3 Critical Lessons From My Lackluster Leadership Week

Back in November, a perfect storm of events completely depleted my leadership capacity.

I was traveling a ton. My home life was suddenly way busier than normal. At work, we were in the throes of planning our 2024 budget.?

I was stretched thin over too many responsibilities. Something had to give. The trouble was, everything on my list was imperative.?

So I started cutting corners in my leadership style instead.

It wasn’t a conscious choice. It was an automatic survival tactic. I unconsciously deprioritized my relationships with my team, and reverted to a transactional mode of leadership.

The worst part: I cut these corners just in time for our annual Strategic Planning Off-Site.

My resulting “lackluster leadership week” reminded me of three critical lessons on the importance of relational leadership.?

1. Data-driven leadership is relational, not transactional.

I’m a data guy, first and foremost. When I’m facing a challenge or a task, my first instinct is to dig into the numbers.?

But I know that most people respond best to relational leadership, even in a data-driven context. So I’ve learned over the years to lead with a people-first approach.?

It’s taken years of conscious effort, planning, and practice to figure this out. It doesn’t come naturally to me at all. But I’ve learned over time that leading data-driven work with human-centered connection brings out the best in people and leads to resilient, dynamic solutions.

In my lackluster leadership week, however, I forgot all these lessons, and reverted back to my natural inclination towards facts and spreadsheets. I kicked off our strategic planning off-site with a massive info dump, blindsiding my entire team with data they’d never seen before. I directed them to process this complex information on the spot, and start generating solutions with no time to prepare.

One person on the team was particularly caught off guard by my transactional delivery. The data was pertinent to their area of expertise, and they should have been in the loop long before it was presented to the group.

I could sense this person’s discomfort right there in the meeting. Instantly, I knew I’d made a mistake.?

2. Meetings are for active collaboration, not passive downloads.

When I hit everyone with a bunch of data they hadn’t seen before, I turned the meeting into an info download session rather than an active collaboration.?

This wasn’t just demoralizing for them. It was a waste of their time and talent.

My team is full of brilliant professionals who are capable of deep analysis and visionary thinking. Had I prepared the data with a clear interpretation and shared it in advance, along with clear expectations and deliverables for their response, they would have come to the retreat with thoughtful proposals ready to iterate and launch.

Instead, I subjected them to Death by PowerPoint. We wasted precious time getting everyone up to speed on the data, at the expense of ideation, strategy and execution. It was a classic case of “This meeting could’ve been an email.” And our retreat agenda suffered because of it.?

3. Nobody’s perfect –?but it’s important to own your mistakes.

We all have moments when we fail to live up to our own standards. I’m not beating myself up. Sometimes we do our best, and it just isn’t enough.

But I do think it’s important to acknowledge the ways we fall short, and learn how to do better next time.

I checked in during our first break with the team member who was particularly impacted by my ill-planned info dump. I asked for grace, and we discussed the adjustments needed for a more effective way forward.

I also called every individual team member the next day. We discussed how they were impacted, and I apologized for letting them down.?

Finally, I’m reflecting publicly and privately on what went wrong, so I can learn from the experience.?

In retrospect, I can see how I failed to recognize my own depleted leadership capacity in the moment. I was trying so hard to operate “as normal” under exceptionally difficult conditions that I actually made things worse.

But another aspect of relational leadership is acknowledgement. A sincere apology and an honest retrospective can build trust even when we’ve fallen short. I’m proud of my team for their gracious responses, and their commitment to moving forward together.

It’s easy to deprioritize relational leadership in times of stress, but that’s precisely when it’s most critical. Going forward, I’ll make relationships a top priority when the going gets tough. This will help bring out the best in me and my teams no matter the circumstances, and make us more resilient, innovative, and capable of navigating the storm together.