# Chapter 106

Challenge the Process - from The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership

This is where we create powerful and special value for the person. It is giving them a different view, another perspective through which to see their situation and their possible unique future. This requires the innovation which you have, as a result of your experience and different perspective. Create value!

This one is in my wheelhouse and I could spend the whole book right here. I am a natural process-challenger. It drove my parents crazy. In the Deep South where I grew up, there is almost always every single time, only one “right” way to do any given task. You could feel the negative energy building when I constantly asked “why” must it be this way, to the one “right” method to accomplish whatever. This is on par with “him who must not be named” in Harry Potter. A spooky superstitious vibe that creates social pressure to not challenge or talk about it, giving it even more power in the process.

This is what you are up against. Its great fun! If you can learn to live with the uncomfortableness that it creates, the social strands that hold relationships together, will experience this pain most intensely. Navigate carefully. Hold people gently. Break their wrong processes, which are holding them back, keeping them from succeeding and a result of their fears - but softly do it. Few people can bear the clarity and tsunami resulting from your challenging the process.

But done well, this is a primary value producer in leadership. It helps people get to the best version of themselves. It helps them face what is holding them back. Go. Break something. Challenge. Be careful.