WHAT YOU FEEL: with so much to do and so much pressure, it’s hard not to react or be emotional

PERSPECTIVE:  You must be a deliberate, thoughtful and unemotional leader in the midst of all the chaos. As Rudyard Kipling put it in his poem “If”:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same.

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

You probably don’t feel you are any of deliberate, or thoughtful or unemotional often. In fact, the same traits that make you a dynamic entrepreneur – vision, passion, and energy – are sometimes inconsistent with these traits. In addition, with the pressures you face, being unemotional, thoughtful and deliberate is tough, especially when all you are looking to do is to let air out of your balloon.

In the midst of the chaos, you must see through the noise and pressure of the moment and make deliberate, thoughtful and unemotional decisions. If you are not able to, you may make bad decisions, alienate constituents, or cause others to question your leadership and the potential of the business. I know what you are thinking – “ I wish I could have one hour when I was deliberate OR thoughtful OR unemotional.” It is difficult to take a deep breath, process information objectively and make good decisions. How do you do this?

There are several ways. First, you must take emotion out of the equation. Emotion causes us to be reactive. Think of the situation in which the vendor working on your technology platform tells you that even though you are one month from your product launch, it is going to cost you an extra fifty percent to complete it. Your first reaction is to get pissed. Thoughts run through your head “Why couldn’t they have shared this weeks or months ago? Where the hell do they think we can get the money? I can’t believe they are trying to take advantage of us.” You are tempted to lose it, to send your friend Tony to have a “conversation” with them or to fire them on the spot. None of this is new. In a normal business environment, taking the emotion out of decisions is done every day. With entrepreneurs, however, your balloon is full and an event like this can often cause our balloon to pop.

Emotion causes bad decision-making. When we are emotional, we react to the situation at hand and fail to take into account the implications of our decisions. Consider the technology vendor. Despite the fact that you think that you were treated unfairly, you must consider that, among other things, you may not have a back-up plan, you need time to find an alternative, and the vendor has your confidential information.

In addition to the negative consequences of decisions, when you make decisions with emotion it sends a message to your team, advisors, investors and customers. When you react emotionally, your employees and investors question your leadership. Customers question your judgment. Employees think to themselves “We have a good business idea but do I think we can be successful if this is the way our leader acts”?

I was recently at an event at which ex-President George W. Bush spoke. He was asked to take us though his thought process when he was told about the attacks of September 11. He was sitting in front of a first grade class when Andy Carr, his Chief of Staff, whispered in his ear “a second plane hit the World Trade Center. We are under attack.” President Bush said the first thing that went through his mind was that he was pissed and wanted to jump out of his chair and get to work. Instead, he sat, waited for what seemed like forever until the class was done, slowly walked out, met with parents as per his schedule and then left with his team. He understood that the most important thing at that moment was to convey a sense of calm.

When leaders react emotionally, they send a signal of instability that makes constituents – team members, employees, investors, customers and the like – question the stability of the organization. You may be letting some air out of the balloon, but in the end you are hurting both the organization and your stature as their leader.

Being unemotional is only the first step. You also have to be thoughtful and deliberate. For the important issues, you must give them more thought. In early stages, you often don’t have the financial or human resources to take advantage of standard business practices. You may need to come up with creative solutions to solve issues because of this limitation. You need to tap into the same creativity that helped you create your vision. You have to find ways to make one plus one equal three or to get blood from a stone. It’s not as if the solution to your technology vendor would be answered with “no problem. We were planning for this contingency and have a backup offshore shop doing parallel work.” Right. You need to bring a thoughtfulness to your decision-making process to take advantage of your creativity and the creativity of others.

You also need to be deliberate. The whole day of an entrepreneur is about scrambling. With important decisions, you have to slow down. They say in the NFL quarterbacks have success when the “game slows down” – when they can see how the play is developing before it develops. In decision-making process under the gun, we don’t take into account the implications of our decisions. As hard as it is, go slow when it comes to important decisions. Decisions may require the approval or opinion of others. You may want to consider getting buy-in from others before you make them in order to build relationships. Think about how often you reacted to the situation in front of you only to come back a day later and realize the implications of your actions.

Not only is this characteristic key to making good decisions, it sets the tone for the company. In the face of pressure, when you can take a step back, process information and make deliberate and thoughtful decisions, you create a sense of calm and confidence in you and the company. When situations come across your desk, how you act sets the tone for the entire organization.

There is no magic checklist for developing this skill. Make a commitment to being a more unemotional, deliberate and thoughtful leader. No different than if you were improving on your golf game or becoming  a better dancer. Check in with yourself periodically. Ask an advisor or coach to help you and give you feedback. Score yourself on a scale of one to ten. This skill helps your organization deal with the various issues that come across your desk.

Click here to Subscribe to The Lonely Entrepreneur Blog