Great leaders do not chase comfort – they choose difficult conversations, hard decisions, and accountability before crisis forces them to.
If you’re a leader in an architecture or engineering firm, you’ve probably had the same thought I have had more than once: “Maybe tomorrow will be an easy day.” You know the kind of day I’m talking about: the meetings all start and end on time, the inbox stays manageable, the project issues resolve themselves before they escalate, nobody resigns, nobody calls about a fee dispute, and no client sends an email that starts with “We need to talk.”
For leaders, the idea of the “easy day” can become a hoped-for fantasy. After grinding through enough long weeks we start to believe that if we just push through this one project or this one hiring challenge or this one difficult client situation then maybe things will finally settle down. But here’s the truth we all need to learn: Comfort is a myth.
There are almost no easy days at the leadership level; there are only days where we choose to face the hard things – and days where we postpone them. And postponing them almost always makes them more difficult.
How and why we avoid discomfort
Consciously or unconsciously, we tend to avoid doing difficult work. Hard things are hard to do! Most of us did not arrive in our current positions by being passive or avoidant, but the tendency to delay discomfort can show up in several ways:
- We delay the uncomfortable conversation with a struggling employee because we don’t want to hurt their feelings (or make them not like us)
- We hold on to a technical task that someone else could do because we’re more comfortable in our area of expertise than in our role as a manager and coach
- We avoid that networking event because we already have clients who like us
- We postpone reviewing financial performance metrics or contract terms and conditions because it’s easier to focus on the work we already know how to do or that we’re already great at
In the short term, these choices can feel productive. We stay busy and check items off the list, telling ourselves that we’ll address the harder issues when we have more time. But as we know, the point in the future where we have “more time” is as much a fantasy as the “easy day”. Delaying the hard things just compounds their severity. For example:
- A difficult conversation that should have happened in March becomes a performance crisis in September
- A delegation opportunity turns into a bottleneck where the leader becomes the constraint on the team’s growth
- You miss a chance to connect with potential new clients
- Financial blind spots slowly compound until leadership is forced to react instead of plan
In Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin make the argument that, “On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame.” The hard things must be done, and they must be done by us. It’s not enough to be productive; we must execute on the right things.
Discomfort is inevitable – agency is optional
You can’t prevent the hard parts of leadership; difficult personnel decisions, project crises, economic downturns, and client conflicts are part of the territory. However, you can decide whether you encounter them proactively or reactively. And in many cases, you can exert some control over the form of discomfort you confront. Consider a few examples:
- Getting up at 5 a.m. every morning to exercise is uncomfortable. But it’s a discomfort you choose today in an effort to stave off preventable health problems in the future.
- Putting money into savings or your 401(k) retirement account reduces your disposable income today. But planning for your financial future keeps you from having to work beyond your desired timeline.
- Giving direct feedback to a struggling employee is uncomfortable. But it’s far less uncomfortable than dealing with the consequences of unresolved poor performance – or losing your top performers who grow tired of carrying the load.
- Stepping into unfamiliar responsibilities like business development, financial management, or contract negotiations is uncomfortable for many technical leaders. But avoiding those areas simply transfers the risk to someone else in the organization.
By directly engaging with hard things, we build up a body of evidence that we can overcome hard things. As Angela Duckworth writes in Grit, “When you keep searching for ways to change your situation for the better, you stand a chance of finding them. When you stop searching, assuming they can't be found, you guarantee they won't.”
Leaders set the cultural temperature
Perhaps the most important aspect of choosing discomfort is that leaders set the tone for everyone around them. Leaders model the behavioral norms of the organization, so if leaders avoid difficult conversations, their teams will do the same. If leaders stay in their technical comfort zone, emerging leaders will believe that management responsibilities are optional. If leaders quietly endure problems instead of addressing them openly, issues will remain hidden until they become crises.
Thankfully, the opposite is also true! When leaders demonstrate a willingness to tackle uncomfortable issues directly, it sends a powerful signal throughout the organization: this is a place where hard things are addressed, not ignored. Equally important is the environment leaders create around that behavior.
Encouraging people to do difficult things only works if they know that failure isn’t fatal. In Right Kind of Wrong, Amy Edmondson writes, “Psychological safety helps people take the interpersonal risks that are necessary for achieving excellence in a fast-changing, interdependent world. When people work in psychologically safe contexts, they know that questions are appreciated, ideas are welcome, and errors and failure are discussable. In these environments, people can focus on the work without being tied up in knots about what others might think of them. They know that being wrong won't be a fatal blow to their reputation.”
When people feel safe, they’re more willing to lean into discomfort, and that’s where growth happens.
Preparation isn’t prevention – it’s resilience
Many leaders instinctively try to eliminate discomfort through preparation. Strategic plans, policies, training programs, and systems are all designed to reduce uncertainty. And make no mistake, these measures are incredibly valuable! They’re many of the “hard” things we do to help make our organizations better. Unfortunately, they don’t eliminate hard problems.
Each time a leader chooses to have the difficult conversation, delegates a responsibility that stretches the team, or confronts a financial or operational issue early, they’re building muscle memory for the organization. They’re proving, to themselves and to their team, that hard things can be handled. Over time, that confidence compounds. And while preparation doesn’t prevent these challenges, it builds resilience.
Choosing discomfort today
In architecture and engineering firms, we often celebrate technical mastery. But the organizations that thrive over decades tend to have leaders who consistently choose discomfort. They:
- Address issues early.
- Take responsibility for difficult outcomes.
- Invest time in areas outside their personal comfort zone.
- Create cultures where honesty and accountability are normal.
None of these behaviors eliminate the challenges of leadership, but they do something more important. They ensure that when the hard days inevitably arrive, the organization is ready for them. And perhaps that’s the real goal: Not finding the easy day but building the kind of team that can handle the hard ones together.
 |
Morgan Stinson is chief operating officer at EEA Consulting Engineers. Contact him at morganstinson@eeace.com. |