harbingers of bigger things to come. We can believe in our strengths and in our capacity to become stronger. We can ultimately build the confidence and courage to overcome what is holding us back from our un-imagined potential.

Choose to face your ghosts, get off your (metaphorical) bed, and shine a flashlight into the dark spaces. What you don't find there might amaze you and lighten your load.

Exorcise your ghosts - own the night.