I bought a new car recently. Well, new to me.

It’s a 2010 Audi A5 Cabriolet. Black on black. Twenty inch rims with over-sized low profile tires. Two litre turbocharged engine. Premium plus package – the works. Only 44,000 kms.

Wow. I have never had a car like this. And “no”, I am not having a mid-life crisis. My first car was a 1968 850 Fiat Spider convertible I bought for $100 when I was 15. I got hooked on convertibles and have wanted another one ever since. You know though, when you have a family it’s not practical to have a convertible sports car, so you wait until the kids are grown up.

Well, that is where we now find ourselves. So I got a convertible, and I love it!

I am not used to having a car this flashy, powerful and luxurious all in one, and I must say, it doesn’t take long to get accustomed to this kind of vehicle. I think I am now ruined for the ordinary.

I bought it from another province from a business owner who brought it up from the states. When you bring a vehicle to BC from another province you have to get an authorized mechanic to perform an Out Of Province Inspection. It’s simply to ensure the car is of a certain stature to meet the safety and environmental standards of British Columbia. I was confident the vehicle would pass with flying colors. Which, of course, it did.

However, when my mechanic had a look at the vehicle he made a passing comment that, upon reflection, was very profound. He walked around the vehicle with a cheeky little grin on his face and said,

“Yup, she’s a beauty – lots of wow, lots of woe.”

My interpretation of what he meant? My car is full of numerous components that make this vehicle a “wow” on many fronts, but the same amazing components that make it an incredible vehicle, can also make it a pain when it needs repairs. I can live with that, but we’ll see how I feel when it needs some repairs.

As I drove away, reveling in the “wow” of my new purchase, I realized that my mechanic could easily have been commenting on leadership instead of my car…

Leadership is lots of wow, and lots of woe.

I asked one of my clients once what they loved most about their business:

“My people!”, she replied.

“What do you dislike most about your business?”

“My people!”, she repeated.

Lots of wow, lots of woe.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Some people look at what is and ask, ‘Why?’ Others dream of what can be and declare, ‘Why not!”

The latter person is someone who has turned their woe into wow. We have all heard the adage that there are no such things as problems, only opportunities – opportunities for wow. Turning woes into wows is a choice we can all make. As leaders we cannot afford to look at the difficulty we are currently experiencing with a “woe is me” attitude. That turns to self-pity and passivity very quickly. We can’t look at the problem and stay stuck in woe, we must see it as an opportunity for wow.

Victor Frankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning, who suffered atrocities as a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany said,

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

As leaders whose attitudes and actions set the tone for the culture of our organizations we cannot afford to choose a woe attitude, we must choose a wow attitude: An attitude that looks at the problem as an opportunity to grow, to strengthen, to stretch, to discover new ways to do business, new ways to lead people, and new ways to keep moving forward in the face of opposition.

What woes are you currently experiencing that you can look at differently and turn into wows?

Wholehearted leaders understand we can choose our attitude regardless of the circumstances, and turn our woes into wows.