The Hardest Person I Have to Lead
Leadership is hard. And here's the most embarrassing part: the hardest person I have to lead is me.
I got a fresh reminder of that on the golf course recently. I was rocking along, playing fairly well, when—wouldn’t you know it—one bad shot sent me into a tailspin. For four holes, nothing went my way. Try as I might, I just couldn’t regain my composure. I was getting really frustrated.
There was a time in my life when that sort of thing would have ended my round emotionally. If my frustration got overwhelming, I wouldn’t have been able to right the ship. This time, for some reason, I was able to take a pause, relax, and recover. It didn’t magically turn me into a PGA tour pro. But being able to choose my response instead of my temper choosing it for me helped me enjoy the rest of my round.
That's the whole ballgame with self-leadership. It's not about never feeling the frustration. It's about what you do with it. Frustration can be a great prompt for growth. And I was proud that I had grown enough to handle mine more productively that day.
For leaders, growth is not optional.
Growth is essential for good leadership because none of us have arrived yet. We need to grow to become the best version of ourselves.
It can be tempting to treat growth like a mood. I'll take the class when I feel like it, read the book when I get around to it. But my wife and business partner, Michelle, put it well recently: relying on how you feel is a bad plan, because feelings are fickle. If you wait until you feel like growing, you'll wait forever.
Self-development takes a plan. It takes discipline. And most of us don't love discipline. But an undisciplined leader creates chaos. And your team feels it before you ever say a word. They know when you're inconsistent. They know when you're not secure in what happens next. You may try to convince yourself no one's watching. They are.
You can't give what you don't have.
If you want your people to grow—and you should—it's hypocritical to expect that from them while you sit still. The Law of the Lid says an organization can only rise as high as its leadership allows. If I stop growing, I become the lid for everyone following me. The only way to make room for my people to move up is to keep moving myself.
What's done in the dark shows up in the light.
We like to think we can compartmentalize. Home stuff stays at home and work stuff stays at work. That’s wishful thinking. If something's broken in me, if I have deficiencies I should have been addressing but didn’t, that doesn't stay contained. It leaks out, maybe as manipulation, or short temper, or inconsistency I can't quite explain. A broken leader in a position of influence can do real damage.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Just do the work. Read the book, have the hard conversation with yourself, go to therapy if that's what it takes. And pretty soon what used to make you lose your cool will seem a lot easier to manage.
Emotions are indicators, not dictators.
Frustration is a difficult emotion for leaders. So are anger, insecurity, loneliness, and any number of others. But they don’t rule our lives. Emotions—even difficult ones—aren't the enemy. They’re telling you something. The mistake is letting the feeling make the decision instead of just informing it. Take the pause. Ask what's behind it. Then choose your response.
Growth starts with an uncomfortable admission.
You have to grow to lead well, but you won't grow until you admit something in you isn't where you want it to be yet. That stings. But it's also the only door in.
Before you can lead anyone else, lead yourself. It's not extra work on top of leadership. It is leadership.
If you're ready to get honest about where you're leading well and where you're not, let's talk. Book a free discovery call.
