“God gives every bird a worm, but he does not throw it in the nest.” – Swedish proverb
Patience is a complicated virtue. The dictionary says that patience is “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset”. We prize patience, we tell people they should be patient, we talk about patience as something that we’re all supposed to have.
That being said, there’s a fine line between being patient and being passive. There are too many leaders who keep saying they’re being patient when they’re really just procrastinating or avoiding something difficult. They keep being “patient” for years, until eventually they’ve missed whatever opportunities they may have ever had.
You as a leader need to exercise patience, but at some point you must act. You can’t just “be patient” and hope that things work out. You can’t just “be patient” and think that eventually opportunities will take care of themselves. Eventually, you have to dive in and make things happen.
Think about an opportunity or challenge that you’ve been facing for some time. Why exactly is it still unresolved? Are you really being patient? Or are you simply afraid to act?
You cannot be a leader without action. Not crazy action, or rash action, or out of control action. But you must act. You must take the initiative. At some point, you must be the aggressor.
Leaders who spend their entire careers “being patient” tend to have organizations that do the same thing. When leaders are passive, and wait for things to magically fall into place, they end up leading organizations that are stagnant. People see the leaders not aggressively going after things, so they figure they won’t either.
Don’t be that leader. Don’t be the leader who just waits for something to happen and uses patience as an excuse. Put your foot on the gas and make great things happen. Start today.
