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DISCIPLINING YOUR DISAPPOINTMENTS IN LEADERSHIP

I have seen pioneer leaders who quit because they felt disappointed, in that their efforts did not yield the a commensurate results from their estimation but they forget to recognition that it is not every seed planted to the ground that germinates. Pioneer leaders must additionally discipline their disappointments in such a way that it gives them the benefit of doubt not to throw in the towel when things go wrong.

The guarantee of harvest after planting your seed depends on nature while you still deserve it. I have seen farmers who lost all their crops to erosion, flood, earthquake, pest infestation, even herds men, but they never stopped planting. Those occurrences are not totally within the farmers' control, nonetheless they still have a choice to be disappointed or not. In leadership, many times, your efforts as the pioneer leader will not yield increase, such that people will get offended and leave the leadership cycle unexpectedly, which sometimes, also, has left many leaders heat broken.

Disciplining your disappointments is developing a mindset that something may go wrong in the process of transforming followers to leaders, and knowing that it is normal. The reason is that bad and good things will always happen so that you can be able to place value on what is good, but not excluding the bad from happening. Meaning that the possibility of good and evil happening is 50/50. Until the leader disciplines his disappointments, he may not be able to handle the turnout of events when unanticipated results are gotten.

In studying the ancient book, I discovered a story that captures this particular leadership dynamics of disciplining your disappointments.  Jesus tells a story in His parable of the sower that the sower went all out and sowed his seeds: some fell by the way side, some fell on the stony ground, some fell on thorns. and some fell on good ground. Notice that 1 out of 4 fell on the good ground, which establishes that the sower stands a chance of succeeding only 1 out of 4. In leadership, it is expected that 1 out of 4 of your efforts will yield the required results. The farmer was not angry that some of his seeds fell on the wrong places, rather he recognized that some fell on good ground and chose to focus his attention on those.

As a leader, do not let little things cheat you out of big opportunities, because not every of your seeds will fall on good grounds. In practice, settle it in your heart that you cannot make everyone successful. Not everyone will be successful in following through your instructions. Those are some of the leadership constants that you must settle your  hearts to receive. Understand that you cannot change people but they can change themselves.

In disciplining your disappointments, let your motivation be that the odds are 1 out of 4 and focus your attention on that. Furthermore, in that story, the seeds that fell on good grounds did not produce equal results, meaning that the results of your efforts will never be uniform as you endeavor to lead the people from point A to B within a record. Some will bring 30% result, others 60%, yet another, 100%. That is just the way it is. The 30 cannot and will never do 60 or 100. Actually, it is more frustrating to expect 100 from those whose capacity is just 30. But great pioneer leaders recognize that everybody's capacity vary and will never put the people under pressure in order to produce results beyond their capacity.

Disciplining your disappointments and recognize that sometimes output will never equal input; that the people will always produce results according to their own capacity and not according to your own capacity.

Elvis C. Umez
Leadership Consultant
IDB Consult

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