Have you ever wondered what to do in that moment when everything feels like it is falling apart?

Sadly, this is not something college taught me to navigate. Through leading teams, there are a couple of consistent principles that I have found to be true:

1. When things fall apart, great leaders figure out how to frame the failure – Most of our organizations are not so fragile that we can not sustain failure. In fact, I would challenge that most of us need to fail more often. When we frame failure as potential rather than catastrophic, we actually change the climate of innovation in our organizations. As this changes, we get more people willing to take a risk, try something new, and fail forward.

2. Don’t fear uncertainty – Uncertainty is the most consistent variable in leadership. The more comfortable we get with uncertainty the better leader we will become. When we start expecting uncertainty, it loses the grip of fear that some of us feel. Uncertainty is filled with as much possibility as questions. What if the things we are about to learn are the things that actually will propel us towards a better future?

3. They feel we can always get better – Our best leaders are always looking for ways to create new and improved systems, campaigns, teams, weekends, etc. We can always get better. Part of this philosophy probably means we are not extremely content. We can get better and better but only when improving is our goal. We have to fight to improve. ALways!

Ok, so how are you doing? Do you feel you have some of these principals in your toolbox?