As a CEO and mom to a young son, my days are planned with precision, sometimes down to the minute. Most days go smoothly, but some days a curveball gets thrown at me. Can you feel my pain? It happened yesterday, and it was a good reminder that part of being an effective leader is to be adaptable, flexible and nimble.\n\nI got on the tollway and traffic was flowing, so the day was off to a great start. Until I arrived and the client said, “You know the session is from 1-5, right?” Actually, if I’d known that I wouldn’t have shown up at 7:30 am. No use in placing blame or pointing fingers, there were 25 people that were expecting a workshop on strategic thinking at 1 pm not 8 am.\n\nI remained calm and immediately kicked into fix-it mode. I had another afternoon meeting that I’d have to reschedule, not to mention a little league baseball play-off game to get my son to. All in all, it took two phone calls and less than 5 minutes to rearrange things. Covered. Handled. Check. I could have panicked.I could have gotten angry. I could have “lost it.”\n\nInstead, I took a breath, let it go of some of those negative feelings and reminded myself, “It is what it is.” I also thought, there must be a good reason this happened. So in the end I made a reason, I went back to my office and cranked out as much work as humanly possible. I was even more driven to make sure I made good use of this time.\n\nCome to find out, the client thought they’d emailed the change in time, but in fact had not included us. A simple miscommunication, it happens all the time. As much as I’d like to think I have everything in control, you never know when a curveball is going to come at you.How we to react and deal with the curveballs is a true test of character and leadership.
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