The Ceiling Fan Leadership Effect

I am obsessed with fans; ceiling fans, stand up fans, box fans, desk fans, etc… I am one of those who cannot sleep without one blowing in my face. I am not going to tell you how many fans my wife and I have had in our bedroom. But the number is somewhere between two and four–we may have had more once, but you’ll never know. I told you, I am obsessed with fans–I wasn’t lying.

We also have a ceiling fan in our living room we leave on 24-7. In fact, we have gone years without ever turning it off. I am sure you know this (or maybe not), but most ceiling fans have a switch on them allowing you to change the direction that a fan spins. This is vital if you want to maximize the air flow in the room. The two different directions mean the difference between your fan blowing the air down, or sucking it up. The general rule is to have your fan blowing air down during the winter, as to keep the hot air low since it naturally rises. However, in the summer, you want the fan sucking up the hot air, allowing colder air to hover down low.

I believe there is a powerful lesson about leadership in this whole ceiling fan concept. I call it The Ceiling Fan Leadership Effect. Here are some thoughts about The Ceiling Fan Leadership Effect:

1) Hot Air Always Rises To The Top

Heated issues always will try to work their way up to the highest level possible, but leaders need to push issues down to the lowest level possible. If you are always putting out fires at every turn, you cannot focus on future possibilities. You will be inundated with emergencies rather than intentional about opportunities. I see leaders who are engulfed with hot issues all the time because they haven’t learned how to change their leadership ceiling fan setting. Understand that issues will never stop rising unless you intentionally reverse the polarity. If you don’t do something about this natural process, you’ll never get to where you could be.

2) Turn Your Ceiling Fan To Blow Air Down

It’s natural for every issue to try and rise to the top, but you have to make sure you leadership ceiling fan is operating from blowing the air down rather than sucking it up. Too many leaders welcome problems by perpetually dealing with them. If you continually deal with problems, rather than empowering others to deal with them, you will always have problems to deal with. I call these types of leaders “Problem Magnets.” Problem Magnets attract hot issues because they’ll drop everything to accept them without ever trying to push back. The more you set yourself up to be THE problem-solver, the more problems you’ll draw towards you. If your team knows you’ll take care of everything, they’ll keep coming to you. Why would they ever deal with problems if you consistently appear to be ok with taking them on?

3) Never Turn Off Your Leadership Ceiling Fan

The moment you stop pushing issues back down is the moment you’ll stop moving forward. Remember: Decisions should be made at the lowest level possible. The only reason you should make a decision is because no one else can. If there is someone on your team, or positionally lower, that can make the decision–they should. Never make decisions for people. This limits their ability to develop and become a self-thinker. You should lead with questions, not just answers. If you answer every question and deal with every problem, you don’t have a team; you have slaves. And slavery is not teamwork. You have to be consistent with holding yourself accountable to empower others. If your team is dependant on you to do everything, you’ll limit your ability to level up.