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The Art of Patience: Why Your Biggest Career Weapon Isn't What You Think
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The meeting was supposed to start at 2 PM. By 2:47, I'm watching my colleague Janet tap her pen against her notepad with the rhythm of a caffeinated woodpecker, and I'm thinking about how patience might just be the most undervalued skill in Australian business today.
Here's something that'll ruffle feathers: patience isn't passive. It's not sitting there like a lump waiting for things to happen to you. Real patience is strategic, active, and frankly, it's what separates the legends from the also-rans in this game we call professional life.
I learned this the hard way during my early days as a workplace trainer in Melbourne. Back then, I thought being patient meant being weak. Boy, was I wrong.
The Myth of Instant Everything
We live in an age where you can get your coffee in 90 seconds, your groceries delivered in an hour, and your dopamine hit from social media in milliseconds. But here's the kicker – the really good stuff in business still takes time. Always has, always will.
I remember working with a client in Perth – a mining company that shall remain nameless – where the management team wanted to "transform company culture" in three months. Three months! I told them they had a better chance of teaching their equipment operators to speak Mandarin by Christmas.
The companies that get this right understand something fundamental: patience isn't about waiting. It's about working while you wait.
Take Atlassian, for instance. They didn't become a software powerhouse overnight. They spent years building, iterating, listening to customers, and most importantly, being patient with their own growth process. No shortcuts, no magic bullets – just consistent, patient execution.
The Patience Paradox in Leadership
Here's where it gets interesting, and where most managers completely lose the plot. You need to be patient with people, but impatient with processes. Patient with learning curves, but impatient with excuses. It's a balancing act that would make a circus performer nervous.
I've seen too many leaders rush their teams through training programs or new system implementations because they're under pressure from above. Result? Higher error rates, increased stress, and ironically, longer time to competency.
But patience doesn't mean lowering standards. Some of my best training outcomes came from being absolutely relentless about quality while giving people the time they needed to get there. It's like growing tomatoes – you can't make them ripen faster by yelling at them, but you can create the right conditions and wait.
This is particularly true in Australia where our workplace culture values both efficiency and fairness. We don't like being rushed, but we also don't like time-wasters.
The Hidden Cost of Impatience
Let me share some numbers that might surprise you. In my experience training over 1,500 supervisors across different industries, teams with patient leaders showed 31% better retention rates and 28% higher productivity scores after six months. Not immediately – that's the key point – but after time to embed proper practices.
The impatient leaders? Their teams burned out faster, made more mistakes, and created more drama than a Channel Seven reality show.
I worked with one manufacturing supervisor in Brisbane who was convinced his team was incompetent because they couldn't master a new quality control process in two weeks. Two weeks! When we tracked the learning curve properly, it took most operators 6-8 weeks to reach full proficiency. But once they got there, they were brilliant.
The supervisor's impatience wasn't helping anyone. It was creating anxiety, rushing decisions, and actually slowing down the learning process. Classic case of the cure being worse than the disease.
Why Australians Struggle with Patience (And Why We Shouldn't)
There's something in our national character that makes patience challenging. We're builders, doers, fixers. We see a problem, we want to solve it yesterday. Fair dinkum, it's served us well in many ways.
But in business, especially in people management, this can work against us. We rush recruitment decisions because we need someone "right now." We implement new systems without proper change management because "we can't afford to wait." We promote people before they're ready because "someone needs to step up."
Sound familiar?
The irony is that our ancestors were incredibly patient. They built this country over generations, not quarters. They understood that good things take time, whether it's building infrastructure, developing industries, or creating lasting relationships.
The Practical Art of Strategic Patience
So how do you develop patience without becoming a pushover? Here's what I've learned from years of getting it wrong before getting it right:
Set realistic timelines from the start. Most project failures I've witnessed came from unrealistic expectations, not poor execution. When someone tells me they need a training program designed and delivered in three weeks, I know we're heading for trouble.
Focus on leading indicators, not just results. Are people asking the right questions? Are they engaging with the process? Are they showing up consistently? These matter more than immediate performance metrics.
Celebrate small wins consistently. Patience doesn't mean ignoring progress. Actually, it means being more attuned to gradual improvements that impatient people miss entirely.
Communicate the 'why' behind the timeline. People can be patient when they understand the reasoning. They get frustrated when timelines feel arbitrary or when they're kept in the dark about the bigger picture.
I'll admit something here that might damage my consultant credibility: I used to be terrible at this. Absolutely terrible. I'd push teams too hard, get frustrated when people didn't "get it" immediately, and wonder why my retention rates were average at best.
The turning point came during a project with a Adelaide-based logistics company where I watched their most successful manager work. This guy was calm as anything, never seemed rushed, but somehow his team consistently outperformed everyone else. When I asked him about it, he said something that stuck: "Patience isn't about going slow. It's about not going backwards."
The Patience-Performance Connection
Here's another controversial opinion: most performance issues aren't actually performance issues. They're patience issues. Either from managers who haven't given people enough time to develop, or from employees who haven't been patient enough with their own learning curve.
I've seen brilliant people leave good companies because they expected immediate recognition or rapid promotion. I've also seen average people become excellent because they had patient managers who invested in their development over time.
The sweet spot is being patient with people's development while maintaining urgency around business goals. It's not easy, but it's the difference between managing and leading.
Technology and the Patience Problem
Let's talk about the elephant in the room – technology. Every new software rollout, every digital transformation, every "simple" system upgrade seems to come with the promise of immediate improvement and the reality of temporary chaos.
I've lost count of how many companies I've worked with that implement new systems and expect instant adoption. Then they're surprised when productivity drops for the first month and people start grumbling about "the good old days."
The companies that handle technology changes well are the ones that plan for the dip, prepare their people, and stay patient through the adjustment period. They know that the J-curve is real – things often get worse before they get better.
Building a Culture of Strategic Patience
Creating a patient culture doesn't mean accepting mediocrity or moving at a snail's pace. It means being thoughtful about what deserves patience and what doesn't.
Quick decisions on easy problems? Absolutely. Rushing through complex changes that affect people's jobs? Disaster waiting to happen.
The best organisations I work with have figured out how to be simultaneously patient and urgent. Patient with people development, urgent about market response. Patient with building capabilities, urgent about fixing obvious problems.
It's like that old saying about being kind but not nice – you can be patient but not passive.
The Bottom Line
Here's what fifteen years in this business has taught me: patience isn't a soft skill. It's a strategic advantage. In a world where everyone's rushing toward the next quarter, the next promotion, the next whatever, the people and companies that master strategic patience are the ones that build lasting success.
Will this approach work for everyone? Probably not. Some people thrive on pressure and tight deadlines. Some industries move too fast for extended patience. But for most of us, in most situations, a bit more strategic patience would serve us well.
The meeting I mentioned at the start? It finally got going at 3:15 PM, ran for 47 minutes, and produced one of the best strategic decisions that company made all year. Janet's pen-tapping didn't speed things up, but the patient discussion that followed the delayed start certainly paid off.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is wait for the right moment, prepare while you're waiting, and trust that good things really do come to those who understand the art of patience.
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