I believe that patience is not a virtue, but instead it is a skill that can be learned and mastered over time. From a young age we are taught to be patient, good things come to those who wait, but why is this same thought process not used by today’s business leaders?
Patience may not be a commonly talked about leadership tool, but it is a tool that all great leaders possess. Great leaders know when to take a step back in order to see situations in different light. Great leaders are not quick to judge others and jump to conclusions. Great leaders fully listen to their followers before answering. Great leaders do not quickly blame others when there is failure. Lastly, great leaders have the ability to know when they are becoming impatient. The problem is that patience is being worked out of our society as we more to a period in time that is filled with instant gratification through the likes of social media, technology, the ability to watch TV shows on demand through Netflix, and the list goes on. The issue with the world becoming more instantaneous is that this has now trickled its way into the way leaders conduct themselves and as a result has decreased the number of great leaders in our society.
Patience as a leadership tool is beneficial to both the leader and the followers. By showing self-control through the use of patience, leaders are able to increase productivity, develop their follower’s skills, be more detail oriented, and portray themselves as being more compassionate. Art Petty describes six reasons as to why patience as a tool, is often a leader’s best choice in his book Leadership Caffeine.
- Constantly stressing speed to your followers, or “Too much beating the drum for speed, speed, speed” (Petty, 2012) will eventually result in your followers ignoring you or having a loss in faith. As the old adage goes, if everything is urgent, nothing is urgent.
- Developing skilled followers takes time. As a manager you may want your brand-new employee to perform at the same level as all the other employees, but this is unrealistic. Developing skilled employees takes time and patience, and leaders should adjust expectations to reflect this.
- Followers process change at different rates. This in a way ties to the second reason as new employees will take sometime to adapt to their new workplace and the procedures associated with it. Also, if as a leader you fail to show patience with those who are in the middle of processing change, you run the risk of losing them as follower.
- Speed kills, in other words, poorly planned corporate initiatives that are implement way to fast often end in disaster. In order to successfully implement a plan, a leader must show patience and think out all the steps before leading his followers.
- Some processes are naturally resistant to speed. Not all tasks can be completed quickly, the process and time to complete the task is sometimes unaffected by your employee’s skills or motivation. When this is the case, leaders need to show patience in order to keep their followers committed to the task.
- Human gut instincts can be misleading when assessing the skills of followers. Incorrectly jumping to conclusions about the skill level of staff can lead to skilled employee turnover, leaders should be patient when assessing situations in order to correctly diagnosis their followers. (Petty, 2012)
In order to implement patience as a leadership tool, the first step is to become self-aware and emotionally intelligent. By becoming self-aware leaders are then able to control their emotions and are more capable of analyzing situations and how they should respond given the circumstances. If a leader is unable to recognize when they are becoming impatient with their followers, they will not be able to lead them to the best of their ability.
References:
Petty, A. (2012, Decemeber 27). Leadership Caffeine – 6 Reasons Why Patience is a Leader’s Best Friend. Retrieved April 2018, from https://artpetty.com/2012/12/27/leadership-caffeine-6-reasons-why-patience-is-a-leaders-best-friend/
Dwight's Leadership Toolkit 