How do you determine what you can and can’t change as a leader? What methods have you tried? When did they work well, and when didn’t they work so well? What “change” models have you experimented with?
This is an important topic that we’ll likely explore during the Leading with Quality day, so it’ll be great to explore some ideas early on this thread.
On practical note, something that is setup by people who are at higher authority or leadership cannot be change. I will not say it’s impossible but it is not easy as it depends on many factors, and the most crucial is ego. As the people’s emotions are becoming more fragile and complex, it is most probable chance that if higher leadership people have ego issue and we suggest something that is beneficial for the things they have setup, things will go wrong, instead of taking it as positive feedback they will take it as negative criticism.
Things which are in our control, we can obviously change that as a leader like testing process, team management , etc.
For me, I use the circles of influence. It’s more an internalised practice now on how I think about problems rather than a model I outwardly use. So being clear about the things I can directly control, the things I can influence and then things out of my control (Circle of Concern). Each problem or opportunity that comes my way, I internally filter them into these buckets and either do it, collaborate to influence or make practical decision to say “I can’t do anything about that” and leave it. It takes practice to leave things but you find if you focus on the things you can’t influence, thats when burnout happens.
I had to learn the hard way that just because I see the problem doesn’t mean it’s mine to fix. One thing that’s helped me is asking three simple questions:
Can I change this? Can I influence it? Or do I need to work around it for now and live to fight another day?
What’s worked best is focusing on what I can actually control as @simon_tomes mentioned. That might be how my team handles triage, how we advocate for quality, or how I prep for a leadership convo. And sometimes, influence just means planting the seed and walking away. No one wants to be pushed into change.
I’ve played some change frameworks, but truthfully, no framework beats building trust and being consistent. People respond to someone who’s in the trenches with them.
Would love to hear how others figure out what to let go of before it leads to burnout.
It’s a question with a lot of nuances. As others have mentioned, influence, what you can control, and essentially picking your battles are certainly part of this.
Coming at it from another angle, “change” has a lot of connotations for me, and is rarely the aim I start with. I think that the discovery, understanding, and educating we do can result in change, and those are what I put more deliberate effort into, even if my mandate is ultimately to change something. Observing the outcome of these things can give me a good indication of how likely things are to change, and what part I can play in that.
Brilliant talk from @amcharrett . Honestly I had know idea it referred to the same model I used, but my goodness did I learn so much more from that talk. It has given me some ideas to move forward with.
I think we have a lot of power to change things or influence, and sometimes its not about whether I can, but determining if its best that I do so at all.
One thing to question is “do I even want to be responsible for this?” We have specialized people to handle special situations and they are experts. Instead of worrying what I can/can’t change/influence, I also try to ask if I even want to be responsible the next time this happens.
Theres also so many other factors that might come up and sway a decision in context:
Am I willing to put my name on this if it goes well OR poorly?
How many people are already looking at this? Do they really need me?
Whats the worst thing that can happen if I don’t pick this ball up?
Who could I delegate this to to learn from as a useful exercise? How can I get what I need, but also make it useful for someone else?
