The business section of any bookstore is a rainbow of ideas about good leadership. Every writer suggests a simple way to influence others, improve relationships or enhance productivity. Each book describes the author’s take on an ideal leader. I think leadership is too complex to simplify into a single book, but the wide variety of writing on the subject is still useful. Leaders should choose for themselves an ideal they can strive to achieve. The ideal is a vision of a perfect leader.
Thinking about an ideal leader is an important first step toward developing as one. Without a destination in mind, effort to improve cannot be applied in the right direction. A well thought out leadership ideal serves as an individual source of inspiration and motivation.
Your leadership ideal should not be etched in stone. It will be influenced by every experience you have as a leader or follower. It will likely capture a bit of every great leader you know. It will be shaped by any poor leaders you see, in what it deliberately excludes. The ideal you aimed for as a younger person may change as you become more senior. You should always be making subtle adjustments to your ideal. If you’re not, you might not be paying enough attention to what you’re doing and the impact you’re having or not having on your followers.
Your ideal should be a reflection of the the ideal leader your followers are looking for. In order to be an inclusive leader, you must adjust your approach for every individual follower. A leadership ideal will necessarily be broad enough to serve many different people.
Know where you want to go and know where you are now
As difficult as it is to describe an ideal leader, it is even more difficult to know how close you are to becoming one. Knowing where you are now is just as important as knowing where you want to go. The gap between here and there is the path of development you should follow.
Leaders should always be a little unsure about where they stand relative to their ideal. There are two ways to try to find clarity: estimate through rigorous self-reflection, or get feedback from your superiors, peers and followers.
Rigorous self-reflection needs to be focused on the specific skills or behaviors you’re working on. If your ideal leader is a great listener, you should be thinking about how well you listened to others. If you don’t reflect on your listening performance after every conversation, you should do so at the end of your day. Whatever your chosen ideal, you should be thinking about your behavior every day, honestly assessing your performance so you can work smartly to move ahead.
Even better than self-reflection is clear feedback from others. Their perspective is the best information you’ll get, but even in the most open climate you’ll receive it relatively infrequently. You’ll go long stretches without any concrete leadership feedback from others. There are ways to seek it out, but I’ve found the most valuable feedback is unprompted, arrives with no warning, and may not be communicated clearly or directly. It takes effort to listen for it, and it takes even more effort to hear it. And it’s usually distressing.
Everyone falls short of their ideal
A leader courageous enough to pursue an ideal, and to self-reflect or seek feedback from others, will frequently be reminded of their own shortcomings. The most difficult part of developing as a leader is not writing your ideal leader vision or reflecting on your progress towards achieving it. The real work is dealing with the pain of finding out you are not the leader you want to be or even thought you were.
I’m convinced the unhappy experience of learning you’re not as good as you thought is unavoidable for anyone who truly cares about leading others. The experience of sadness or disappointment is unique to leaders strong enough to be invested in their performance. Weaker leaders who pay no mind to their work are never let down, but that’s why they are weaker leaders.
The mental and emotional discomfort felt by a caring leader that finds out they are falling short of their ideal can be difficult to shake. It can spark feelings of self-doubt. It can leave a leader questioning their own integrity. It can rob someone of the joy they normally find in leading and inspiring other people.
If you work as a leader has even left you with these feelings, you are not alone.
Hang in there
I believe feelings of frustration and self-doubt are an inevitable consequence of the pursuit of becoming a better leader. People are all so different, and inspiring each of them so intricate a task, that little failures are impossible to avoid. The only way you can avoid negative feelings is to give up on really caring as a leader and being satisfied to do the same thing every day in ignorance of followers’ reactions. Obviously willful ignorance does not make for great leaders.
Almost none of the business section leadership books will warn you of the inevitable negative feelings experienced by great leaders. There seems to be a myth that great leaders never have bad days. Or that great leaders never admit having bad days. Those myths are wrong.
I say almost none because there is one author saying what no one else will: Brené Brown. I read her book Daring Greatly several years ago and it was unlike anything I had read before. Her writing on vulnerability and courage speaks directly to the leadership challenge I’m trying to describe. To be a great leader, you need to reach out to others far enough to be vulnerable to rejection. You can’t stay in the mental and emotional safety of your own home. You have to head outside and walk down the street to try to meet your followers where they live. Unfortunately, sometimes on that journey, it’s going to be cold and rainy. Those bad days are what will make you better. Your willingness to face those days is the courage it takes to lead. I will be re-reading Daring Greatly and reading Brené Brown’s newer book Dare to Lead soon. More to follow I’m sure.
I write about rainy days from my own experience. I’ve been trying to lead other people for my entire adult life. I’ve studied leadership in graduate school and I’ve spent years teaching it in classrooms all over the country. I have the nerve to write about it and think other people will want to read what I have to say! Yet I still have days when I wonder what the heck I’m doing. I still finish conversations with followers knowing that if they said they’re with me, it’s only because my organization’s rank structure means they have to. I know I’m not truly inspiring them – I’m not leading them. I’ve fallen short of my ideal.
My choices are to keep working at it, adjusting my approach with each follower until I discover what moves them, or to give up. I’m not going to give up. And I hope you don’t give up either. If you’re trying to lead other people but feeling self-doubt, hang in there. You’re not the only one. But you are one of the few that cares enough to be vulnerable. Keep up the great work.