Leaders need positive aggression

We usually think of aggression as a negative emotion, but for leaders it can be a positive driver for change. Let me explain.

Topics:

- According to the Cambridge Dictionary, “aggression” has a number of definitions:
1. “spoken or physical behaviour that is threatening or involves harm to someone or something” – obviously that’s bad, and not recommended behaviour in a professional setting...
2. “forceful playing in sport that is intended to win points” – it is this definition that I want to focus on today.
- Ref: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/aggression
- I am a big fan of the sport of Rugby. In Rugby, there is a defensive line of players intended to protect their goal line, and attacking pods of plays intended to break through the defensive live of the opposing team.
- You cannot win a game of Rugby without being aggressive: players have to physically break through the defensive line of the opposing team, using strength and speed.
- Most sports will have similar concepts: “being aggressive” simply means scoring points, and ultimately winning.
- As a counterpoint, if a team is too passive and plays in an overly-defensive way, they are likely to tire out from the constant work on defending, and ultimately will likely lose the game.
- In some activities, you MUST be aggressive to win.
- In my own chosen sport of Karate for example, it is impossible to win a fight without being aggressive.
- Now let’s bring this back to a professional context: are you and your team playing to win, or playing to defend?
- As a leader, it is your job to give your team the right objectives, then to motivate them to push forward with an aggressive energy.
- Attack ideas, attack project deadlines, attack process improvements, attack quality improvements...whatever the context, you and your team need to him them with energy!
- In my experience, this is especially important within a large enterprise, with a lot of red tape and inertia slowing down progress.
- The only way to break through such red tape is to attack it: think about breaking that defensive line on a Rugby pitch: it takes aggressive to punch the initial hole through it, then the rest of your team can follow you through that hole.
- Your job as a leader is to challenge on topics, and call out topics that you think are wrong.
- You can do this in an aggressive way, while still remaining polite, by attacking the ideas and NOT the people.
- All ideas should be open to challenge, there should be no topics off limits to peer review.
- If an idea is not robust enough to withstand review, then it should not be implemented.
- Conversely, if a great idea fails because it was not pushed through aggressively enough, that is a real shame!
- Don’t be passive with great plans: they need to be pushed hard, to be given every possible chance to succeed!
- Push it hard right up to the point that it gathers it’s own momentum, and benefits from the flywheel effect. Then you can step back.
- Finally, when you have your shoulder to the wheel, make sure you are not pushing alone: engage your team to push with you, and observe who pushes with you, and who pushes against.
- Keep that list for latter.

Episode link: https://techleader.pro/a/695-Leaders-need-positive-aggression-(TLP-2025w22)

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