Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.

Feelings rule. Most of us recognize that they shouldn’t, but they do. If you take the view that people shouldn’t have feelings and proceed to ignore them, you will limit your persuasive effectiveness. If you allow yourself to be held hostage by feelings, you will be paralyzed. The key is to recognize, accept and express everyone’s feelings and then recruit those feelings to your cause.

1. Recognize your own feelings. This is not as easy as it sounds. Most of us react instinctively to the events in our lives without recognizing the pivotal role our feelings played in those reactions. Most of us who react impulsively are embarrassed to admit that we don’t keep our feelings on a shorter leash.

2. Recognize others’ feelings. This is a lot easier. Most of us are pretty good at divining how others feel; we just don’t think they should feel that way—if they turn out to feel differently than we do.

3. Accept feelings. We all have them. They change. They enrich our lives and torment us. We can do the right things in spite of them.

4. Express them. It’s not enough to just recognize and accept them. We have to put them on the table. Then we can deal with them. Unrecognized and unexpressed feelings will derail the best-laid plans every time.

How do you deal with feelings at work?

Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.

Discomfort is a double-edged prod. Most of us will not change unless we experience some discomfort. Too much of it is paralyzing. Leaders walk this tightrope every day. Effective leaders know that they must feel and create some discomfort, but if they make their colleagues too uncomfortable organizational momentum will stall. It’s not an easy balance and even the best leaders don’t always get it right.

1. Make yourself uncomfortable first. Until you have achieved personal perfection, there are plenty of opportunities. Leaders long for comfort just like every other human being on the planet. If you can find no other personal flaws, feel uncomfortable about feeling too comfortable.

2. Focus on those organizational results that are not hitting the mark. It is counterproductive to create discomfort for discomfort’s sake. It must derive from the failure to achieve meaningful goals to have significant impact. If you are consistently meeting all of your goals, you have set the bar too low.

3. Hold yourself and others accountable. Figure out who has the power to make things happen and then hold them accountable for making them happen. Since the leader is always accountable, you cannot do this successfully without holding yourself accountable.

How do you create just the right amount of discomfort in your workplace?

Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.

It’s not what we say; it’s how we behave. All of us show up wanting to do more of what we feel like doing and less of what we don’t want to do. When leaders say one thing and do another, everyone notices and leadership credibility suffers. The hypocrisy of leaders is the reason that people use most often as an excuse to slack off. “If they don’t do it, why should I?” And they have a point.

1. Clarify your expectations for how you will interact with each other at work. No one is perfect and all of us will slip from time to time, but at least everyone will know what’s expected of them.

2. Confront violators. Ignoring obvious rule transgressions is worse than having no rules at all. Of course, confrontation is hard and no one wants to do it. That’s tough. It’s your job to confront others and to own up to your own shortcomings when your colleagues point them out.

3. Tell stories about changed behavior. If you confront each other, behavior will change. And such stories are among the most effective organizational motivators known. Find them and use them.

How have you clarified your behavioral expectations at work?

Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.

It’s difficult to achieve exceptional results, but it’s much harder to sustain them. Having achieved the goal, we all tend to congratulate ourselves and move on to the next challenge. We become bored, lose interest and focus, and backslide. We stop doing the things that made the difference, mistakenly thinking that those processes are now stable.  They are not. All organizational processes are naturally unstable.

1. Prepare yourself and others for performance deterioration. Begin talking openly about this danger as a part of your goal achievement celebrations. Remind everyone of examples where you’ve scaled the summit and then fallen off a cliff. There will be plenty of these examples.

2. Keep monitoring all key processes. A performance dashboard is the perfect tool for this. You can see how you are doing at a glance each week or month. Any unraveling will become immediately apparent.

3. Make sure that a leader remains accountable. We all pay more attention when our names are on the board as the responsible leader. Others may become intoxicated with success, but the fear of embarrassment will keep the designated driver focused.

3. Create a crisis at the first sign of performance droop. Become distressed and let it show. People are exquisitely sensitive to how their leaders feel. Use this fact to your advantage.

How do you sustain exceptional performance?