Navigating Obstacles
Stories of our and others’ accomplishments always seem to sound like a logical, linear pathway to success. But in reality, attaining any goal is a winding road, with false starts, missteps, and obstacles. Sometimes these obstacles are programmatic and other times they are personalities. Either way, the road to success requires navigating through the mire and muck to get to one’s goals.
Literally, every significant project is accompanied by equally significant challenges. In essence, what makes the project important and impactful is the need to overcome confounding complications. And the larger the leadership role that you chose to play, the broader the scope of problems you will encounter and need to overcome.
A crucial element of leadership, then, is overcoming the inevitable obstacles, complications, holdups, impasses, that are part of every path to success. How you overcome them is as much a part of leadership as attaining the success itself. As a matter of fact, leadership is often most apparent when encountering and responding to roadblocks to success.
Can you as a leader demonstrate the same grace, respect, calmness, and kindness during the moments when your goal seems elusive or obstructed as when things are all going smoothly? Can you help the team to recognize that challenges are part of the path to success? Can you guide your colleagues to be creative in finding ways around, through, and over obstacles in your path in a way that is consistent with your values and those of your organization? Can you role model behaviors to manage difficult personalities that are creating unnecessary roadblocks to your progress?
This doesn’t mean that you cannot be frustrated or disappointed that the path forward is difficult or uncertain. It does mean that, as a leader, if you lose self-control over how you respond to the situation, you will ultimately lose the respect of your followers and colleagues, and the desired goal becomes unattainable anyhow.
When you learn to navigate obstacles with the clarity of vision, collaborating with others to attain the goal, any crisis becomes an opportunity to reestablish a sense of purpose and confidence in your and the team’s ability to manage the inevitable complexities that occur with any great endeavor.
“As someone who works in the area of change leadership, I can tell you that logjams, bottlenecks, and obstacles are part of every path to success.” — Seth Kahan
About the Authors
Pam Thompson MS, RN, FAAN is the CEO Emeritus of the American Organization for Nursing Leadership, formerly AONE. During the same time, 2000–2016, she was the Senior VP of Nursing for the American Hospital Association. After retiring in 2017, she now serves as a healthcare consultant and volunteer board member and trustee for several healthcare entities.
Marla Weston PhD, RN, FAAN is the past CEO of the American Nurses Association Enterprise which included the American Nurses Association, American Nurses Credentialing Center and American Nurses Foundation, serving from 2009 to 2018. She now is a consultant and facilitator in leadership development, organizational strategy and growth, and future trends.
