Discovering Hidden Opportunities To Lead

By Hardin Byars, executive coach with HTG Peer Groups

It was a typical winter morning in London. The fog hung so thick in the predawn air that you could spoon it. As the bus arrived it was the usual packed scene into which he wedged and jostled, picking his path towards a place to stand comfortably out of the way. This morning, however, he found himself leaning up against a previously unnoticed door that popped open under the press of the crowd. The opening revealed a small, lit stairway into which he found himself drawn. At the top of the stairs he emerged onto a second level that was completely empty. “Has this been here all along,” he asked?

Do you ever feel like the guy in our fictional story? New morning … but the same old stuff that crams our plate and taxes our capacity. Unfortunately, all too often that’s the way we look at daily challenges. Yet, as with our commuter friend, if we only focus on the lower level of the bus, the untapped capacity of the second level remains obscured in the fog.

To get beyond this way of thinking I encourage budding leaders to step back and take a broader view of a situation — to see that many of our daily issues are actually double decker opportunities to serve and to lead. Yes, there are things that fill our plates and need our immediate attention. However, as long as we just focus on “fixing” problems that people bring to us, they will keep bringing us their problems. Instead, we can look at issues with an eye both for the immediate solution as well as for exploring developmental opportunities with the person bringing us the issue.

So the next time someone presents a problem for you to solve, ask yourself the question “is this an opportunity to teach?” Then, let that answer shape how you respond. You may find that you not only wrestle the problem to the ground but, over time, you end up with more capacity as you teach your team how to handle more of their challenges themselves.