The LIFT Blog

By Ryan Quinn

Early in my graduate training, I found two of my colleagues laughing over a sheet of paper. I asked them what was so funny. They showed me a paragraph that they had just written. It said something like “We live in a time of fast-paced technological, economic, demographic, and geo-political change. In order to deal with this change, organizations must also be nimble, adapting quickly and relevantly to the challenges they face in their environment.” My colleagues then informed me, with light smirks on their faces, that I’d better learn how to write paragraphs like this, because I’d probably write them over and over again in the beginning of most of the papers I would write. The truths of accelerating change were so self-evident that they had become trite – something to joke about.

I have a tendency to get caught up in this “need for speed.” I attack even simple tasks with the intent to get them done as quickly as possible. Every once in a while, though, I run into a task that requires patience, and I am stunned at how difficult it is. Last week, for example, my family and I went on a trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I left work behind to spend time with my family. I ended up spending quite a bit of my time with Andrew – our three-year-old son, who I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. Andrew has become increasingly insistent about doing things (like getting dressed) by himself, without help. When you take a family of six back and forth between the beach, the home, the pool, and other activities, you change your clothes multiple times each day. And if you know that your child could change his clothes in three minutes if he would let you help him, but it takes 15 or 20 minutes when he insists on doing it himself, being patient can sometimes be excruciating. I practiced it all week long.

Is Patience a Virtue?

Patience may be a necessary virtue to parent children well, but is it necessary for management? After all, with the acceleration of technological, economic, demographic, and geo-political change, isn’t speed a more important virtue for managers and organizations?

Speed is necessary and inportant for organizations, without question, but patience is as well. There is a time for urgency and a time for patience. In a brief review of practical and academic literature, I found that there are countless situations in which managers need patience to succeed. Some of these include:

1. Starting new businesses in international venues – particularly when Westerners seek to establish their businesses in Asian venues
2. Investing in new ventures
3. Managing innovation during preparation, planning, and implementation stages
4. Managing organizational learning
5. Eliminating debt
6. Mentoring employees
7. Managing conflicts between daily challenges and unmet expectations
8. Overcoming bias in the workplace
9. Selling and negotiating major purchases or long-term contracts
10. Leading large-scale change

The last situation on this list – large-scale change – is particularly interesting, because it is the same situation I began this post with: the world is changing fast, so organizations need to change quickly too. And yet, in Anjali Sastry’s research[1] on incremental and radical change, she found that, if organizations do not have a waiting period to let changes settle in after a major change, they are more likely to fail. This research is consistent with my own observations. I cannot count the number of managers I have met who feel disenfranchised by the number of change programs they have seen in their organizations. Each new program that gets implemented after the executive leadership fails to see the previous program through to its completion gets labeled “The Flavor of the Month.” In fact, in another study[2], Shona Brown and Kathleen Eisenhardt found that companies in high-speed environments did best when they paced the changes they introduced to occur in pre-specified time frames.

Becoming Patient

Managers need patience in many activities, but patience does not come easy. According to Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, the psychologists who compiled and edited Character Strenths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification [3], patience is a combination of three other virtues: self-regulation, persistence, and open-mindedness. We can see this in my experience with Andrew last week.

Self-Regulation

The first strength I had to practice when becoming patient with Andrew was self-regulation. Self-regulation is the conscious control of one’s own impulses. For example, as Andrew would get dressed, if the elastic on his underwear was twisted in the back, my first impulse was to straighten it for him. If I did this, though, he would throw a fit, adding another five or ten minutes to the clothes-changing process. Andrew needs to learn to not throw fits. But his father also needs to let Andrew learn how to do things for himself, and how to be sensitive enough to Andrew’s needs that he does not do things that he knows will make Andrew upset unnecesarily. I had to learn to control my impulses to help him with his clothing without asking him first. I got better at this over the course of the week by naming the impulses that I needed to control and identifying what I would do instead (such as, “When I feel an impulse to straighten Andrew’s elastic, I will put my hands on my legs, tell Andrew that his elastic is twisted, and ask him if he would like me to straighten it for him.”).

Persistence

The second element of patience that I needed to develop was persistence. Persistence is the practice of continuing in spite of difficulty. Waiting for Andrew was difficult. There were many times when I wanted to abdicate the responsibility to his mother. I reminded myself, however, that more was at stake than simply getting Andrew ready for the next activity. By waiting for him, getting down to his level, encouraging him to continue when he got distracted, reminding him again and again why he needed to get his clothes on, and coaching him through the process, I was not only helping him learn how to dress himself, I was also helping him learn that he is capable of taking on new challenges and mastering them, and that his father loves and supports him. This is knowledge and confidence that can help him all his life. And reminding myself of that perspective helped me to persevere.

Open-Mindedness

Restraint and persistence are not patience if a person is bitter, angry, or close-minded while waiting. Even when I controlled my impulses and persisted in trying to get Andrew dressed, my first inclination was seldom one of enjoying the experience. At one point during the week, however, a thought popped into my head: “What’s the rush? You’re on vacation.” When I had this thought, I chuckled to myself. I had no work to go to, no community responsibilities, no housework to do, and yet I still felt rushed. How silly.

As I considered this, I thought further, “What could be a better use of my time than to spend it with one of my children, helping him learn and grow?” I began to think of alternative ways to encourage or help Andrew. I tried explaining reasons why he should dress in a particular way, asking for permission to fix something before trying to fix it, playing silly games with getting dressed, and other techniques as well. In a couple of cases, my time with Andrew created touching moments or even became fun. I still got impatient from time to time, but I improved to the point that I could tell I was more patient with him at the end of the week than I was at the beginning.

The Result

Andrew and I keep improving – Andrew at getting dressed, and me at being patient. It is still hard, but there are lots of positive moments as well. This week Andrew often smiles at me as he puts his pants on and says, “Is dis da wight foot, Daddy?” as a way of asking me whether he is putting the correct foot in the correct pant leg, and involving me in his efforts. The way he asks the question is endearing, and I feel closer to him when he does it. I can tell I’m becoming more patient as I practice, and I am grateful for the experience.

I have also found that, consistent with Peterson and Seligman’s claims, a character strength can be used in many lift domains. Last night, Andrew’s older brother, Mason, started acting obnoxiously and bothering Andrew. Instead of reacting and punishing him, I picked him up and hugged him patiently until he calmed down.

Leading with Patience

Patience is a strength. Exercising this strength makes it stronger, whether done at home or at work. And if it is exercised at home, it can be used  at work, and vice versa. Leaders who exercise their patience should have a leg up on developing the people that they lead over leaders who are not patient. They are likely to be more persistent and adaptive during change, more sensitive to people from other cultures when working internationally, more likely to see projects through to completion, more likely to work through conflict, more likely to overcome complex challenges, and so forth.

We live in a world of fast-paced change. Leaders in this world need to move quickly, identify issues that need urgent attention, and stay ahead of the competition. And sometimes, patience will help leaders to do just that.

[1] Sastry, M. A. (1997). Problems and Paradoxes in a Model of Punctuated Organizational Change. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42: 237-275.

[2] Brown, S. L., & Eisenhardt, K. M. 1997. The Art of Continuous Change: Linking Complexity Theory and Time-paced Evolution in Relentlessly Shifting Organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42: 1-34.

[3] Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. 2004. Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. Washington, D.C. and New York: American Psychological Association and Oxford University Press.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 3:51 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.