Things are a little crazy around me right now. My work team is shorthanded due to a weird confluence of circumstances. We are, once again, looking for a house. On top of that are the usual obligations – weddings and car maintenance and taking out the trash and cutting the grass and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
I’ve recently read a lot about stoicism as a management philosophy. Google’s definition goes like this:
An ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium. The school taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge, and that the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain.
I want to focus on that last bit about being indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain. To me, that means that I focus on my tangible reactions to what happens rather than my emotional responses. For example, if there’s a fire, how I feel about that fire is unimportant. Throwing water on that fire is the important thing.
Which gets me back to the current craziness in my life and work. How I feel about that isn’t really important. What I do about it most assuredly is.
This also translates into how I lead my team through our current challenges. If I freak out, all that’s going to do is stress out my team. If I look at our current challenges, acknowledge that they are challenging, and then act in ways that resolve the problems, then they’re going to feel better about our ability to conquer any problem that comes before us.
In other words, never let ’em see you sweat.