Their Weather Is Not Your Climate

Many of the leaders I work with answer to someone else—a board, a boss, investors, or some other authority. They have worked hard to build strong teams and healthy cultures, yet they can still find themselves deeply affected by the decisions and behavior of those above them.

You know the story. You build a strong team. You establish trust. You create a culture in which people take responsibility, solve problems, and do good work. You determined to create an organization that reflects your values. And then someone above makes a decision that seems thoughtless, senseless or even reckless. Suddenly, the culture you’ve worked so hard to create is getting rained on in someone else's weather.

That can be demoralizing. But their weather does not have to become your climate. You may not control what comes down from above. You do have a say in what happens below.

The Stoics had a straightforward response to this kind of problem: distinguish between what you control and what you don't. You don't control other people's decisions. Whether your boss recognizes your contribution, whether a board understands what you are trying to accomplish or whether someone above you responds to a difficult situation thoughtfully or from an out-of-control state is not in your control.

But you can control how you respond.

The Stoics had a straightforward response to this kind of problem: distinguish between what you control and what you don't.

Viktor Frankl made a similar point from a very different context. Writing about the extremes of his experience in the concentration camps, he argued that even when circumstances strip away almost everything else, a person retains the ability to choose their attitude toward those circumstances. Frankl wrote, “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond.”

“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond.”

This is one of the foundations of what I call Self-Authorizing Leadership. A self-authorizing leader does not wait for someone else to tell them that they are leading well before deciding what good leadership requires of them. They establish their own standards for leadership and hold themselves accountable to those standards. They don't surrender their judgment, identity, or sense of effectiveness to the approval—or disapproval—of the people around them.

A self-authorizing leader does not wait for someone else to tell them that they are leading well before deciding what good leadership requires of them.

This does not mean ignoring authority. It does not mean rejecting legitimate criticism. And it certainly does not mean pretending that organizational realities don't matter. It means knowing where your authority begins and ends—and refusing to give away any part that is yours.

That becomes especially important when the person above you is struggling. When someone else's behavior affects us, it is easy to give it far more authority than it deserves. We ruminate about the bad decision or replay the conversation. We become angry about the lack of recognition and start anticipating the next problem. Slowly, something more consequential happens: their weather becomes our climate.

The leader above you may be panicking. You don't have to panic. They may be creating ambiguity. You don't have to create more. They may be communicating badly. You don't have to repeat that communication style to your team.

This is where I have so often gotten it wrong myself. Earlier in my career, I would become preoccupied with poor leadership around me. I would notice the bad decision, the dysfunctional behavior, or the missed opportunity—and then give it an extraordinary amount of my attention. The irony was that I became so focused on the leadership I didn't control that I was not fully utilizing the leadership I did.

The Stoics would ask: Is this within my control? (No.) Then what is within my control? (My own leadership.) These questions are useful for leaders because they bring the focus back to the work. How much attention will you continue to give to what you cannot change?

We cannot control the conditions above us. But we can choose the conditions we create below us. A strong leader can stand in the rain without making everyone else stand in it.

That may be one of our biggest responsibilities as leaders: to absorb the reality without transmitting the dysfunction. Your boss's anxiety does not have to become your team's. The board's ambiguity does not have to become your organization's. Someone else's poor leadership does not require you to abandon your determined leadership.

That may be one of our biggest responsibilities as leaders: to absorb the reality without transmitting the dysfunction.

It may be their weather. But it is your climate.