Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer throws a pass against the New England Patriots; Photo Credit: David Butler II
Imagine the scene. Your team just won a championship, and, being the captain, the trophy gets handed to you for the team picture that will forever memorialize the triumph. Pretty cool, but that’s the easy part.
The hard part happened months before when you emerged as the team leader because you stepped up to have the uncomfortable conversations the team needed to hear.
Former Heisman Trophy winner and number one NFL draft pick Carson Palmer spoke on a GameChange Livestream Forum about what it took to be a team leader. “If I had to sum it up in two words, get uncomfortable.”
Last season, Palmer took over as the head coach at Rancho Santa Margarita High School and led the team to a California state championship. On the livestream, he acknowledged the challenge of getting uncomfortable if you want to be a leader. He said, “It’s uncomfortable if you want to be a leader. It’s not natural… It’s not going to come easy. It doesn’t come easy to very many guys.”
As Palmer stated, not everybody is comfortable with being uncomfortable. Moving out of your comfort zone is not only important to become a great leader, but it is also an essential ingredient in having any success in life that you dream of achieving.
So, what steps can you take to start becoming more comfortable with being uncomfortable?
- Accept and Choose: The first thing is to understand that it’s natural to fear doing things that make you uncomfortable. You are not alone. Remind yourself that other leaders faced the same anxieties that you are feeling. Choose to be courageous like they did.
- Reframe Your Focus: When thinking about doing uncomfortable things, it is natural to focus on the fear of the action. It’s helpful to reframe your perspective away from the fear and toward the goal that the action will help you achieve. Focus on the dream!
- Reflect on Previous Fears: Things we are anxious about are often much worse in our imagination. Think about other things you feared in the past and how, in retrospect, those things turned out to not to be nearly as hard as you thought they would.
- Take Baby Steps: You don’t have to completely change overnight. You can gradually start doing little things that make you uncomfortable and start building up your confidence until doing them becomes much more natural for you. At some point, you will become totally comfortable with the thing that used to make you uncomfortable!
