Let’s face it, sometimes our boss or peer managers are not what we wish they were. They aren’t addressing serious operational issues, providing clear communication, holding people accountable, or unifying the team. They seem happy with their efforts and unaware of the downstream negative impacts, dramas, and drains their work performance causes.
This has the potential to be very challenging. That is why it is critical to find our own inner stability. If not, we risk becoming highly provoked and disastrously distracted. Our vital energy gets captured, drained away and we get all balled up in ever narrowing narrations and judgements.
As we look at our peer and above managers, we can spend so much of our precious time and attention grousing over their perceived incompetencies, lack of skill in certain areas, what they are doing or not doing, that we lose sight of our own management path and trajectory.
This is a shame. This is what I call being stuck in Shouldlandia – they shouldn’t be this way.
My recommendation this month is to pull back in; let that go and keep focused on what we each personally want to achieve and develop as a manager. When we’re stuck in Shouldlandia the biggest thing we surrender is our excitement.
Our excitement over what we can accomplish, the excitement over a possible difference we can make at the co-op, the excitement of our own development of skills and experience.
And here’s why we never want to give this excitement away for any reason whatsoever. It is the actual lifeblood of our development as a person. It is the fuel and nourishment of what propels us forward not just professionally but as a person who values exciting opportunity and challenges.
If you are committed to staying at your co-op, find a way out of this provocation and practice the strength of who you want to be, given the situation. It is not easy, yet it is better than getting stuck in Shouldlandia with its daily deflation.
If you are contemplating leaving because it is just too much, don’t go yet. Practice strengthening who you are and build proof for yourself that your reason for leaving is to go toward something that excites you, not from provocation or resentment.
There are many, many ways to get stuck in Shouldlandia…this is just a small reminder of one of them.
What other managers do with their opportunity is their business.
Our job is to honor and protect ours.