Patience is a virtue. However, leaders and entrepreneurs tend to be inherently impatient. No matter what stage your company is in, you will always feel the pressure of time and results. Time and results are like a chicken and egg situation.  Time will afford you the chance for results, and results will afford you more time. But usually you have dollars flowing out like sands in an hour glass and you don’t have the luxury of letting things play out. Leaders often unknowingly shoot themselves in the foot by forcing premature results. However, sometimes, the best way to add value is to practice patience to give options the opportunity to play themselves out. It takes an incredible amount of patience to let some options play out, especially when you are early on in a venture. Most in business today are terrible at being patient…let alone knowing when to practice patience. This episode discusses knowing when and how to practice productive patience leadership in order to drive results. In the last few shows we’ve discussed what happens when the value you’ve been building might start to show some cracks in the foundation: * First, you have to recognize that there are cracks in the foundation. Many drones will just keep crossing the bridge and will prefer ignorance to anything that might rock the boat…so they won’t even keep their eyes all the way open…This is where understanding your role as leader or manager is essential. * If you are a manager, you need to be able to point out the crack to the leader you are working with as a manager is there to mitigate conflict so that the leader can best forge ahead on the path to significant long term value. * If you are a leader, you have to be the steward of the vision of the long term value of the venture, so you MUST take the time to understand what the potential implication of the blemish is in the overall value. * So you believe the value to be worth saving, you have to be willing to endure likely short term resistance and conflict. * So if you’ve built something worth saving, then you have to risk ruffling more than a few feathers who aren’t going to appreciate your efforts…remember, they still shoot the messenger, and people are ultimately self serving and have trouble seeing beyond the now. It is critical to know how to balance time and results and know when to practice patience. Having the patience to let some options play themselves out can ultimately add great value.