Sometimes You've Gotta Be Uncomfortable
“I got that excited/scared feeling. Like 98% excited, 2% scared… It could be 98% scared, 2% excited.“ Oscar, as played by Owen Wilson, Armageddon
A couple months back I volunteered to be on our decorating committee at church. I saw that they needed some volunteers in our weekly bulletin, and I while it certainly piqued my interest, I was hesitant to volunteer. Decorating is something I have never been really good at in my life. Truthfully, even all the artwork that I have posted in our basement rec room and office area were agreed to by my wife. She would have been happy with whatever I chose, but I still needed that extra bit of validation that I was doing a good job with the decorating.
That was just in my own house… Imagine helping to decorate a whole church where hundreds of people will attend. I was quite nervous about the whole thing. But still, I felt a tug that I should volunteer. I called my friend, Heather, who ran the decorating committee. I told her that I likely wasn’t good at decorating but that I was good at taking direction and wanted to help. Heather was really nice about the whole thing and said she’d be happy to have my help.
Leaders take note. The way she handled my nervousness over volunteering was pretty awesome. On the call, she talked about how my lack of experience might provide new ideas and viewpoints. As leaders it can be easy to always look for the experts when hiring someone or selecting volunteers for a project. Being open to different levels of experience can be really helpful in bringing in fresh new ideas.
At my first meeting, I was quick to downplay my own opinions on things, again worrying that I didn’t have any useful ideas to give. Heather wouldn’t allow that. She insisted that we all share our ideas with one another. She would continually ask people by name for their thoughts on ideas, just to ensure that everyone was being included. After a couple meetings, everyone started to feel comfortable sharing their idea.
Heather had helped to create an environment where opinions were shared openly and respectfully. This was accomplished by trying out everyone’s ideas. She would say things like, “Let’s try it and if it doesn’t work we will just try something else.” Statements like that create a space where failure is okay, which helps make people comfortable with sharing ideas.
These are all easy ideas that can be transferred directly to the board room. I think it’s easy to miss insights like these in our daily life. When we talk about leadership, we tend to focus on managers of some company. But leadership lessons can be found all around us.
What strikes me as even more interesting is that Heather would say that she’s only the leader because they needed someone to volunteer for the position. She would tell you that really the whole committee just works together and no one is actually in charge. She is absolutely correct about that and it’s because she has taken it upon herself to create the environment where a leader doesn’t have to dictate what must be done. Instead it becomes collaborative and the leader only has to step in to make decisions when the team is stuck.
In the beginning of this article, I talked about how I was nervous to join the committee because it was outside of my comfort zone and it required me to be a little bit vulnerable. In the end, it’s been a great experience that has helped me come to love working with some new people who I didn’t know very well. It also helped reinforce some great leaderships lessons for me and I hope for you readers as well.
After talking to Heather recently, I found out that when asked to take over the committee, she was nervous as well. She was overwhelmed by the large number of tasks that she would need to ensure were remembered and completed on time. In addition, Heather was extremely short on volunteers when she took over. Last but not least, the person who had been in charge before her had been absolutely crushing the job, leaving big shoes to fill. Despite all those uncomfortable feelings, she did it anyway. And she was better for it. And so was I.
What scares you? What do you want to do but feel too afraid? Get out there and be uncomfortable. Take a risk. Go for it.
You likely will not succeed every time you try something new — but I promise it will never work out when you don’t try at all.
-Jason