STAFFING RESOURCE CENTER

Technology has fostered impatience. We expect a prompt text reply or an instant reaction to our social media post. In a world of Amazon Prime 2-day shipping of anything, we've largely become unaccustomed, as a society, to wait. But when immediacy or efficiency stumbles, the choice of how to respond belongs to us.

All we need is just a little patience.

Turns out, Guns N' Roses were onto something.

Patience is a virtue that adds positive and practical value to both your personal and professional life. But more than an attribute one simply possesses, patience is a skill one can and should develop over time.

That's where the seemingly oxymoronic concept of active patience comes from. To be patient is not to sit passively and allow life to happen to you. It is an active stance to adopt -- replacing restlessness with endurance, annoyance with composure, and discomfort with compassion.

To become a better leader -- an actively patient leader -- you must first learn to recognize and disrupt impatience.

Impatience can be a habit -- a pattern of automatic response by the brain rather than active, in-the-moment decision-making. Habits often develop to fill a void where no distinct other option is specified. When the habit is impatience, the results can be toxic.

In his New York Times bestselling book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg writes that science shows that "a habit cannot be eradicated -- it must, instead, be replaced." He adds, "If you want to change a habit, you must find an alternative routine, and your odds of success go up dramatically when you commit to changing as part of a group."

A concerted effort to replace impatience with patience as part of your work culture makes sense and, science says, is likely to succeed.

How can you disrupt impatience at work -- and become a more effective leader?

• Develop self-awareness. Be cognizant of times when a mistake or delay causes you to feel annoyed, upset, or anxious.
• Learn what impatience feels like. Are you irritable and snapping at others? Are you fidgety or on edge? Do you feel pressure? Is your breathing shallow?
• Recognize triggers or patterns that typically cause you to react impatiently.
• Understand that your response is under your control.
• Repeatedly remind yourself: opting not to give in to impatience is a choice you can make.

Practicing patience is a strategy. When hiring, ask questions about how an applicant has reacted to something that didn't go as expected to gauge patient or impatient response indicators. Nurture patience in staff by modeling active patience and redirecting your impatient responses as well as those of your direct reports.

What does it mean to practice strategic patience in your organization?

• Accept that some things are out of your control.
• Decide you can tolerate or manage a problem without adding the extra stress of being upset by it.
• Be diligent and committed to seeing things through to eventual completion.
• Learn how to remain composed, calm, and control yourself when things go wrong.
• Take time to ask questions, wait for answers, and allow space for thinking.
• Do your research, so goals, expectations, and timelines are realistic.
• Have empathy, be kind, and engender goodwill among colleagues, clients and staff.
• Put things into perspective. Is the urgency you feel genuine? Does this issue affect the big picture and long-term goals?

This is hard work, but the payoffs are many.

What are some of the benefits of practicing patience at work?

• Mindfulness. Forcing oneself to recognize impatience and replace it with patience fosters overall conscientiousness, which will improve creativity, calm, and attention to detail.
• Dependability. Frustration feels like chaos and instability. Patience feels reliable.
• Diplomacy. Impatience creates tension. When employees or departments are actively patient, they are less likely to heighten conflict and are more apt to collaborate and understand each other.
• Resilience. Constantly adding extra stress and negativity to setbacks at work takes a toll. Choosing patience -- and seeing that things beyond your control will play out, regardless of your response -- will allow you to quickly recover from crisis mode quickly.
• Productivity. Impatience is draining and unhelpful. The energy wasted on aggravation can be channeled into more actionable directions: What, in anything, can we do to avoid this problem in the future? Are there steps that would've made this process more seamless? What can I do while I wait? Active patience allows for creative thinking, information sharing, problem-solving and positive collaboration.
• Increased confidence and trust. A company, leader, or employee that remains calm under pressure and sees things through to completion regardless of hiccups along the way is one that others feel good about and will rely on without reservation.

As reported in Harvard Business Review, David Suss, an associate professor of organizational behavior at Georgia Tech's Scheller College of Business, surveyed 578 full-time U.S. working professionals from a wide range of industries during the recent Covid-19 lockdown. According to employees' ratings, creativity and collaboration increased by an average of 16% and productivity by 13% when their supervisors demonstrated patience.

The power of patience is measurable.