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.