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Leaders use the Scales of Balance

Written by: Paul Bridle

Article Overview: How do we balance determination with prudence? How do we have a vision but don't become locked into something and loose sight of opportunities? Can we maintain focus while at the same time stand back and take an objective viewpoint?

Leaders use the Scales of Balance

My son was going through the mid-term blues at university. You know what I mean, we have all been there. We start out with loads of enthusiasm and then part way through the year reality kicks in and we start to wonder why we are doing this? We pull ourselves out of it just in time to start a hectic dash for final exams.

I had a chat with my son in an endeavour to encourage him and re-vitalise him in some way. I said something that even made me stop and think! I said “Remember, it is not the Degree that is important, but rather what you learn along the way”. I went on to explain that discovering how to learn, how to present his case, how to discipline himself and how to plan his work and study, were all far more important than the Degree at the end of the two years.

Is this a contradiction with the need to keep focused? I don’t think so. It is all about balance in our perspective. His desire and determination to achieve the degree is a good aim but at the same time he needs to keep it in perspective. If he achieves the degree and doesn’t benefit from the learning along the way, then he joins the massive queue of people who have an education but lack intelligence to make a living.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not belittling the achievement of anyone who has got a degree. Far from it, but what use is knowledge if a person does not know how to use it in practice? The same applies to everything we do, especially in business. We get so focused on the share price, the sales target or similar objectives, that we don’t take time to get some of the enjoyment and learning from the process. In this busy world with deadlines and targets, it becomes easy to get caught up in the big push to succeed.

Sales people fall into this trap. They are so focused on making their target and closing the sale that they forget to learn from each and every encounter with a customer. If the customer doesn’t buy they just move onto the next one without asking valuable questions such as, ‘what could I have done differently that would have made that sale possible?’ or ‘what did I do right that I could do again next time? Questions like these make that sales person learn from the process and not get lost in the mad push to achieve the goal.

So what has this got to do with Leadership? A leaders responsibility is to help people find this balance. A leader needs to keep the balance in people’s minds. A leaders role is to help people not only remain focused but also to make sure that they are learning from the journey and getting the most out of it.

Of course this means that Leaders need to be able to do this themselves.

So how do we remain focused at the same time as maintain balance?

Lets me share an example of team that climbed Mount Everest in 1994 including Dennis Brown, John McIsacc, Jamie Clarke and others. Here was a team of people who faced all the obstacles thrown at them. What helped them make it through? A constant focus on the peak. Their focus was always on making the peak and they couldn’t allow the worsening conditions or individual problems get in the way of what they wanted to achieve.

The team were struggling and Dennis and John had to go on alone. Finally, Dennis had to stop and left John to continue to the summit. At 162 meters and only forty minutes from the summit, John was faced with the reality that physically he was not going to be able to make it. Not that he could not reach the top, but rather that he would not be able to make it back after reaching the summit!

You see, making the summit and then not making it back was not a worthwhile goal. The aim had to be to get there and that had to be balanced with also getting back. With only 162 meters to go the decision was made to turn back.

Can you imagine being so close and yet recognising that the last few feet would be breaking the balance? But it did not end there. Having decided to turn back they had to descend the mountain and make sure that they were capable of making it back another day! These climbers were learning at each stage of the operation. They were storing that information so that they were capable of using it next time.

Here is another way that leaders keep a balanced perspective. I have found that outstanding leaders treat failure in the same way that they treat success! What does that mean?

I am reminded of Rudyard Kiplings famous poem ‘If’.

“Meet triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same”

I have found that leaders do just that. Failure is viewed as a learning opportunity and so is success. That does not mean that in both cases we go out and celebrate in the same way. It does mean that we don’t get carried away by the success or the failure.

You may have heard the expression ‘there is no such thing as failure, there is only feedback’. In other words, failure is not the end of the world unless we let it be. Failure is a discovery of one way it is not going to work. We need to learn from that and make sure we don’t repeat that way again. So the moral of the story is, let us learn from the failure and then move on with new knowledge and experience that will be valuable to us.

However, the same mental attitude applies to success. Success is wonderful but it is not a guarantee that we will achieve it again. We may have achieved our targets for the year and done better than we ever did before. However, just because we did well this year does not automatically mean we will do the same next year!

So leaders celebrate the success and enjoy the moment, but they maintain a balance that says, what can we learn from that experience and what do we need to do next time?

Same response on both occasions - What can we learn from this and what do we need to do next time?

That is keeping a balanced perspective.

If we are going to learn to have that balance within ourselves we need to be able to always put the situation into perspective. We need to be able to look at issues and situations in context of the greater opportunities or the bigger picture.

My study of leaders showed me that they generally do this at certain times.

1. When they are getting too emotionally involved in the goal they want, then they will seek an objective stance that checks that this is the right track to be on.
2. When they are getting more pressure than they anticipated, this will cause them to step back and ask themselves what they are missing?
3. When someone they respect makes a comment that makes them try to see the situation from another persons perspective
4. Just before they hit the point of no turning back, they will re-examine the situation to make sure that this is the right focus and that there is nothing they are missing.
There are probably many other times, but these are the main times that I have noticed that leaders make sure that they bring out the ‘scales of balance’ and put the whole situation into a perspective.

What are you doing that has got you so focused that you have forgotten to look for the balance? Look around and you will soon see that there is a perspective that you have lost or not noticed.

We can’t look through the telescope and at the same time notice the foreground. Equally you can’t drive the car by looking at the end of the bonnet of the car. We can’t remain focused without blocking out something as a result. It takes a conscious effort to take our eye off the focus to make sure you get the whole picture and put the situation into perspective before refocusing on the goal.


As leaders we need to develop this ability within ourselves as well as helping our people do the same.

How good are you at helping people maintain that balance? Do you keep emphasising the outcome without balancing it with the learning, the development and the enjoyment that we should be getting out of each day.

Helping people get the most out of the journey is not only as important as achieving the outcome but in some ways it can make achieving the outcome possible.

When people are getting too close to the issue or allowing their emotions to cloud their judgement, then the leaders role is to bring the balance into the frame. Point out the view that the person has lost and help the person to discover the other side to the situation.

Take time to listen to people and ask yourself what it is they are focused on, and then ask, what they are missing in creating that focus? As a leader if we notice people in these situations, then we need to consider it our role to step in and ensure that they are having a balanced view of the situation.

Another example may be seeing an employee looking dejected or down in the mouth. Maybe he is a sales person and is getting frustrated by customers choosing the cheaper alternatives flooding the market from overseas. What can we do in this situation?

Putting it into perspective we may say,

“I realise that people are going to try the cheaper alternatives but we both know that the cheaper alternatives don’t have the same quality or reliability in the long run. We know that the unit price is cheaper but the overall cost is greater because they won’t last as long as ours. So don’t get dejected, just because we know it doesn’t mean that our customers know it. They need to discover it for themselves. At times like these we need to make sure that the customers feel comfortable to come back to us and don’t feel too embarrassed by their mistakes. We need to be helping them discover what we already know…..”

What have we managed to do here? We have brought balance into the situation for the sales person. Have we taken away the problem? No. Have we given up on the focus? No of course not. All we have done is put the problem into perspective. We took out the scales of balance and weighed the situation up and helped the person put the issue into context.

Practice the skill of seeking to find balance. Use the signals that great leaders use to know that you have probably lost the balance. Most of all remain focused with the ability to step out of the situation when necessary and take in the bigger picture.

For my son, if he learns how to plan, how to discipline himself, discovers how he learns best and how to deal with the challenges and deadlines of being at university and doing a degree, then he will probably do well in the exams and get his degree. Most of all he will have an ability that will serve him well for the rest of his life.

Paul Bridle

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Article Tags: aim, benefit from, contradiction, customer doesn, desire, education, encounter, endeavour, lack intelligence, perspective, queue, sales target, share price, targets



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