The Project is Failing and You’re Starting to Panic

Every Thursday, we show you a real-life management challenge, explain how traditional approaches come up short, and then walk you through how you could use AiMS thinking and tools to confidently overcome them in your own team. A few small, but important changes in how you think, talk and act can immediately increase your ability to drive results, improve culture and develop your people.

The Situation

Picture yourself leading a team with a high-stakes project on the line. Deadlines are looming, client demands are shifting, and your team is looking to you for guidance. Meanwhile, unexpected issues arise – a key team member falls ill, technology fails at a critical moment, and your customer is driving you nuts with their constant demands. You're trying to navigate these challenges while maintaining team morale and meeting targets and you feel like you're failing at every turn. Everything seems out of your control, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and stretched to your limits.

If you're anything like me, you've wondered if being in a leadership position is worth the headache.

What Goes Wrong

You've probably resorted to some common pitfalls when you find yourself in this situation:

• Micromanaging
• Losing focus on the broader objectives
• Succumbing to decision fatigue

You may have overextended yourself by trying to handle every detail, which can result in overlooking strategic priorities. This excessive control often diminishes the team's morale and productivity, as your stress becomes a shared burden. Ultimately, the attempt to control everything can ironically lead to a loss of effective leadership and decision-making ability, exacerbating the sense of being overwhelmed.

It can be a vicious, spiralling cycle.

The AiMS Way

We know that effective leadership starts with self-leadership. Self-leadership is about embodying the qualities and behaviors that one seeks to inspire in their team: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, accountability, resilience and a relentless drive towards better results and a better culture.

The foundational skill in improving your ability to lead yourself is to understand and act on what's in your control. There are three main areas in your control:

• How you choose to look at things
• Your intentions and your wants
• Your decision and actions

By focusing on these elements, you can more effectively influence outcomes and lead by example. This approach fosters a positive, proactive environment, where challenges are met with thoughtful responses and a clear vision, essential for successful leadership.

Let's use our high-stakes project example from above: What's in Your Control:

• The choice to be focused on finding solutions.
• The decision to believe in your team's ability to step up and deliver
• The desire to use this challenging situation to grow as a leader
• Your response to the situation, including staying calm, positive and optimistic.?
• The decision to reallocate resources and tasks among the team to cover for the absent member.
• Communicating effectively with the client about the situation and potential delays.
• Prioritizing tasks to focus on the most critical elements of the project.
• Studying previous successes to see what strengths you can build on in this situation.

What's Not in Your Control:

• The team member's absence (due to illness or other personal reasons).
• The unforeseen technical issues that have arisen (assuming they are beyond your team's immediate expertise).
• The initial deadline, if it was set by the client and not negotiable.
• External factors affecting the project, like market conditions or third-party dependencies.
• How your boss reacts.

Focusing on what is in your control doesn't mean your team will hit the deadline - there are too many variables outside your control to guarantee that. But it will give your team the very best chance of hitting it - which is much better than feeling overwhelmed and stuck.?

The AiMS ToolKit

We've developed a very simple tool called the Energy Focusing Framework that will teach you how to get clear on what's in your control and what isn't. It gives a simple, powerful template that you can use to map out all the aspects of a situation and get immediate, laser clarity on where you should focus your attention and energy.

All our training participants have access to our entire library of leadership tools.

Our Next Training Cohort Starts January 11, 2024

The AiMS Leadership Development Certificate Program is design to help leaders lead 1-on-1 and team meetings that do three things simultaneously:

• Drive results
• Improve culture and belonging
• Promote employee development and well-being

Our training could be right for you if you…

• Need to radically increase employee ownership and engagement
• Have a desire to run more effective meetings
• Desire better coaching conversations and interactions
• Care about people and relationships as much as (if not more than)? you do results
• Want team members to deliver their best results
• Want to get more done and feel better about your work
• Need to drive continuous innovation
• Are ready to tap into and multiply your team's capacity to get things done

Schedule a discovery call and let’s see if the AiMS Leadership Development Certificate Program is right for you and your organization!