Restraint. It’s a hard quality to apply, especially for leaders when taking action is both and expectation and the norm. Decisiveness is a much-admired leadership quality, driven by an instinct to intervene, to act and fox. For some this is seen as the proof of a leader.
And yet we know leadership, like life, is more nuanced than that. Sure, the move to act may be the right thing, but not always.
One small but powerful (and probably recognisable) example…At times we’ll have delegated work that comes back looking little like we expected or would have done it. We may need to resist the temptation to take the work back and re-do it in our image.
In pausing, we might recognise the different and unhelpful restraint we’re putting on a colleague’s learning when taking time to talk through the work and coach would be of more value to both in the long run. Likewise, a ‘take back and re-do’ approach is a surefire way to undermine any sense the other has that we trust them.
Restraint is a conscious and vital choice when we start to think about our impact as leaders, not just on the people, teams and organisations we lead, also on the wider world beyond.
Ahead of every decision, even the urgent ones, we might pause to consider whether the choices facing us will contribute to a better world, a greater good or detract from it.
At times that choice might require something of a sacrifice or selflessness, and yet, if we’ve engaged heart as well as mind in out pausing and contemplating, we will know the right thing to do. And that right thing might be nothing.