Pre-Mortem

A drawing of our team by the amazing Amanda!

Tomorrow, we kick off our second Human Leadership Program. And, as it usually goes, the what-ifs started creeping into my head as we prepared . . .

What if this program isn’t as good as the last?

What if our audience isn’t as engaged?

What if we get complacent because of our previous success and we miss something?

What if we didn’t incorporate enough feedback from our past participants? What if we incorporated too much?

What if our idea of including student leaders to join us doesn’t work?

What if the team gets sick? What if I get sick?

What if our internet goes out? 

What if Zoom crashes?

What if we forget to record? 

What if we get questions we can’t answer?

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

It’s human and normal for these types of thoughts and fears to cross our minds. Especially when doing something new. Especially when doing something for a second time when you had great success the first time.

It’s what you do with the thoughts that matters.

In the past, I didn’t do anything with them except try to bury them. If pre-project jitters like these crossed my mind before venturing into something new, I dared not say them out loud to our team. “I am the leader,” I would tell myself. “I need to be the strong one.” And, if ever our team expressed fears aloud, I would—with unrelenting positivity—remind them that we would accomplish whatever was ahead of us like we had always done and that none of our fears would come true . . . even though, deep down, I had the same ones.

Things are quite different today. 

The more I learned about leadership, the more I learned about being human. The more I learned to talk about the stuff we feel, the more I learned that vulnerability is strength, the more I learned that realism is just as important as optimism, the more I learned to validate the emotions of others instead of dismissing them.

Today, before we venture into any new project or do anything meaningful, I lead our team through something called a pre-mortem. I learned it from my coach, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: Instead of waiting until after something happens to dissect what went wrong and why it did (a.k.a. a post-mortem), you do it beforehand. 

In this case, we imagined that our second round of the Human Leadership Program was an absolute disaster. We then went into why: What were all the things that happened that made it such a failure? Next, we imagined all the things that could go wrong, said them out loud, and talked openly about our fears and worst-case scenarios. After that, we shifted to talking about how we could prevent these things from happening, and we explored what we would do if our fears actually came true.

It’s a powerful exercise to lead because not only are you making it safe for people to talk about fear and failure, you are also productively exploring proactive measures you can take to minimize the chances of things going wrong. It doesn’t mean we are able to “solve” every potential problem and remove our fears . . . it just means we have plans in case these things actually happen.

For example, in the event that the entire team wakes up sick tomorrow morning and I’m the only one in good health, we decided that the show will still go on. What are the chances of 4 out of 4 team members waking up sick tomorrow? Probably very rare. But it was someone’s fear, and all fears are valid, so we made a plan. We also talked about what we’d do if the team wakes up in good health tomorrow but I wake up sick. We decided that if this happens, we will reschedule the program. I’ve never called out sick once from any kind of speaking engagement . . . but again, it was someone’s fear. And it’s valid. Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t one day.

The fact is . . . things will go wrong. They will. We can try our very best and be super proactive and our fears may still come true. It doesn’t do us any good to keep our jitters inside. Let’s talk about them. Let’s normalize them. Let’s humanize them.

Here’s what I know: Tomorrow, we will welcome more than 200 people from around the world to grow as leaders. Fifty students are joining as guests to learn the concepts of human leadership before entering their careers. There's a lot that can go wrong. There’s a lot that can go right. 

And no matter what happens, I’m proud of us. No matter what happens, our hearts are in the right places. No matter what happens, we are showing up in service of others.

In the end, that’s all that really matters, doesn’t it?

Big hugs,

Kristen

PS: No REAL TALK tomorrow because of the Human Leadership Program, but we’ll catch you the following week on 8/18 at 11 a.m. ET! Join us by registering here: https://bit.ly/3kWe2kT