“He just can’t say ‘no’ to any idea, especially his own.”
“She flits from one new project to another. She never finishes anything she starts.”
“He’s got the worst adult ADD I’ve ever seen!”
These are comments we often hear about leaders—which hampers leadership follow through. So often the frustration with leaders is not that they lack vision or direction, but that they can’t keep to a direction once set.
In Pixar’s 2009 animated classic Up, there is an iconic scene in which Dug, the talking dog, is suddenly distracted and yells, “Squirrel!” We now kindly refer to the leaders referenced above as exhibiting SQUIRREL leadership.
The First Step to Leadership Follow Through Requires a Pause
Being easily distracted during decision-making prevents important followthrough.
The Importance of Leadership Follow Through
So how do leaders with uncontrollable instincts to pursue new shiny objects remain opportunistic while guarding against the destructive consequences of SQUIRREL Leadership? Here are four doses of self-honesty to take if you feel as though you may be your organization’s “Squirrel.”
1. Don’t dismiss the costly consequences.
Your ability to generate a new idea a minute isn’t “strategic,” “creative,” or “entrepreneurial.” The truth is that it’s costly. The capacity you are draining from your people and your organization has real dollars attached to it. The psychic motivation you are exhausting from them is incalculable.
Worse, you are likely diminishing a genuine strength that you could bring as a leader by using it to excess. The greatest way to ensure your, and others’, ideas have maximum impact on your strategy is to narrow the focus of your team and organization on the few initiatives with the most promising potential.
Stretching capacity too thin by bouncing it from one thing to another ensures your strategy will likely fail to realize the results you hope for.
2. Own your FOMO.
Whether it’s excessive ideation as a leader, or job-hopping from one assignment to another, your fear of missing out may be a detrimental factor underlying your unconstrained impulses—another detriment to leadership follow through. Pinpoint the anxiety that triggers how you respond to new ideas (especially your own) or opportunities that arise.
Are you really drawn to them on genuine merit, or are you simply afraid of grandeur you may miss out on? Learn to evaluate ideas and opportunities on measurable criteria for what potential they hold. Do your best to emotionally detach from them. The more you can depersonalize the idea or opportunity, the more objectively you will evaluate it.
3. The importance of follow through: Accept not every great idea should be born.
No matter how brilliant an idea may be, no organization has the capacity to pursue them all. Walking away from the obviously mediocre ideas requires no leadership feat. Saying no to great ideas so that greater ideas can prevail is what exceptional leaders do.
Effective decision-making and leadership follow through are both essential to managing a team. Learn how with these blogs:
If you struggle saying no, especially denying yourself your own pet projects, recognize others will eventually conclude your leadership to be weak. Every “yes” you dole out means previous “yes’s” get diluted. Learn to be gratified by the hard work to see one great opportunity through to completion no matter how many others you must forfeit.
4. Dig up the underlying pathology
It’s very likely that your inability to control impulsive instincts stems from deeper issues. It could be that your sense of significance and identity are overly rooted in your need for affirmation. Having your ideas acted on validates you, and forfeiting your ideas makes you feel inadequate.
It could be that you do have ADD and your need for immediate gratification impairs your judgment when new opportunities arise. Or it could be that your envy of others’ ideas triggers your “greener grass” impulse to compete and prevail so others don’t outshine you.
Finally, your unrestrained sense of discontent may create persistent restlessness that makes it impossible for you to sit still long enough to let ideas or opportunities mature. Regardless of the root, accept there is one to be dug up, and that your behavior is more than a personality quirk.
Whether it’s managing your career or your organization, your SQUIRREL leadership impulses come with a cost. If others have raised this with you, even in jest, take it seriously. Step back and do a ruthless assessment of your decision-making, focus, and leadership.
Ask for hard feedback, even if it has to be anonymous, to see if others are suffering in silence from the repercussions of your impulsive flitting. SQUIRREL leadership has destroyed many a career and organization. Don’t let it do the same to yours. Focus on the importance of follow through.