Stay cool under pressure

Years ago, in a small mid-western town in the United States, there was a rather odd fellow called Ticky. Old Ticky wasn’t the brightest citizen in those parts. The townsfolk often said that he was a few bricks short of a load. One day, Ticky wandered into the blacksmith’s shop where the blacksmith had just pulled a horseshoe out of the fire a few moments earlier, laid it on the anvil and turned to fetch another tool. The horseshoe wasn’t glowing hot, but it was close. The first thing unsuspecting Ticky did was to reach down and pick up the horseshoe with his bare hand. Instantly realising the error of his ways, he let out a yell and threw it down. “Did you burn yourself, Ticky?” the blacksmith asked. “No,” Ticky shot back, blowing on his hand, “it just don’t take me long to look at a horseshoe!” The eloquent management genius, Peter F. Drucker, once said that a crisis must never be experienced for the second time. When Ticky and Peter F. Drucker agree on a management axiom, there has to be some natural truth to it. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, Ticky never picked up another horseshoe, hot or cold. Before laughing too hard at poor Ticky, it wouldn’t hurt to consider how much Ticky there is in each one of us. First of all, he didn’t realise the horseshoe was hot. All too often, we find ourselves in the hot seat without a clue as to how we got there. There’s no shame in picking up a hot horseshoe, unless we’ve picked it up before. Business people regularly contribute to their personal stress levels by picking up the same horseshoe over and over again. We all need to become what show business people call a quick study and resolve not to repeat behaviour that result in heated situations. When executives and managers realise how their habits influence the entire organisation, it is easy to understand how a burning twig can quickly become a forest fire. The secret to leading under pressure is to be equipped with an early warning system and techniques for swift and skilful resolution of difficulties. A skilful and effective leader has a long memory and is constantly open to new input. If you’re feeling the temperature rising in your organisation, stop and make a three-point assessment of the situation: 1 Is the friction caused by pressure from outside sources such as customers, stockholders, the bank and/or government agencies? 2 Is the friction coming from inside sources such as employee demands, lagging productivity, poor quality and/or unreasonable imperatives from senior executives? 3 Are personal issues invading the work place, brought in by one or more individuals up and down the organisational ladder, including yourself? Whatever difficulties are causing the organisation to heat up, you can be the one to cool the situation by, first, identifying how similar challenges were successfully negotiated in the past and second, refusing to pick up the hot horseshoe a second time. A hot hand remembered is a cool hand under pressure. – Source: ST/ANN Excerpted from Leadership When The Heat’s On, a book by Danny Cox, one of America’s busiest speakers, a former air force pilot and the author of several books.