Leadership Challenge: Go Where You Don’t Want To and Be Better For It.

There’s another nonprofit leader in Nashville whose personality grates on me. I’m being blunt about it because it has everything to do with this leadership challenge. I’ve never worked for her, or actually even worked with her on something requiring work product. I see her often in nonprofit gatherings for networking or training. I can’t say I don’t like her. It’s more accurate to say she irritates me and I struggle to respect her position of leadership.

If I believed I was the only one who feels this way about a colleague, I probably wouldn’t be so honest. I’m pretty sure I have good company. Because I don’t actually work with her, the path of least resistance would be to not like her and not worry about it. But that’s petty. Petty is no one’s most attractive trait.

An unintended but interesting thing happened. While I was thinking about this challenge, I found myself in a meeting with her. Since the challenge is to be a professional grown up with colleagues who irritate, how I interacted with her was front and center on my mind. I made a conscious decision to interact directly with her instead of avoiding her, which is what I usually do. Did I suddenly feel like I wanted to go drink a beer with her? No, but I did feel much more relaxed. It was easy to appreciate what she said and not focus on the personality things that annoy me.

I’ve decided to take it a step further. I’m going to invite her for coffee or lunch or make an appointment to talk about some ideas I have. There is always value to getting outside my well-loved comfort zone. Even if the hoped-for outcome falls flat, the value is doing it. Most often there will be gain…new insights, fresh perspective, even an aha moment.

Leadership challenge: Have a conversation with someone in your professional world who annoys you.

Some details:

• It shouldn’t be someone you have conflict with or someone it would seem weird to invite to coffee or lunch. It should be someone who even though they irritate you, you know they have things to offer.
• You don’t have to lock yourself into coffee or lunch. Find a reason to call them for an opinion about something and see where the conversation goes.
• If you want to go crazy with the challenge, ask if there’s anything you can do to help them. An event that needs volunteers? A presentation for their staff in an area of your expertise?

I’m going to give it a try. Maybe this conversation will change nothing or maybe it will surprise me. There’s only one way to find out.