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The most important skill for entrepreneurship is processing discomfort.
Your tolerance to discomfort is directly correlated to how much you'll think outside of the box. Or how quickly you can make hard decisions. The more you try, the more you fail, and the faster you grow.
My simple model of processing discomfort is Awareness -> Acknowledge -> Release -> Redirection.
- Awareness — Many of us avoid discomfort unconsciously. So we first must understand what is uncomfortable for us individually, and how we respond.
- Acknowledge — When we finally see how we are around discomfort, we can tend to judge or criticize ourselves immediately. We need to work to acknowledge the current state.
- Release — Once we can acknowledge the discomfort and our initial response, we can work to release it. Releasing could be kinesthetic, emotional, and/or cognitive depending on the discomfort and the individual.
- Redirection — After release, we could redirect our focus based on our values and our priorities. What would I like to accomplish here? What is in the best interest of the company?
Types of Discomfort
There are different types of discomfort. Here are the most common ones I see in CEOs and how to get past them.
1. Anticipating others' emotional response
Most commonly, the CEO has hard feedback or hard decisions to make about a team member. This decision will most cause others to be fearful or angry.
To get past it, role-play and ask your partner to act out the worst-case scenario.
2. Fear of making the wrong strategic decision
- Sometimes, the best strategic move isn't obvious.
- To get past it, leverage your team. Use the Issue / Proposed Solution template and solicit comments from everyone who has context. Run a premortem to plan for worst-case scenarios.
3. Letting go, delegating, and trusting
- Early-stage CEOs do lots of IC work. They will eventually need to level up and trust their teams.
- To get past it, write down what needs to be true for you to trust your team. Make the ask.
- Find the next high-leverage challenge that energizes you.
About the Author
Sabrina Wang is a CEO coach for extraordinary leaders of Series A to Unicorn companies. She is a founder, CEO, and operator who brings real-life experiences in building products and scaling revenue into her coaching. She is a writer, creative, and trained meditation teacher.
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