How frustrated are you today?

Chances are there is some frustration in your life today. And if not, then there was some yesterday and there will certainly be some tomorrow. A frustrated leader is a fruitless leader.

Leadership is more frustrating than an at any point in recent or near recent history. There are many reasons for this. We wont dive into them, because dealing with the symptoms is largely ineffective, if you neglect the cause. We need to find the root(s) of this frustration. Leaders are frustrated. That’s a fact, we’ll accept it and move forward. Work is being done, but is it the right work?

Let’s dig deeper.

There is a zone where leaders enter that is hard to shake, yet has a great negative effect on the leader. This zone is called the frustration zone. It is a place where results (often because of results), personnel and activity lock the leader in a perpetual place of frustration. The boundaries aren’t clear. They are fuzzy. Frustration feels like a maze, that often the harder you work at getting out, the more lost or frustrated you become. Despite trying various solutions or reorganizing your team, the frustration remains. You are working harder and harder, yet you still are more confused and frustrated. Welcome to the frustration zone. There are some things you can do that will help you work your way out of the soul-stymieing and brain-blowing place of frustration that you are in, have just left or are heading in again.

How to Work Your Way Out of Frustration:

1- Rest. Frustration leads to life imbalance, especially for hard-working, over-achievers who also happen to be leaders. You feel the responsibility, you feel the lack of results. And as a result, your frustration mounts, relationships fray and thoughts narrow. You are short and curt with those around you. But, you wont and don’t end up solving problems and seeing solutions with heavy eyelids or an exhausted body. A lot of the time frustration is simply a by-product of over-work and over-activity.

The first thing you need to do is pull back. Now, I didn’t say pull out. Abandonment or ignorance is not the solution. Rest allows you to renew your perspective. Every individual needs rest. Sometimes, we simply pile too much on ourselves and others. Organizations and teams need rest. Ask any successful sports team what happens the day after a game, it’s a physical day off.  Vocations are contests and struggles. We are always going to run into frustration because the earth yield’s nothing worthwhile easy. That means there is stress. Stress wears you out physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Rest rejuvenates, renews and restores. Leaders and organizations need rest. But, most are unwilling to take what they need most.

Rest is a reset. Do you remember the original Nintendo? Back in the day when the Nintendo (16 bit) would get hot because you played it too much and your thumbs hurt from pressing down on the directional pad too much for too long, you had to hit the reset button. Often, we get so locked in that we neglect rest. Rest for our bodies, our minds and our souls. Like the Nintendo, we had to hit reset. Eventually, to rest our eyes and our thumbs, our parents would make us turn it off…this was always a problem, because early video games lacked automatic save points. So, we would desperately plead with Mom to not cut our game off in the middle of a stage. Often, she would intervene and unplug it. We needed rest. We were neglecting other things that were important. Problems magnify when you are tired. Your brain, your body and your soul need rest, in order to function at it’s highest level. When you’ve been playing/running hard for a long time, your vision is narrow, your energy is waning and your responsiveness is slow.

2- Plug Yourself Into the Problem. After you’ve rested, and you’ve had time to meditate on the thing of greatest frustration, go plug yourself into a new place. Too many leaders withdraw and make their decisions and judgments from a position too far removed from the place of greatest frustration. If you aren’t getting the results on your team or in a department that you are capable of, then go insert yourself into that area. You need to feel, to see and to experience what those that you are leading are experiencing. You can never lead people effectively if you can’t relate to them and don’t understand what they are going through. Sometimes, leaders need to give themselves a new office, a new position on the front line. This may temporarily cause the frustration to increase, but now you will see more clearly the causes or effects of the frustration. You can’t fix what you can’t see and haven’t touched. Listen carefully, I didn’t say glue yourself to the problem. Plugging in means you can also unplug. Gluing in means you are stuck. Getting stuck is not a healthy place for a leader or the organization to be in.

3- Clarify Your Expectations. Our frustration increases when we assume on the behalf of those working with us or for us. We expect our leaders or our followers to know what to do and maybe they should. However, if you want to be truly effective as a leader, then, you take the burden of responsibility and assume the expectations are unclear. Clarifying the expectations goes a long way in clearing the chaotic air, in decreasing the pressure of frustration and dividing the responsibility up among the team. When expectations are unclear the law of human nature is to reject the responsibility. Often this is not intentional, but it is an uninetentioal by product of a lack of communication. When expectations aren’t clear, individuals, departments and teams often take a mind set of self-preservation. When the ship is sinking followers find a flotation device and hold on. Leaders get to a place where they can be heard and give clear, calm direction and instruction.

Hares, Turtles & Clydesdales

When things aren’t clear, your people like a turtle will tuck their head back in their shell. Like the turtle things will slow down, which will only increase your frustration. A moving turtle is an effective turtle–maybe not as effective as you thought. Don’t think you want an organization full of hares, because as soon as a hare is frightened they run anywhere as fast as they can to get away from the perceived danger. Hares are fast, but flighty. Turtles are methodical and determined. Fixing frustration is never a quick fix, as you strengthen your turtles you can help them develop into Clydesdales. Clydesdales are trainable, dependable and strong. They can pull lots of weight continually over an extended time on a long journey. If you give a bunch of responsibility to a bunch of hares, they will run all over the place creating a lot of activity, but simultaneously increasing your frustration. Clarifying your expectations pushes you toward patience. Impatience is always a root of frustration.

4- Work on One Thing. Far too often leaders see every problem all at once. This is overwhelming. Your brain can only process so much information at one time. Your brain has a hard time working out more than one solution at a time. You have limited thought capacity and limited physical capacity. This means you only have a certain amount of thought energy and physical energy. You must measure where you will invest both types of energy. Wasted energy only leads to more frustration.

A leader must identify one thing to work on at a time. And be willing to work on only that one thing until it gets right. To work on one thing, the entire organization must have one focus, one voice and one direction. Organizations and leaders that are pulled in multiple directions and allow it are accelerating greater stress, which leads to division and ultimately collapse.

Being overwhelmed makes you feel hopeless. When you are hopeless depression follows. A depressed leader is an uninspiring and apathetic leader. No one follows a depressed leader for long. Medical experts (I’m not one) say that depression can be caused by chemical imbalances. I have found that depression is often triggered by helplessness in the face of a deep personal fear. Fears can lead to worry. Worry leads to anxiety. Anxiety is a state of mind that ushers you into depression. A depression is a low place. Fears never inspire us. Fears never elevate us. Fears never raise us to new heights. Often our frustration is a symptom of one of our fears. If you can find the fear, then you can often release the frustration. As you learn to recognize what triggers that fear, you can work on strategies and mechanisms to overcome that fear.

You can’t lead tomorrow’s yield with yesterday’s you!

Often, the business, the organization is growing, but the leader isn’t growing. This only causes the organization to suffer more. You can’t lead tomorrow’s yield with yesterday’s you. If you aren’t growing you are dying. If you are in neutral you are sliding backwards. Changing gears is often painful for a leader. To grow when you are stuck, you most often need to downshift.

5- Find Your Blind Spots. Every leader has flaws, few leaders will admit it. These flaws further frustration when you are not aware of them. Some blind spots are self-imposed because of hyper-focus. Most other blind spots are the results of being human. As a human, you are fallible, imperfect, biased and flawed. This seems and feels entirely too vulnerable and exposed for most leaders and their organizations to admit. There is no perfect leader (other than Jesus) and there is no perfect organization, because people are involved.

You are not the solution to finding and fixing your blind spots. Too many leaders think and act like they are. To find your blind spots, you need a small circle of trusted, truth-tellers who will call you out and speak in to your blind spots. These trusted, truth-tellers do not in any way benefit from telling the truth, in fact, if the relationship is not viewed as equal, they often fear reprisal and retribution. They value conviction more than compensation. They value doing things right over what is convenient or expedient. They value people over profits. It is arrogant to operate independently from wise counselors. Most people don’t volunteer their counsel for fear of reprisal. You have to find someone you trust and allow yourself to be vulnerable and transparent. If they tell you what you want to hear, they are not right for you. You need those who will tell you what you need to hear. They will not validate your bad ideas. They will not whistle while you work in frustration. They will pierce your heart and your bad ideas with the truth…and, if you are wise and want out of frustration, you will love and respect them for it.

6- Become the C.E.O. (Chief Encouragement Officer). Not only do you often need to change your position, but you often need to change your title. Give yourself a title that no one will pay you for and that doesn’t give you any more power, but the power to lift those around you up. People need to be inspired and when you are frustrated, you are uninspired. An uninspired leader can never inspire an uninspired follower. But an uninspired leader can encourage an uninspired follower. I have discovered that at the greatest points of my frustration the best way for me to serve my organization was to go around and just start encouraging all those who work for me. Instead of trying to prod people into better results and into the right places, I just started patting everyone on the back.

Truett Cathy

“How can you tell if someone needs encouragement?”

 “If they are breathing.“

A frustrated leader must become selfless and put his frustration to the side and simply start encouraging those around him. Encouragement lifts the soul and spirit of those whose minds and flesh are tired and overwhelmed. Encouragement is a fresh wind. A frustrated leader is most often blowing hot air or stale wind.

7- Ask for Help. Don’t pay for help. Get rid of the people that are benefiting from your frustration. Ask for help. There are people who are willing to help that don’t need payment for their counsel. These people are invaluable. These people are loyal and bought in. They are owners without voices. As a leader, you need to hear from your team, especially the long-term, most loyal ones. These are often the most silent. They observe, they feel, they see, but they stay silent. They aren’t leaders, they are followers and they will follow you right over a cliff or into a ditch.

Perhaps, the greatest release of frustration is when your soul is at liberty. Liberty is freedom. The mind follows the heart and the heart is the home of the soul. Frustration is felt in the identity of the leader. Your identity is truly in your heart. Many times frustration is a heart issue with the heart of the leader. Because the leader has been given great purview and responsibility for people, resources and opportunities, frustration is really a test that the leader is failing. This is known to only the leader and a small circle of perceptive people. To acknowledge this failure is to have an identity crisis. But, what the leader doesn’t realize is that the perpetual frustration signifies than an identity crisis is currently on-going. The organization will feel the effects of the leader’s heart. This leader has but one option left: ask God for help.

This is the ultimate act of humility, asking God for help and waiting for him to send it.  Leaders must recognize and accept that there are elements, actions and forces at work that are beyond their control. We are limited. But, we think we can fix our frustration, but, yet we find ourselves still locked in frustration. God is unlimited. Our soul must get still before God and surrender. We must admit that we need help, that the frustration is really in our hearts. God introduces frustration into the lives of those he loves. This frustration is often then passed to followers and the organizations they run. Most people are quick to say, “Everything rises and falls on leadership,” except when they are the leader!

Leader, locked in frustration, get still, ask God for help and wait on his response. While you are waiting, by faith go back to work and watch for God to realign, reset or restore your former joy.

“Be still and know that I am God.“

Psalm 46:10

(c) Alex Vann, 2017