Why leaders choose effort over comfort

The simple design of an ice tray is underrated brilliance, and this week it struck me as a perfect little demonstration of the difference between leadership and management.

It’s not fancy. Just a bit of plastic with some intelligence few people would think about when using it. Small grooves connect the cube slots, so filling it can happen by using only one section and allowing the overflow to do the work until the whole tray is full.

So simple.

A patient person would put the tray under the tap, pour water steadily into one cube, hold it on a very slight angle and let the design do what it was designed to do.

I never quite find myself doing this.

I notice my resistance to the easy way. I aim water at the whole tray, move it around, overfill some cubes, miss others, tilt, correct and fuss with it, intervening far more than is required for a task that was designed to be easy.

As I notice, I think: why am I like this?

The easy way is right there, the tray is designed for ease. Yet, I resist it.

It’s a tiny domestic moment, obviously, but it exposes something common. Many things in life and leadership are made far harder by the way we approach them.

There is often a simpler path available, yet we don’t take it. We say we want simplicity and ease … and yet our actions show something quite different; a more complex path than what was needed.

Of course, the reason is equally simple — we complicate because complexity gives us something to do. It makes us feel useful. Valuable. If there is something to manage, interpret, fix, carry and control, then surely we must be significant?

Complexity is a convincing strategy of the ego.

Ease, by contrast, is surprisingly confronting. If something can flow without all our effort, what does that suggest about the effort we have been adding?

This is one of the patterns I see repeatedly in coaching. A client brings a problem, and although it is not my role to fix the problem for them, it is usually immediately obvious where they are making the issue harder. Not stupidly. Usually intelligently — with compelling stories, thoughtful analysis and perfectly reasonable explanations for why the simple path is not available.

There is usually a story about themselves, another about the other person, another about what can and can’t be said, what will happen if they act, and why now is not the time.

But inside those stories, the simplicity disappears, and the thing becomes “hard.”

Most of the time, the thing that would create movement is not complicated. It’s mostly just getting out of the way.

Be honest. Ask the question. Entertain a different story. Stop assuming. Tell the truth without carrying all your emotion into the room.

None of this is intellectually difficult. Most of it is obvious once named. But simple is not the same as easy, because the simple path often asks for courage where the complicated path only asks for effort.

Most people will choose effort over courage.

Grind over discomfort … and this is where leadership becomes interesting.

Managing feels useful because it gives the leader a role they know how to play. They can intervene, solve, smooth, chase, carry, work around and keep the whole thing moving through sheer effort. It is exhausting, yes, but it is also satisfying. The grind was justified; the leader remains necessary.

Leadership asks for something different.

Leadership is often simpler, but it requires more courage upfront. It asks you to stop managing around what is difficult and go directly to what matters. Have the conversation. Name the pattern. Challenge the story. Trust that people are more capable than your interference allows them to be.

And when that happens, things start to flow.

That is the premise of Unmanaged, really. Not that there is no work involved, but that much of what we call necessary effort is actually the weight of managing. When something is truly led, responsibility returns to the right place. People understand themselves. Conversations create movement. The leader does not need to fill every cube manually.

This can feel oddly threatening if part of your identity has been built around being the one who fixes, holds, carries and knows.

But there is a difference between initiating flow and controlling every movement.

A big one.

So this Friday, I’m asking myself where I am still making things harder because the harder version makes me feel more useful.

If this week felt heavier than it needed to, perhaps the better question is: where do I need to choose courage over effort to make next week smoother?