Leading So People Will Follow

Talking to Yourself About Obstacles

Most of us have a tendency to react to obstacles in one of two ways depending on our own particular wiring: we may tend to avoid looking at the obstacles or overbalance in the opposite direction and become completely paralyzed by them. The art here for a leader lies in taking the middle path: looking at obstacles simply as data, assessing them accurately, and deciding how to move beyond them to achieve your vision. That’s what it means to see past the obstacles.

Learning to do this begins inside your own head, in managing how you’re talking to yourself about the obstacles before you. Most people’s mental monologue (self-talk) is a continual jumble of commentary. Some of it is pure reporting (“The industry is ...