3 High-Value Tips for Leaders to Break Out of Comfort Zone

Cozy environment and excellent facilities in your cabin/cubicle can make you feel super-comfortable. It is a physical comfort zone that we create around ourselves. Our desk becomes a place where discussions happen. Where papers are pushed.

If you are someone who ‘does things’, sticking to your desk all the day long is still fine because you get paid to do the stuff.

But as a leader in business setting, where you are expected to get things done, you cannot afford to be confined by cozy comforts of the office environments.

Leaders can have a bigger impact when they focus to “Work ON the business” rather than “Work IN the business”.

Not sure what you should do to get out of the comfort trap? Try any of these 3 random strategies. They not only pull you out of your comfort zone, but can also add tremendous value to your team/organization. These have always worked for me:

• Spend more time with your customers
  • As a leader, your impact on an organization is as large as the impact you have on the customers.
  • You can only get to know the “real” problems of your customers if you spend quality time with them to build a relationship.
  • It is easy to “monitor the numbers” (sales dashboards, internal efficiencies and other metrics). Once seen, what is difficult is to connect to customers, act and take right decisions.
  • Some of the most successful business leaders were known for spending more than 50% of their time facing customers.
• See people, don’t just watch them
  • When dealing with a team, it is easy to take people at their face value.
  • You can constantly “watch” your people (i.e. track their hours, outputs, track the time they spend away from their desks etc.) and that is easy.
  • Or you can “see” your people (i.e. understand them, their motivations, their skills and treat them as humans) and put right people on the right task.
  • You double your chances of success when right people do the right job with right levels of motivation.
  • Empower people, add value to them and help them grow in their individual capacities. That is the core of leadership. Be a catalyst.
• Improve something
  • Here is the idea. In a silent moment, sit with a pen and paper. Think about “Top 3” pain areas in your team/organization.
  • Ask “Why they are a pain?”
  • Identify what needs to be done to address these pains and then execute the improvement actions. Track the progress and improve further.
  • Sure, it is a hard work first time. But structuring an area of work in form of processes, you are reducing dependencies and improving operational efficiency.

So if you are a manager or leader at any level, do a reality check this morning. If you feel stuck, pick any one of the above and get yourself moving. I can assure, you won’t regret doing any of these!

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Photo Courtesy: DJHuber’s Flickr Photo stream

Great Quote - Comfort Zone and Complacency

This wonderful quote comes straight from Guerrilla Consulting Blog - where Mike McLaughlin refers to this quote by Harry Beckwith -

“…comfort nudges us dangerously close to complacency, and nothing good comes from that. It kills businesses, dulls lives, and encourages nothing better than ordinary. Our greatest blessings come from people who refused to be complacent, whether it was Beethoven or the Beatles.”

Too much of comfort is not a good sign - and managers/leaders needs to constantly introspect, ask difficult questions to self and be on the edge. I have seen many people in my career span who are averse to trying something new - because it requires them to move out of their comfort zone.

I was reading an article (not sure where!) on Intrapreneurship and I loved the term coined by author - “From Comfort Zone to Courage Zone”. Journey from comfort to courage may turn out to be adventurous and even uncomfortable initially - but it is worth giving a try! Because that is where all the growth lies.

Update 07/26: Great and timely quotes on Confidence Building in today’s Times Of India daily in Sacred Space. Here they go -

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. - Eleanor Roosevelt

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started. - Marcus Garvey