The idea behind, "Let's make it easy."

What do scrambled eggs, marathons, and leadership have in common?

Each represents a challenging task that is, at its core, an accumulation of many simple actions. They all illustrate that how challenging an undertaking is can belie the actual simplicity of the component parts. Let’s take that humble breakfast meal, the scrambled egg, as the first example. Cracking eggs, heating a pan, the act of scrambling. Easy. But if these steps are done haphazardly or without care, the meal is ruined. A great scrambled egg takes practice and attention.

Completing a marathon is, at its most basic, just putting one foot in front of the other. This is something most of us do everyday with little thought or planning. But anyone who has finished the full 26.2 miles of a marathon will tell you it takes time, planning, and endurance. Speed comes in handy, too, but it definitely optional. (At least, that is what I tell myself with my 05:59:58 marathon PR…)

Now, I expect that not everyone will agree me when I say that the last item on my list, leadership, is easy.

Leading is hard work. I believe this. I’ve seen it and I’ve experienced it firsthand. Here’s the thing: hard work does not automatically equate to complicated work. While it’s human nature to overcomplicate things, we have done ourselves a great disservice in the space of leadership with this tendency.

Our world is complex—more so every day. Human interactions are complex and unpredictable. Technology and work are moving faster than the proverbial speed of change. Political, economic, and social systems are volatile. We dwell in ambiguity.

But leadership can be easy.

If fixing scrambled eggs can be viewed as a series of easy, teachable, and reproducible tasks, leadership responsibilities can be similarly deconstructed. So, the leadership skill we need now is the ability to examine a whole piece of work and distill it to its component parts so that mastery can happen at that almost atomic level.

Take delivering feedback, a universal leadership responsibility that many leaders avoid because they view it as complicated, unpleasant, and overly-challenging. Here’s the thing, there is complexity in delivering feedback, but it’s not to be found in the act itself. Instead, it comes from that unpredictable human interaction. When we focus, erroneously, on the challenge of giving feedback, we’re distracted and inhibited from responding to the actual challenge—being open to the other person’s reaction and feelings.

So, let’s deconstruct the act of delivering feedback. When I do this, I like to start at the end and work my way back and then retrace my steps. In this case, the end goal of feedback is to have a clear, organized, message for the recipient, delivered with compassion and candor.

Now if I put these in order (retrace my steps), the process/task of delivering feedback and the skills I need to do it well can look like this.

When responsibilities are approached this way, we can make leading easy.

If you want to build the skillset to map and name a process, you can accelerate your progress by working with a coach or mentor. Personally, I am passionate about helping leaders discover the easy hiding behind the challenge. I'd love to hear from you if you want to learn more!