A friend is married to a landscaper, and he’s worked on some wild projects. I thought he might tell me about overhauling an overgrown backyard or building a challenging multi-level patio. It turns out those jobs are easy.
The toughest part of his business are the clients who thought they’d demonstrate high agency by doing a job themselves over a weekend. The punch line is that those over-confident self-helpers often argue with him about the best way to fix their half-finished, bit off more than they can chew mistakes.
In the March series, 4 Simple Ways to Excel at High Agency, we’re discussing actionable principles to help you boss up. So far, we’ve identified showing up and seeing patterns. Principle #3 is pausing. No one likes slowing down, but all it takes to change your mind is seeing an outrageous slideshow of DIY mistakes. That’s when you think, Why didn’t you stop and call in an expert?!
Now, apply the same ideas to a work project. Being the person who suggests a time-out hardly seems like a high agency thing to do. However, it looks different if you’ve been involved in a product that launched too early and wound up with a bunch of avoidable errors. Where artwork on a marketing campaign had to be replaced, spiking the budget. And when you kept going with a vendor whose work didn’t quite fit the specifications. Then a time out seems like a shrewd, strategic, well-timed move.
Let’s meet someone whose experience with a difficult project showed him what high agency truly meant.
When Brett Miller started at Amazon, he was under the impression that leadership was a straight line. The equation went something like: Loudest voice + in a hurry person = Leader.
But then he discovered something interesting: The quieter people in the room often had a better grasp of a project’s hits and misses. They didn’t have conventional, brash leadership traits.
Instead, they were composed and respectful. They probed assumptions. And their precise questioning worked wonders because they were more interested in bringing clarity than declaring their opinions in front of a captive audience.
Brett posted about a project where a major roadblock came out of nowhere at the eleventh hour. He remembered, “While others scrambled, this person calmly asked, ‘What’s the most immediate action we can take to unblock progress?’ That simple question shifted the energy in the room, and suddenly we were aligned and focused.”
Have you ever been in a situation like the case study, where high agency comes from the person you least expect? Self-control doesn’t seem like a sexy quality. However, emotional self-mastery takes on a whole new appeal after you’ve been locked in rooms with people losing their cool.
What high agency people understand is that taking a breather isn’t meant to punish others, take potshots at their confidence, or delay the process while someone nitpicks. Instead, it’s intended as a chance to put things in order before going on to the next stage. Even better, being grown isn’t about age or your career stage. It’s a mindset you can take on anytime.
Difficult turning points will happen in every deal or product developed. So, the next time your gut tells you something is off, step back and recall these benefits of pausing:
There are no winners in here today, gone tomorrow proposals. So, demonstrate your high agency by saving everyone time, cycles, and capital. Balance shrewd critical thinking with a passion for accomplishment and remember: Pausing isn’t punitive.