16 Jan The 50/50 of Leadership

Working with the concept of the 50/50 in leadership will reduce stress and pressure in the workplace.

The 50/50. What is it? It’s the concept that 50% of the time things are gonna be going ‘good’ and 50% of the time, things are gonna be going ‘bad’. If you want to go all enlightened on this, technically, nothing is either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but as humans, we like to label things so.

The 50/50 can be seen as a natural phenomenon everywhere, everyday: daylight and night time (light and dark), growth and death, the in breath and the out breath. We are all always cycling through the 50/50.

The problem with humans is that we want the ‘positive’ 50: All. The. Time. And we believe it should be the case. Just look at how everybody on social media is proving it’s possible. With their happy, amazing lives.

When you only aim for the ‘positive’ 50 though, the inevitable ‘negative’ 50 is going to feel so much worse. Not only that, but you don’t get to practice allowance and acceptance and being in the present moment, those supposedly very important things we all keep hearing about. You might have these practices on your wish list for your personal life but what happens if you start taking them to work as well?

When you accept the 50/50, stress reduces, overwhelm reduces, pressure reduces. There is a tri-fold reason for this. One, because you can accept what’s happening, although it may not be the preferred scenario, you simply don’t mind. Yes. You heard me, you simply don’t mind. It’s not an ideal situation but it’s ok. And because of this, the second reason comes into play.

You have better access to your pre-frontal cortex (PFC), your thinking brain, to come up with possible solutions and next best steps. Your survival and panic brain is not switched on (or at least it’s kept at bay) and you get to use the smart, human PFC part of your brain. Your whole brain is smart btw, it’s just this part is the one that can get you out of a pickle very cleverly.

Thirdly, you begin to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. This one skill here can change your life. When you’re not pushing it away, avoiding it or ignoring it, you start to get used to it. When you start to get used to it, you start to be able to handle more challenging situations and that, is what will make you a good leader. You’ll be able to ‘think on your feet’ better. Things that upset others and get in the way of taking the next action, won’t upset you.

Consider how the 50/50 shows up in your day as a leader. Do the ‘bad’ situations stress you out? Are you overwhelmed when things go wrong?

In these cases, take a step back, just for a second and notice that this moment is the other half of the 50/50. Ask yourself,  what would it be like if that was ok? Who would I be if I took this in my stride and instead of believing that it shouldn’t be happening this way, I believed that it should.

If this possibility broke your brain, that’s good news. It’s time for leadership styles to start shifting so we begin creating environments where our humanity is put first. That means more acceptance and feelings of abundance and connection. In these states, staff engagement improves and so does productivity, efficiency and quality. It’s time to start embracing the 50/50 and change how we feel about our everyday lives at work and at home.